In an initiative hosted by Aaron Bady (ZunguZungu), I'm joining a gang of awesome bloggers in reading and blogging on the entrants for the Caine Prize for African Literature this year. You can read along with us -- all the stories are available online in PDFs and linked from the Caine Prize website. There's five stories on the shortlist, and a review will be going up every Friday. This is the first one.
The first story the group will be reviewing is “Hitting Budapest”, a story by Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo. What I liked most about the story is the dialogue between the characters, how real it was. I liked the hard-edged innocence of aspiring to be better thieves coupled with not seeing there is something really wrong when a girl is impregnated by her grandfather, scarcely even knowing where babies even come from. I liked how it's not exactly drilled into you that these kids are not the wealthiest. The first thing you learn about them is not their poverty, but that they are kids. And truly, that's all you need to know.
What I didn't like, however, was how I was not sure why there was any need for this story at all. One bothers to write a story, I believe, to point out a moment where things change, either the moments leading up to the change, or the fall-out of the change itself. Basically, I think that a piece of fiction is best when it chronicles a momentous time in a character's life, and the fall-out from such an occasion. Stories can stop and start a narrative so we can zoom in and out like a camera at details and skip backwards and forwards in time, showing to the point of stark nudity particular instances in a character's life in a way that film or any other medium may not be able to. I can't say that this story really does that here.
Perhaps the point she was getting at was that they got to see themselves through the eyes of this random woman in this really upscale neighborhood, but that particular thread wasn't dragged through the story. We get no sense of how the kids were affected by this meeting, save for feeling indignant at her taking a picture of when without so much as offering them food. Maybe the coupling of meeting someone they thought as strange and insensitive with the confronting of a suicide was meant to hint the reader at something about their not knowing how miserable their circumstances are. But they do. They know enough about their situation to want to escape it. Their entire day in the story, they talked about escaping, to Budapest, to America, to South Africa. At the end of the story, I don't know why Bulawayo chose this particular time in the characters' lives, or get any sense how this particular trip to Budapest warranted telling. In sum, I don't know why she wrote the story at all. I don't always think stories ought to have some sort of moral lesson or even a “point” as such; I just like knowing, after I read a story, why it was written in the first place.
In spite of what I've said, and the ending (I found it a bit rushed), I liked reading the story, and I probably will check out more of the writer's work. One of the most gratifying things about this juncture in African literature is how urban some of the stories are, how current, and how younger folks are willing to talk about social issues without moralizing. I'm sure I've said this in this blog before, but I really hate how almost necessary it is as an artist in an African country to feel the need to be topical and have something to say about whatever burning issue there is in our polity. We can't always write about HIV/Aids or poverty, after all, and even if we do, we can't, for the sake of creating art, forget that reality is all about telling stories about people and the very flawed, ver fascinating lives they lead. Even when writers talk about poor people, the best art puts it at the forefront of our minds that we are dealing first and foremost with people, celebrates that humanity before it decries the situation that it lives in, and quietly when it does so. This story does that, as does so many stories people are coming with these days, and that should be applauded.
To see how the other bloggers liked (or not) this story, check ZunguZungu for updates with more blog reactions.
I learned a lot from your brilliant post-
ReplyDeleteToday I learned a new literary expression “African-poverty-pornography” in reading Zunguzunga’s very insightful post on “Hitting Budapest”-here is how the term is to be understood:
““If you were so inclined, in fact, the thing you could say about it would be that it traffics in the familiar genre of Africa-poverty-pornography, by which I would mean that its “story” is only an obligatory excuse for the parade of affect-inducing spectacles which are the story’s real reason for existing. Rather than building a character through back-story, you could say, the purpose of “Chipo” and her fellows is only to dramatize a particular sociological narrative about poverty, to put into view a picture of what you might call a collapsed mode of social reproduction.”
One of the interesting moment in “Hitting Budapest” occurs when the children are in a rich party of the city and a affluent very Anglozied woman asks to take their picture (to show friends back in London a picture of street children she “actually spoke to”)-clearly the woman is receiving a form of voueristic titilation from this encounter. The question then becomes is writing this story like taking a picture of the kids to show people back in London how close you dared to get to real poverty. Bluntly is the author of “Hitting Budapest” (and most of the other Caine Prize stories) writing a story those with high end literary literary educations (as many Caine Prize writers and probably most all readers) can ring their hands over at the poverty of the people of Africa? This did make me reflect a bit. Are these stories written to appeal to the Oxford based Caine Prize Judges?
