Uncovering 'different samenesses' of women's lives
Parched Earth: A Love Story
Elieshi Lema
2001, E&D; Limited, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
224 pages
Reviewed by Tony Simoes da Silva
"A woman writer must have an imagination that is plain stubborn, that can invent new gods and banish ineffectual ones" (Yvonne Vera, Opening Spaces: Contemporary African Women’s Writing; Heinemann, 1999) .
Elieshi Lema’s novel, Parched Earth (2001) is subtitled ‘A Love Story’, and to a great extent what we read is indeed an interesting take on the romance narrative. But the fact that the story has a single female protagonist and a number of male suitors suggests already a more radical view of the world, one in which a woman’s search for love is an active rather than a passive experience. This, combined with frequent if mildly graphic descriptions of love-making, almost invariably initiated by Doreen Seko, the story’s main protagonist, adds to this sense that Parched Earth is not only challenging some of the more conventional depictions of women in African writing as more or less passive victims, but that it does so with a very clear design to state the writer’s position on the matter. To put it differently, the novel allows Lema to contribute forcefully to wider debates about gender, writing and power in contemporary Africa. In Parched Earth she takes up Yvonne Vera’s view that "Writing offers [African women] a moment of intervention". That on occasion this also leads Lema to indulge in a less than subtle didacticism is a risk that I believe the writer would have been aware of, and one that I think she handles with considerable success.
But any reader familiar with a large body of women’s writing, not necessarily all African, will recognise the political models within which she works, and the ways in which this in turns places specific demands on the aesthetic dimension of the work. The overt emphasis on a female sensuality, depicted as intrinsic to Doreen’s story again reflects a decision to have readers see the world through a woman’s eyes, whatever the limitations imposed on her perspective by social ideologies. If I may simplify it a little, remove Africa from the background, shift the story’s obvious material and historical determinants and one might be reading a text produced by a writer in the USA, the UK or elsewhere "outside the industrialized world" (Fawzia Mustafa, back cover). Allow me, however, to cite Mustafa’s words in full:
The novel belongs to a new generation of works which are documenting, for the first time, the constitution and emergence of a historical, political and cultural consciousness hitherto not considered the domain of concern of writing outside the industrialised world. I think [that] the gender politics of Parched Earth with its emphasis on complimentarity rather than either fatality or separatism places it with a new generation of theoretical work by African women positing a local rather than western-oriented brand of womenist/feminist/woman identified consciousness.
"Lema herself does a much better job at situating her writing than any amount of posturing by an academic critic might do"
While it would be hard to find a more supportive statement, I am struck by the contortions Mustafa performs as she seeks to sidestep the perceived taint that monster concepts such as ‘womenisn/feminism’ leave on African writing by women. This idea that literature, or art in general by Africans, women and men simply cannot share anything in common with the work of other people elsewhere in the world must be one of the most futile political stances adopted by critics of African or postcolonial art, in this case literature. That writing in English by a woman who, very obviously has been exposed to the writing of women from other parts of the English-speaking world, should be only authentically African - and the implication is mine, hence the emphasis - is so limited as to undermine rather than support the novel. Thankfully, Lema herself does a much better job at situating her writing than any amount of posturing by an academic critic might do. Moreover, contrary to what Fawzia proposes, novels such as Parched Earth have always been less the exception than the norm among writing by African women.
Parched Earth revolves round a number of love relationships. As we follow the story of Doreen Seko, a young teacher struggling to find a balance between the ambition to succeed professionally as a teacher in a male-dominated world and to find happiness in her personal life, we meet some of the men with whom she becomes romantically associated - Zima, Martin, Joseph. Love is at once instrumental and incidental to Doreen’s quest for self-fulfilment, for she knows that as a woman the price of love often amounts to giving up all professional ambitions. It is this quandary, where the political and the personal meet that Lema explores in her text. She is especially concerned with depicting Doreen’s growth into a strong and confident woman at ease in her multiple roles of daughter, lover, mother and teacher. Central to the narrative is thus the notion of learning as intrinsic to self-growth, for the difficulties Doreen faces result in large part from her lack of knowledge about her own past. She knows also only too well that she must struggle to overcome the hurdles set in her path by the very things that she desires: love and professional success.
