Roses Under the Miombo Trees: An English Girl in Rhodesia

by Amanda Parkyn

Amanda Parkyn's memoir focuses on her life in 1960s Southern and Northern Rhodesia. Based on the letters she wrote to her parents back in England, Roses Under the Miombo Trees covers significant events in Rhodesia's history as uniquely witnessed through the eyes of a young naive housewife

Genres: Africa, Nonfiction, Memoir

240 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2012

Reviews

[Anne Purwitsky · Rating 3 out of 5]

lnteresting read as I grew up in those times in Rhodezia.,so it brought back many memories.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent.

[Ranette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very much enjoyed this bio about life in Africa of a young married woman. They moved numerous times and make many friends in different parts. I thought is was a typical 60's life.

[Baglady · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good book to start and stop reading over the roughly 2 1/2 months that I took to read it. Not because it was uninteresting - on the contrary, I kept returning and re-accessing it (online), then renewing because I wanted to keep reading. The format helped - it is more of a journal than a story with a plot.

The author was a young wife whose husband worked in Zimbabwe and Zambia from 1959 through the end of 1964, just after Zambia's independence. She relates her life in expat society through reflection on letters she wrote to her family (and some written by others) during those times. Not unexpectedly she was unaffected by, and largely ignorant of, many societal and political influences around her, and she unflinchingly owns uncomfortable feelings looking back on those sheltered days. Because I worked, and for short periods lived in both Zambia and Zimbabwe in the 1990s, I was drawn in by descriptions of "colonial" places with which I am familiar. Written in 2009, a postscript comments on the deteriorating health and economic conditions of each country. While accurate at that time, this snapshot was incomplete and seemed condescending, consistent with the "I am an outsider drawing conclusions based on my one-sided view of things" perspective that characterizes the nature of the expat community in the early 1960s. This is too limited a view to give readers even a cursory briefing on the challenges and rewards of living there post-independence. So much changed between the 1960s and now - both improvements and deterioration - that readers are advised to seek other sources of accurate historical information and reflection, many of which are listed among the references she used in writing this memoir. I had to keep reminding myself that this is just one person's experience of a sheltered life, a very one-sided view of life in Rhodesia in the early 1960s.

[Susan Hirtz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A young woman's coming of age memoir is painted on a canvas of colonialism, highlighting a borderline awareness of 1960s British racism and paternalism in Rhodesia, where a hard core refusal to accept independence occurred.

Raised in suburban society among a stratified English middle class in postwar 1950s, Amanda Parkyn followed her insular and controlling parents' guidance in doing the "right thing". She married a "suitable" husband, leaving a promising career of her own to create a family with him in Rhodesia. Over a few years of blissful unawareness of looming political unrest, they experienced a life of garden parties and tennis built on local poverty. Left out of this book are many incidents of insurrection and violence because the Parkyns managed to leave Southern Rhodesia for what later became Zambia just before they occurred. While she mildly alludes to the stresses on herself and her husband, they must have been greater than she describes as they resulted in divorce.

Navigating such turbulent waters left her with a clearer idea of her own lack of perspective, but in comments about a more recent life one observes an insular attitude. She appears to be striving in this book to grapple with similar issues, however marginally. She further distracts and interrupts her story line by inserting poems written at the time. These give us a glimpse of her loneliness and isolation in a world only partly understood. One is left with pity, not empathy for someone whose self esteem appears to be tied to her way of life.

She could have renamed this book A Sheltered Woman or Life in a Bubble and been perfectly clear.

[Susanna Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a little uncertain about this book when I started reading it, but was pleasantly surprised. Amanda Parkyn discovered four years worth of letters she'd written her mother while Parkyn and her husband lived in various areas of Southern Africa. She uses those letters to reconstruct their time there, not flinching from the attitudes that she held during that period of time, and delving more deeply into what was going on in (what are now) Zambia, Malawi, and Zimbabwe.

I had a similar experience after reading Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, in that I'd now like to learn more about Rhodesia and the area's history before, during, and after colonization. Luckily, Parkyn provides a list of further reading that helped her during the writing, so I'll be sure to check out some of those books as well.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. There wasn't a juicy plot...this is more like reading someone's diary or journal. This book covers Amanda's experience living in Rhodesia in Africa in the 1960s when it was under British rule. Her mother saved her letters home, so she has put together a story based on her experience. I enjoyed reading about it. If you have any interest in what it would be like to live in another country, this is something to consider.

[Kari · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this delightful book, Parkyn described not only the life of a young expat family living in Rhodesia, but the relevant political circumstances that informed the decisions they made, and the activities they partook.

I most admired her dual voices. In equal parts she was the young mother discovering Africa, parenting, and companionship, and then the biographer humbly reflecting on her younger self's naïveté and colonial history.

[Reza Amiri Praramadhan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was expecting whites' live in Rhodesia (especially Southern one) under the Rhodesian Front and the UDI, and the struggle Instead, I read about sewing, giving births, preparing for parties and charities and whatever. At least this book gives me an insight of how idyllic life was then, even in Africa, and how paternalistic and ignorant are white people regarding the blacks. Fortunately this book is a short one to read, if you can stand the tiny details.

[Bacaff2]

Very interesting!

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this! It is sort of rambling but a great glimpse into life in the early 60s in Rhodesia.