This brings up the broad question-how much do author intentions matter. My first, and now second,response is that Dickens knowingly did just that. He wrote (certainly in his opening years) about the extreme poor of London (most of the people really) to sell magazines and books to the more affluent people who want only a literary contact with the poor. Does Dickens make use of Cliches about the poor in say Toto Oliver Twist or The Old Couriosity Shop. I am a life time reader and lover of Dickens but I would have to say yes he does rely on cliches and standard figures like orphans to arouse sympathy. Dickens himself came from poverty and wrote his way out of it.
To give another example, Robindranth Tagore, the first Asian writer to win the Nobel Prize, came from a family of incredible riches, the kind you can hardly even find anymore. He wrote many stories deeply sympathetic to the poor of India, especially women in which there is no hint of “poverty-porn”. He had no economic need to sell stories by pandering to his readers.
Related to this issue is the Dalit Literature of India which is written by and about the lives of what was once called the Out Cast people of India (apx 120 Million People). Many of these stories focus on the lives of toilet cleaners, street sweepers, and others in the lowest kind of jobs. Most of the authors have advanced degrees, some with Phds from Oxford. Their stories depict institutionalized poverty based on cultural norms going back 1000s of years. Dalit literature is treated as distinct sub-genre of literature. Some of it does feel a bit like “poverty porn”.
I recently read Edward Said landmark book, Orientalism. I think the bad feeling some of the Caine Prize stories arouses come from a Colonial sense that the authors are what are called “native experts” teaching the Europeans how to manage their subjects and being well paid for doing so. They know an over simplied view will sell better than an indepth analysis in which the full humanity of the people in the stories are disclosed. The authors are then, pushing this as devil’s advocate, paid informants and sell outs.
I do not agree with this but I respect it and I am trying to understand the harsh reaction these stories are producing in some readers.
"The question then becomes is writing this story like taking a picture of the kids to show people back in London how close you dared to get to real poverty. Bluntly is the author of “Hitting Budapest” (and most of the other Caine Prize stories) writing a story those with high end literary literary educations (as many Caine Prize writers and probably most all readers) can ring their hands over at the poverty of the people of Africa?"
ReplyDeleteI actually don't think there's anything wrong with taking a picture of poverty. Writing is not altogether unlike taking a picture; it is taking a picture, zooming in and out, and showing it in different lenses and shades of light to really show everything there is to see in the picture. My problem with the story is that it does nothing with the picture it takes.
For me, a writer fails the smell test when (s)he doesn't bring out the humanity in people. People are more than their circumstances. Yes, these are poor people, but the emphasis should be on "people" not "poor". What I read shows that the writer was so consumed with these children's circumstances that she forgot to give the story a plot.
"I think the bad feeling some of the Caine Prize stories arouses come from a Colonial sense that the authors are what are called “native experts” teaching the Europeans how to manage their subjects and being well paid for doing so."
Speaking for myself, having non-Africans read these stories and thinking "I know Africa now" is a small part of what annoys me, but, yes, it is part of it. As one can tell from my review of each of the stories, my issues with each of them is different, but it is fair to say that my main gripe is that writing "African literature" absolves one from writing a good story. It should not be any different.
It is indeed worth wondering why "an over simplied view will sell better than an indepth analysis". I have my theory - people rather have their impressions reinforced than proved wrong, but the best antidote is to tell one's own stories. It is heartbreaking to think any writer is falling for that. Ideally, you write what you have in you to write and leave it at that.
thank you for your detailed very illuminating response and excuse my delay in answering
ReplyDeleteI see the taking of the picture of the children by the woman visiting her father as meant as an inherently dehumanizing act-the children are being reduced to interesting things to Can be shown her friends back in London-perhaps to excite them in seeing how close she dared to get to the poor children-
As to the story lacking plot-I am accepting of a plot less short story-I do not see this as "lazy writing" but as following the lead of writers like Katherine Mansfield-
On a related matter-does experience have to be behind stories-could not someone who lived all of their lives in a wealthy are of Paris and attended only elite schools and never in fact even met anyone from Africa not in fact write a better story than the Caine prizes base simply on what you see on CNN? Is lived experience required to validate stories?-this seems to be what some of the commentators on the Caine stories are suggesting-In fact why must the Caine stories be about intrinsically African matters-Frank O'Connor wrote that he told his students, following some advise W. B. Yeats gave him, that if you have a good idea for a story, first set in 11th century Byzantium, then in Florence in the 15 the century, then in the modern world and if it makes sense in all these three settings it might be a good story-
I am glad we shared the experience of posting on these stories and will be happy to respond
once I have read the 12 stories written for the Caine work shop I will do a post called something like "Orientalism, Native Informants and the Caine Prize"