Parched Earth is a novel in which issues of gender and how women are ‘created socially’ are very obviously intentional concerns. Although clearly an African novel, the politics of colonialism and postcolonialism are subsumed in Parched Earth within the story of a woman who, in the course of the novel becomes for a while Mrs Doreen Patrick and once again Doreen Seko. These shifting subject positions and the privileges and demands they impose is a significant aspect of the story. At the risk of overdoing the point, as I read Lema’s overt references to that icon of Western feminism, Simone de Beauvoir, I could not help recalling other more or less recent novels such as Chiziane’s Niketche (2002) and Embaló’s Tiara (1999), to which the French philosopher also provides the intellectual impetus. Is it a feminist novel, then? I am conscious of the dangers and limitations of labels, but I think that the novel can negotiate the ambivalent weight of such a label. Doreen’s profession acts as a central motif allowing Lema to explore the ways in which the story’s main character herself is in desperate need of learning and instruction. Doreen’s search for her mother’s story is juxtaposed to her own quest for inner happiness; knowing the mother’s story will help her know herself a little better. More to the point, for Doreen Seko knowledge is synonymous with power and agency.
Lema explores in Parched Earth some of the difficulties African writers, and indeed all postcolonial artists face; writing, and writing in European languages such as English especially is an elite occupation with limited reach. As a ‘Westernised’ woman, Doreen’s story is not that of most Tanzanian women, something that she clearly recognises by repeatedly returning to her own mother’s narrative. The novel’s reliance on a mother-daughter relationship allows Lema to broaden the relevance of her work for contemporary Tanzania, drawing on this motif to set up a comparison between past and present. As such the novel examines the shifts taking place within African societies such as the village that provides the setting for Parched Earth. Doreen’s string of love affairs with a range of different men, for instance, is contrasted in the text with her mother’s faithfulness to the same man, Sebastian Shose. But like her daughter, Foibe too fails to find happiness in her love affair, for when Foibe falls pregnant, Sebastian Shose soon finds his way out of her life, if not exactly out of her heart: "The girl carried sadness like a tarnished sheen underneath the youthfulness of her face". The ghostly presence of the past, and its traumatic imprint on the present, functions in the novel to link the separate love stories of Foibe Seko and Doreen Seko. Crucially, it frames a third story of love, and perhaps the central one in Doreen Seko’s development, that between mother and daughter.
Although Doreen herself goes on to enjoy a number of relatively happy relationships with men who occupy a variety of more or less influential roles in society, and who, as such could not differ more from her mother’s suitor, she too ends her life as a single mother. The contrast between the formally educated Doreen, by profession a very successful teacher and her illiterate mother, surviving by working the land, could not be more glaring. But it is to the similarities between them the novel returns us time and again. I may be banging on this drum a little too earnestly, but Lema seems to be suggesting that women’s experiences are less the result of their social background or intellectual ability than of their gender. Doreen knows how to avoid falling in her mother’s shoes, but that is no guarantee that at a personal level her love life will be any less disappointing, her personal dreams any easier to achieve.
The novel’s subtitle calls attention then to a ‘different sameness’ that marks both Doreen’s and her mother’s lives. The choices that Doreen can exercise because of her education are not available to her mother, who remains trapped in the structured ways of tradition. Doreen can choose whom she has sex with, whom she marries and when to reclaim her life as a single woman; she enjoys the fruits of professional success through increased social status and financial recognition. Doreen has equipped herself to face the challenges her mother experienced with greater confidence and skill. Thus as the novel draws to a close, and Joseph, her current lover, pleads with her to share with him "a bit of your strength", Doreen offers no reply. In the novel’s last few lines, they listen to a jazz record, and since we are told that both she and Joseph "had lost speech" it is unclear whether she will acquiesce to his request. This ambiguous conclusion seems to leave open the possibility that the decision, whatever it may be, will be Doreen Seko’s alone. She has now come a long way from the young and insecure woman and inexperienced teacher whom we met at the beginning of the story. Having uncovered her mother’s story, and in turn broadened the range of possibilities available to her, Doreen Seko stands ready to live her life as she wishes, however much she may have in common with her mother, Foibe Seko. Does this journey echo the individualistic streak of Western feminism?
