The Rabbi's Cat

To start off, I think it's funny that the cat does not have a name. It reminded me Breakfast at Tiffany’s where the main character, Holly, has a nameless cat. I think this story is relatable because I believe that everyone has conflicts with religion. This cat interacts with different characters throughout the story, each on their own quest for religion and faith. I was pleasantly surprised to see that this is NOT a children's book. The cat even has a mistress in the story. Some characters are confused and bewildered like the rabbi, some are set in their ways like the father, and some are questioning the religion entirely like the Cat.

In addition to this not being a children's book, it's also a humorous one. This cat is born Algerian but it wants to be Jewish! As it was said in class, this is NOT a "Disney kitty". This cat is a foreign creature who's voice in written in cursive to symbolize that. The cursive is harder to read and used a lot less by the average person. The rabbi represents tradition and the cat represents modernity.

I understand the Cat's dilemma with religion as most people would. I think most people can agree that when we are young abstract ideas like religion are harder to grasp. This was a good example of how there can be such a closely connected group of people so many conflicting ideas about religion and faith.

                              
               

Nervous Conditions

Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions is a book about colonizations and the different phases that it takes to be colonized. I like it because it shows the reader how a person is actually colonized and the stages that a person goes through to get there. I also really enjoy the book because I have terrible ADD and Dangareembga's style of writing is perfect for someone with a small attention span. She tends to jump from scene to scene and therefore I never lose interest. After I began reading Nervous Conditions I noticed the important issues that Dangareembga brings up through the story: education, living, money, gender roles, family, and even abuse. She introduces us to Tambu, Nyasha, Lucia, and Ma'shingay and Maiguru (the two mothers). Tambu is obviously not sorry about her brother's death and doesn't seem to feel bad about it at all. I can't imagine not feeling bad about my own brother's death. Each one of Dangareembga's characters is going through some sort of issue with colonization. There have been times where I have felt like I am losing myself. I made a new group friends that totally changed my way of thinking, luckily  I was able to realize is though!

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

The excerpt from Decolonization of the Mind was hard for me to get through. What I took from it was that you shouldn't talk about things you do not know. You should not form opinions without personally experiencing it yourself or having enough knowledge to prove your opinion. The British should respect people in the place that they live. The African language is not just something you can translate. Therefore, can the English carry the weight of their African experience? No, the language should be in the mother tongue. The star story that was read in class about the star bathing the fish's pond was helpful for understanding this. The star does not anything of the pond and the fish does not know anything of the sky. This is true for the British and the Africans. They both do not know enough about either cultures so why form opinions about it? It used to upset me when I would hear people from ivy-league schools talk about how UC isn't a good school. How can they form opinions about UC if they do not attend it? I know nothing of their university's culture and they know nothing of mine.

Wedding at the Cross was much more pleasing for me to read although frustrating. I was frustrated because the woman in this story puts up with so much from her husband. Wariuki was a poor man who was satisfied with just clowning around on a bicycle for money. He falls in love with Miriamu who is a good catholic from money. She loved how down to earth and carefree he was about money and life. However, when he met her father, everything changed. Wariuki was no longer content with just living in the woods with Miriamiu. Her father's comment about money and class hit Wariuki so hard that he drove himself mad trying to be successful. He transformed himself into Dodge W. Livingstone, an accomplished man in the church and society. He made amends with her father, Douglas Jones, and felt it was time to marry Miriamu. I was so relieved at the end when she rejected him at the altar. Douglas Jones colonized Wariuki and Miriamu became decolonized. This reminded me of my friend's parents in high school. They started off very in love but her dad became obsessed with social status and money where her mom had it all her life and wasn't fazed by it anymore. It's sad to see how colonizing the mind can change a person so much to the point that even their relationships don't even work anymore.

Minutes of Glory was very sad. This poor girl Wanjiru, also known as Beatrice because she is ashamed on her real name, was nothing more than a bar maid. However, she was a very ignored bar maid. She felt unattractive and invisible all the time. She envied other pretty girls and how they had so much confidence. At the end, when she returns all dolled up, she got her sweet revenge. She chose to ignore the suiters and prance around knowing that she looked good. She wasn't even fazed when the authorities took her away for stealing. I've seen this happen to many girls in my time. This was clear that colonialism teaches you to hate yourself. She changed who she was and conformed to the fact that men only think women are good for pleasing them. My best friend Libby is a really intelligent girl. She comes from a family of doctors and she herself is pre-med. She's had a perfect grade point average her whole life and school is effortless to her because of her natural intellect. However, when we go out, people think she is just another dumb party girl in a dress and acts less intelligent than she really is. She conforms to the idea of how men think a woman should be instead of just being herself. Colonization teaches women that they are only good for pleasing men with sex.

Nadine Gordimer

In my opinion, Nadine Gordimer’s Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants was a sad story with a happy ending due to irony. This woman works in a garage and seems so lonely. However, it was also a funny story as well. This woman has such an elevated opinion of herself even though she continues to express how lonely she is. She says things like “I don’t know what happens to these blokes, they are married, I supposed, though their wives don’t still wear a perfect size fourteen like I do”. This is funny for two reasons, the first being that she has such a high opinion herself and the second being that size fourteen is not considered perfect. Nadine lightened up the story with this humor but it was still hard for me to avoid how lonely this woman is. I have to say that I can relate to this. I didn’t know a lot of people my first year at UC and so I made friends with a girl who I let walk all over me because I was simply just lonely. Of course, I’ve had romantic situations like hers as well but not as bad as hers. This man was clearly using her and at the end when her co-worker tells Jack that she’s not there it’s very ironic. All that time, she had trusted Jack and let him walk all over her when really her co-worker was the one who was truly there for her.

