Marieke's comments (member since Aug 01, 2008)

Marieke's comments from the Great African Reads group.

This is great!
http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adic...

I read it and enjoyed it/learned a lot. But I think I returned my copy. However, I returned it with the intention of getting my own copy. So I guess I'll do that quickly!

does anyone know if the moroni blues book has been translated into other languages? i can't seem to find anything. i can't do french, but i could do german.

um, i dug again. but i don't know anything, really, about these books (potentially dry/boring and/or depressing):

Limits of Anarchy Intervention and State Formation in Chad

Africa's Thirty Years War Libya, Chad, and the Sudan 1963-1993

Teenager in the Chad Civil War A Memoir of Survival, 1982-1986

sure...i tried quick-like to do some digging but almost everything is in French. i can look some more and set up a poll for a "second selection" but in any case, i'm game to read this starlight book.

Andrea wrote: "On the other hand, I am glad we read this book, since it is one of the earliest pieces of African literature I've read. I wish I owned a copy so I could go back to it easily at some point to see i..."

i totally agree Andrea. I also think it's the earliest pieces of African literature I've read. I'll have to dig out my college books to see if i've read any that were earlier...i also would like to have my own copy; i have no doubt i'll want to refer to the book again in the future. even though my reaction seems mostly negative, i actually enjoyed reading it and i think this has been my strongest reaction to a book from our Tour d'Afrique thus far.

Phyllis wrote: "Marieke wrote: "Phyllis wrote: "I finished the book last night and thoughts are still forming. I suppose I should try to imagine the author's audience (The French) and the era in which this book w..."

the titley book is *really* good. it's not dry at all. bokassa is fascinating just by himself, but the CAR-French relations were also interesting to learn about. i enjoyed Bokassa's fascination with Napoleon. i'll start a separate thread for that book...hopefully others will read it!

Phyllis wrote: "I finished the book last night and thoughts are still forming. I suppose I should try to imagine the author's audience (The French) and the era in which this book was written (1920's) in order to ..."

i felt that way too at the end. i sat there thinking "huh?" and then i wrote my immediate unfiltered reflections and questions. i'm not sure i've ever really gotten my thoughts together.

i tried to do the same: i tried to read it/understand it as the author intended his audience to but i've been unable to for the most part. i have a feeling i'll be returning to this book and it may pop up in later discussions about other books the group selects.

i liked the simple writing style. i don't know French, but i wonder if that style has anything to do with the fact it was originally written in French. i feel like other (translated) French novels i've read were also spare and simple in style.

that's an interesting point--perhaps Maran was trying to convey the characters' humanity by showing them as somewhat tragic flawed figures...but unfortunately they did not come across as three-dimensional at all. i think it would be interesting to see how Africans had previously been portrayed to French people who only knew about Africa from reading about it.

i agree that Batouala's resentment was clear throughout the novel...but somehow i felt like the whites' impact on their life was not shown as clearly as Maran could have shown it. i felt like i had a *very* clear understanding when i read the first chapter of Brian Titley's book "Dark Age: the Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa." colonialism did horrendous things with its exploitation of labor among others...but i just did not get a strong sense from Maran's book about just how profoundly Batouala's people had been affected by the Europeans. i felt more like they had been a nuisance to Batouala but not much else.

And we look forward to your contributions, Phyllis!

i just quickly reread through all the commentary...jeffrey mentioned "Things Fall Apart" and Andrea mentioned "Houseboy." i read Things Fall Apart a long time ago and i read Houseboy as part of this Tour d'Afrique (i'll go reread our comments momentarily). i think there are interesting comparisons to draw...i'll go out on a limb and say that TFA and Houseboy are probably more successful than Maran's book...but i wonder if it has more to do with the time period in which the books were written or because Oyono and Achebe were from the places they were writing about...

welcome, phyllis!
i'll be curious to see if you think it fails at what several of us have said we thought would be its objective. are you able to read the entire book via Google? that would be great, since your library doesn't have it. it's short, so it shouldn't be too much of a pain to read it that way.

