Out of Africa in Reading with Style

Aug 23, 2016 Tien rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: memoirs, africa

This book has been on my radar for a very long time but I’ve never really gone out of my way in researching the author’s background. The book also did not provide any background as to who the author is (I know her name which is on the cover of the book and that she’s in Kenya and that’s it) or why she’s in Kenya or how it was all arranged to be so. I was about 2/3 of the way through the book before I thought that’s what really bugging me about the book and went online to search for a bit more in ...more

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Mar 16, 2018 Chinook rated it it was ok

Shelves: 1001, africa, 500-women, 1-kindle

I really wanted to like this. I thought I’d admire the story of a woman running a farm in Africa all by herself. I thought it would be full of brave and fascinating adventures and obstacles. Instead, it’s more about the people she knew, which would have been wonderful if she hadn’t spent her whole time calling the natives primitive and comparing these human beings to animals every second sentence. I know that it was a different time but this isn’t the only book I’ve read from a different time an ...more

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Apr 16, 2009 Bucket rated it liked it

Shelves: 1001-read-all-editions, bio-auto-bio, non-fiction, culture, race, world-lit, classic, reviewed, diversity, nature-the-outdoors

As far as writing/language, this is a beautiful book that does an excellent job of painting a picture of a coffee plantation in Africa in the early 20th century. The author has a keen eye for detail, a knack for description, and an obviously very deep love for her subject. All this is why we still read this book 85+ years after its publication. And it's worth a read!

However, it IS written by a white person who went to Africa in the early 20th century as a colonist to run a farm and employ the l As far as writing/language, this is a beautiful book that does an excellent job of painting a picture of a coffee plantation in Africa in the early 20th century. The author has a keen eye for detail, a knack for description, and an obviously very deep love for her subject. All this is why we still read this book 85+ years after its publication. And it's worth a read!

However, it IS written by a white person who went to Africa in the early 20th century as a colonist to run a farm and employ the local "natives" who were allowed to remain living near the farm so long as they worked for the author 180 days out of the year. The colonist's mentality that pervades the book put a little bit of a damper on it for me.

For her time, it may be that the author had a pretty liberal attitude towards the African people. She is, after all, a kind and benevolent employer, she helps them with food and medical attention, and has an attitude that ranges from wary tolerance to authentic appreciation when it comes to their culture. She also professes to like them: "As for me, from my first weeks in Africa, I had felt a great affection for the Natives. It was a strong feeling that embraced all ages and both sexes. The discovery of the dark races was to me a magnificent enlargement of all my world."

But from where I sit here in the early 21st century, her writing about the people of Kenya was cringe-worthy over and over again. I got a real sense that she subscribed to the "noble savage" mentality. Additionally, she constantly compares the "Natives" to animals, and I mean CONSTANTLY. To be fair, she also occasionally compares a white person to an animal, but with the Natives, it's disturbingly incessant. Here's a quotation that sort of encompasses both of these aspects of her attitude toward Africans:

"Sometimes on a Safari, or on the farm, in a moment of extreme tension, I have met the eyes of my Native companions, and have felt that we were at a great distance from one another, and that they were wondering at my apprehension of our risk. It made me reflect that perhaps they were, in life itself, within their own element, such as we can never be, like fishes in deep water which for the life of them cannot understand our fear of drowning. This assurance, this art of swimming, they had, I thought, because they had preserved a knowledge that was lost to us by our first parents; Africa, amongst the continents, will teach it to you."

The author is at her best when she's describing the beauty of the land or an experience and the feelings that they give her. For example, on the glorious activity of flying in a plane above her plantation:

"It is a sad hardship and slavery to people who live in towns, that in all their movements they know of one dimension only; they walk along the line as if they were led on a string. The transition from the line to the plane into the two dimensions, when you wander across a field or through a wood, is a splendid liberation... but in the air you are taken into the full freedom of the three dimensions; after long ages of exile and dreams the homesick heart throws itself into the arms of space."

Themes: memoir, Africa, Kenya, auto-bio, farm ...more

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