Gordinmer’s Amnesty was also a sad story! This woman and her child, Inkululeko, lived on a farm where she waited years for the lover her life (not yet husband) to return from the Island. When I read that It was called “The Island” all I could think was shutter island where the mental prison was. She spends all this time trying to prepare to see him and then realized she needed a permit to get to the island. When he finally returns home, he acts almost above all the farm people or “simple folk”. I understand that he wanted to stick with the union and do right by the farm people but this poor woman was left yet again. He never had the time to marry her, she said, but yet he had the time to impregnate her again. When he leaves, she says “Waiting. Waiting for him to come back”(1355). This just made me really sad to know that this woman had to keep waiting for him. I can relate to this a little bit. I had a boyfriend who left for college my freshman year to a really nice school. I felt like when he returned home that he was above everything here and that I was always just waiting for him to return.I knew he couldn’t wait to go back just like her lover couldn’t wait to return to the island. This was a good example of how the farm people were pictured as simple people who didn’t know much and the city people were much smarter and considered a lot more educated.

Gordimer’s Six Feet of Country was about a man his wife, Lerice. One of the farm boys got sick and passed away. They didn’t want to tell anyone because he was staying there illegally. Lerice and her husband were really upset by this because they would have never wanted anyone to ride. I think I felt the most sorry for Petrus because he had so much hope throughout the story. The narrator (the baas) was trying to help Petrus as much as he could. However, when the young boy died, the baas knew he had to report it. The authorities disposed of the body and of course the next day Petrus wanted to know where the body was to give him a proper burial. When Petrus says “my son was not so heavy” I felt incredibly uncomfortable. I knew what had happened as soon as I read that line. Of course the real body was never found and this was an incredibly unfortunate situation for all of them. The baas was outraged by how they were treated and this is a good example of just how they deal with those types of situations.

"An Image of Africa", "Girls at War", "The Madman"

"An Image of Africa" written by Achebe was sort of dry and boring to me. However, it was written that was for a reason. Achebe wanted to prove that he could write just as well as a white man could. He wanted to prove that he possessed the same skills if not better skills. He used the worst british english just to insult Conrad because he thought Conrad was racist. Conrad made very racists comments about africans not being real human beings and referred to white people as "glorious". He would say that Africans were just like white people only ugly. Conrad wanted to take everything problematic and put it on Africa. I can relate because there will be times where I will have a big meal and maybe end up wasting some of it and I will say "I feel bad because there are children starving in Africa" when they are children starving in many other places. His solution is that there has be hope. He wants to start education on thinking of Africa as equal.

"Girls at War"  written by Achebe was a lot more entertaining for me to read. It's a story about a man named Nwankwo who falls in love with a girl named Gladys. He noticed how she changed greatly over time. She became a hooker and told her story of how she had to sell her body to make money. In the end, she ends up dieing because she ran back to help the driver get of the car. She was trying to do something good for someone else and was instead killed. Irony is something that happens to people on a daily basis. I've tried to do the right thing before and have ended up being the one punished. It's a cruel world we live in sometimes.

"The Madman" written by Acheve was at first confusing but then humerous to me. It's a story about two people, the Madman and Nwibe. It was hard for me to distinguish who was who at first. Nwibe seems crazy right away to me. He treats the highway like a person and feeds it water. He tells the highway not to worry and that he will return. He was determined to make it to this market where he just ends up embaressing himself by invading other people's huts. He comes into this woman's hut and acts like it's hit. Naturally, the woman calls for her husband and Nwibe is beaten away. He's really just a vagrant walking from market to market. Then, he meets the Madman at the river. The Madman steals Nwibe's cloth (or pants) and proceeds to laugh at him. Nwibe was outraged and embaressed to be standing there naked while this Madman had his cloth. Without any clothes, Nwibe had no status. Obviously society views a naked person walking down the street as classless and crazy. However, is Nwibe crazy? no he's just been driven mad because of how the people were treating him. After being sent to three doctors, he is "cured" when he really didn't need any curing at all. In the end, if he had just not chased the Madman then he would have looked less crazy and might have been elected to the council of elders. Where is the irony? Well, the good doctor couldn't help him because he knew there was nothing actually wrong with him. The fake doctor was one who got money for "curing" Nwibe. The moral of the story: Look around at your world and be observant. If you start to believe it you can become crazy.

The Stranglehold of English Lit

Felix Mnthali's poem titled The Stranglehold of English Lit is about his dislike for English literature. He believes that the Africans shouldn't have to read and learn English literature if they don't want to. He talks about questions that relate to language and class. He asks, “How could questions be asked at Makerere and Ibadan, Dakar and Ford Hare’—with Jane Austen at the centre?”. He brings up a good point with Jane Austen and how her people don't work in her books. He explained how her books trick the Africans into thinking that the British are such great people. He says "Jane Austen lulled the sons and daughters of the dispossessed into calf-love" which means that the literature is deceiving. Although Jane Austen's books are very popular, he does make a valid point on how her literature tricks the African's into thinking that the British lead such great lives. It doesn't seem fair that if you take literature in Africa, you take British literature and that's final. I can't imagine what it would be like if the roles were reversed. If we have to read only African literature, I don't think I would understand why. Especially if the Africans were taking over our land while we were reading about how they were such great people.