if i remember correctly, according to the introductory material, French readers at the time responded the way Maran hoped they would...i wonder what they saw in it that I haven't?

i agree, andrea. i think that is a big part of my confusion about this book. i feel disoriented and i'm not sure if it's because i know close to nothing about french colonies in africa, particularly the area that became the central african republic. does anyone else feel confused? or have any insight that might help me feel less confused? am i overthinking? :D

i finished. i enjoyed it more than i was thinking i would (soap opera indeed!), but i'm a bit confused about what maran's point was. i need to reread what he had to say about the book and his reasons for writing it. i was under the impression that he wanted to write something that would prompt french people to confront their government and demand an end to colonialism there. so i was expecting something that would be highly critical of colonialism and would show in scathing detail how colonialism had made a mess of things. i didn't really come away with that at all.

i don't really know where to begin with my problems/questions. my questions are essentially the same as andrea's in her above post... where is the line between the actual culture of Bamba and what Maran believed based on stereotypes? how would this book be different if a local person, rather than a black person, himself from a colonized culture yet working for the colonial authorities, written this book?

i was impressed with the imagery and how maran wove in the presence of whites even though there was no real white character...the whites were just background. for the first big chunk of the book, batouala just kept saying things about whites, but no whites had appeared in the story, which made me wonder how he was forming his ideas about them. so i enjoyed the discussion that batouala and his father led regarding the blacks' mistakes since the arrival of the whites.

but aside from the complaints about whites not wanting them to sing and dance and requiring them to pay taxes, i didn't get a strong sense of a profound impact on their lives...they seemed to be living pretty much as they always had, using animal myths to explain everything (which i enjoyed), although here and there it seemed some people -- unnamed youth and Bissibi'ngui (Yassigui'ndja's lover) -- were showing signs of rejecting ancient wisdom and questioning traditions. however, for the most part, things seemed intact -- the coming of age ceremony, funeral traditions, respect for nature. no one seemed to be actually working for the whites, although if it was mentioned, it was likened to slavery, yet the only slaves mentioned were slaves belonging to batouala's people. the narrator's voice simply noted white condescension about the native people's culture and lifestyle, which batouala obviously didn't like, but generally seemed to shrug off. he was just as condescending toward white ways of doing things.

since i know so little about the area comprising the Central African Republic, i have no idea how to judge Batouala and his wife...did they comport themselves properly? what were Batouala's duties to his people? did he fulfill them? how are wives expected to feel about their husbands? is love involved at all in a marital relationship or is that a european concept?

what was maran trying to accomplish with his final scene? I sincerely don't understand it. maybe i'm only able to read the story superficially, but overall i came away with the thought that maran had merely reinforced a lot of ugly european stereotypes about black africans. i was expecting a book that would simultaneously show how traditional black africans (of this region) appeared to europeans, then reveal what was actually happening with the native population. that only happened for me in a couple of spots and certainly did not define the book for me.

and lastly, the most disturbing thing for me was the misogynistic undertone of maran's story. was maran a misogynist? or was the culture he was describing misogynistic? for instance, in chapter 5, "Boundjous," the chapter i really enjoyed because it did the most to explain the blacks' feelings toward the whites, maran writes:

"For the most part, we would certainly obey the 'boundjous,' without even thinking of protesting, if they were only more logical with themselves. the sad thing is that it is nothing like that. One example, among so many others. Hey, two or three moons ago, wouldn't you know that that animal Ouorro, drunk like a white man, wouldn't you know that my Ouorro decides to beat one of his 'yassis' unmercifully.
"By N'Gakoura, I assure you that as far as thrashing one's wife is concerned, no one does it better. Ayayaille! He thrashed her well, i guarantee it. She was just sores and bruises all over. No doubt it was a beautiful job. Blame him if you want. Who among us has never beaten one of his wives?
"So up to then nothing out of the ordinary. This is where the affair becomes complicated. Our hussy, instead of going back in her house, quite calm about her drubbing, decided to go complain to the commandant, who was hosting some touring whites that very day!"

