Rod MacKenzie's Blog, page 7

‘Unwanted, dirty’: The ‘fictitious’ gang rape (II)

(Continued from previous blog) Bend, Not Break largely shifts between Ping’s nightmarish childhood and her adult life in the US. In America she grows, step by painful step, into a successful businesswoman in the software industry. Before this, sometime after the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese government demanded she leave China. This is because of the...

‘Unwanted, dirty’ – reading a Chinese woman’s memoir (I)

– Written while recuperating from a broken hand and wrist How everything is already memory. His broken hand cradled, cupped and listened to as its slow bones knit back. The wonder of watching his fingers and palm go through their re-blooming: the fingers learning again to outstretch, then bunch up like an evening blossom that...

Is Oscar’s attorney really a star?

Why is the defence advocate, Barry Roux, considered a star by the faceless social media when a defenseless woman was killed? One realises there are subeditors, and part of their jobs is just to make a sensational headline. But the story in reports like these celebrate Roux as if he were a chess grandmaster. The metaphor is...

Prejudice, racism and entertainment

“South Africans here in New Zealand have a reputation for being aggressive — especially the Afrikaners,” groaned Mark, a fellow English-speaking South African, over a beer. “Why Afrikaners?” I asked. He shrugged his shoulders. “They arrive here with a huge chip on their shoulder, walk into our workshop demanding a WOF for their car and...

Libraries and violence

You know that sensation when you mistakenly walk into the other sex’s dressing room and there is that sudden fluster and flurry of clothing being pulled back up and stifled or not stifled squeals? Of course you do. Well, for the purposes of description, entering a decent library can be the exact opposite, especially when...

Fleeing China

It was the very recent death of his mother that emerged in him during this time, this fleeing from snow-swept China. Now in New Zealand, he felt his creative fingertips for the first time in months. He re-discovered the warmth of Marion’s hands and laugh again, the hearth which had always been there, the arms...

Poverty, empty hands, little smiles

Wooosshh! I upended the large bin and hundreds of colourful Lego-like blocks and bally-shaped thingies scattered across the floor in front of the delighted Chinese four-year-olds that I am currently teaching. The floor was now a rainbow that had come crashing and splintering down from the heavens. “Pick up the green,” I roared, “the green,...

Meaning in suffering

I have written this with the Marikana massacre in the back of my mind. It is a pity it is in the back of my mind, where it should actually be in the front. I think of the surviving of those mowed down, the frightened families, the grief-stricken mothers, the bewildered, sad and probably hungry...

In memory of my father

The Things that Matter I Pale and bloody in the evening, the vlei is a new-born creature, ripples suckling, tugging at the light, gulls whimpering in the dark. Here, a place denied and unvisited for years and years, pebbles knocking my shoes, I’ll never forget your limp (toe amputated in World War II). Recalling that...

Me trying not to be a sorrowful pain in the arse

“Just breathe deeply,” said James, ironically lighting his third cigarette in a row. “Just breathe … deeply … ” he muttered, placing his hand on his solar plexus and breathing in, “because all you have got IS now”. Or words to that effect. I noticed how James’s heartfelt, life teachings were a simple as a...