(a *beautiful* job?!?! our "hussy"?!?!)

The scene continues...the commandant orders a black militiaman to find the husband to lock up the husband but the militiaman is confused by the gap between crime and punishment, because it is acceptable for a man to beat his wife black and blue. yet everyone is incensed when the militiaman is abused and ridiculed by the white people when he is too slow to act on the commandant's order. it's okay to beat women but not okay for men to be beaten? and then, at the very end of the book, as Batouala lays dying, he muttered that there is no such thing as "Bandas nor Mandjias, neither whites nor blacks--that there were only men--and that all men were brothers." on the one hand, it's a nice thought on a humanistic level. but when juxtaposed with the apparent treatment of women, who are apparently nothing but sex objects and objects of derision to be beaten on a whim, it's rather galling.

as i said at the very beginning of this really long post (sorry!!!!!!), i'm confused about the point of this book and whether or not Maran accomplished what he set out to do. help me out!

I'm finally reading this. I'm reading the one translated by Barbara Beck and Alexandre Mboukou with an introduction by Donald Herdeck of Georgetown University. I chose this copy simply because it is smaller than the other copy I have from the library. Later i'll check my second copy to see if it has different introductory material.

I think the comments so far have been really interesting. I'm curious to see how I react to the book. I liked Bedouin's comments about "wide-angle cinema style"; i'm using that to shape the imagery of the book for myself.

I'm wondering what people thought about any introductions or prefaces they read (if they read them...sometimes I read that sort of thing after I read the actual book). the thing that struck me, was the amount of non-black/non-african reaction to the book...i'm curious to know what a black african person thinks of this book, particularly a black person from this area; rene maran is an "outsider" afterall. he's still writing about village life as an visitor, even though he was a black visitor who understood colonialism in a way a white european would not. if someone from what is now CAF reads this book, or if a black african writer/intellectual reads this book, are they going to see an authentic experience, or a caricature of their traditional life?

it seems to me that maran wrote the book for white people to read, not black people, and it was white people who gave him a prestigious literary prize. does maran's work influence black african writers in any way? or has it?

the very beginning of herdeck's introduction was interesting to me:

"...many French critics attacked Maran's book as 'obscene,' 'poorly composed,' and on of the 'scandals of the epoch'...(a-hem, my interjection: um, my own prejudices about the French people tell me that they would *love* and should *embrace* a good scandal!)
...By so doing, they failed to recognize that Maran had attempted to write the novel as he believed Batouala, the African chief who is the key character, saw reality."

So, my question is, just because Maran was black, can he authentically convey the life of an African chief? (I have absolutely nothing against writers doing such things, that is what the imagination is for...but when a man writes as a woman or vice-versa, it's clear that the author is taking some poetic license...) but when the white world reads a black author writing about black people, it is not so clear, and the black author is given authority that may not be so deserving (or it may!). would batouala's story ring true to the people Maran wrote about?

Two of mine arrived but i haven't had a chance to see what the major differences are or see what different information exists in the intros...

i just fetched all the ones not marked "missing." so i have asked for 1922, 1932, 1973, and 1987. hopefully at least one of those is actually available!

i just fetched a copy for myself...i selected the 1987 edition, but i'm thinking of also asking for the original 1922 book to see what the difference is...and maybe i'll get the 1938 as well? and 1973? HM! could be interesting and i suspect no one else is asking for these books.

So you need to find something by a person from Comoros, not just something written by a person who visited there...like a piece of travel lit or journalism?

Hm. I know nothing about comoros...are there individual islands you could use to find something?

I wonder ... Did Comoros ever have a different name or names?

yeah, this is pretty awesome! i had not seen it before. thanks, shoshana!