A final note on narrative style, since it is probably key to the way readers will respond to Parched Earth. Elieshi Lema writes in what might be described as a straightforward realist mode; there is little to uncover at the level of narrative technique, as it were. That said, however, her characters are composed with considerable attention to psychological depth, and the plot is driven along by a great deal of energy and enthusiasm, not least because Doreen Seko is in the driver’s seat. At times, as I noted earlier, the didactic nature of the text can be rather awkward, though this could be read as a kind of ‘first novel syndrome’. Indeed I suggest that a more interesting way of making sense of it might be by seeing it in the context of Doreen’s role as a teacher; the novel clearly plays with this motif. Ultimately Lema tells a good story, and in Doreen Seko she has the perfect foil for her own artistic and political purposes. It would be difficult not to relate to Doreen Seko’s infectious zest for life, and her boundless ambition to succeed in life, work and love. But it is a credit to the Lema’s narrative skill that even in a novel as centred on women as this one is male characters are always credible, a point I make here for the sake of the work rather than to reassure myself that ‘men matter’!
Another review of the same book
Parched Earth is written by an African woman, a Tanzanian - something uncommon and to be welcomed. Africans contributing their own, under-represented voices to what Chinua Achebe calls the "re-storying" of the world and thereby setting about restoring the balance, is something to be applauded and encouraged. This particular story concerns Doreen Seko, a teacher, working and negotiating relationships in a strongly patriarchal society. She spurns a relationship with her colleague Zima and falls in love with an education official, Martin Patrick, whom she marries, but their relationship frays through her inability to provide her husband with a son. All the while she is reflecting on the difficult life lived by her mother, and other women she knows, or has known. Ultimately, she meets an ex-diplomat whose wife has left him and gains powerful insight into her life.
Undoubtedly this is a story which covers important ground. Much of the writing, however, gives rise to the suspicion - which may be entirely misplaced - that Lema would be more at home writing in another language. This impression is not helped by sloppy editing, particularly evident in the form of rogue punctuation. Not a desperately important failing, many might feel, but indicative of a similar approach to the writing, more casual story-telling than carefully crafted fiction. Many would agree that the "re-storying" of the world should take place in all the languages of the world, translated as necessary. Easier said than done, of course, but the potential benefit in the greater vigour and veracity of language in a well translated, as opposed to indifferently written book, would be inestimable.
"Africans 're-storying' the world and restoring the balance is something to be applauded"
Perhaps, though, the fault for the flatness of the the story-telling should more fairly be blamed on a heavy-handedly didactic quality which permeates the book. Fawzia Mustafa, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Fordham University in New York, in a note on the jacket, places Parched Earth within "a new generation of theoretical work by African women positing a local rather than western-oriented brand of womenist/femininst/woman identified consciousness". It would be deeply unfair to criticise the author for the style of the jacket copy, but there is something fitting about the style of these comments, as if the book had been written almost in pursuit of just such comments, just such an audience.
In a recent article on the writer Jonathan Raban, he is quoted as making the point that the word "fiction" comes from a Latin verb meaning, "I give shape to things". He emphasises that fiction is never simply making things up, just telling a story. In Parched Earth insufficient "shape" is given to the events and dialogue that make up its narrative to give it the interest and force that its subject matter allows.
Too often, for whatever reason, the writing is simply desperately flat-footed. To give one example: "When Martin came into my life and offered love, he found the doors open and walked in. He filled the emptiness with his words, his wants, moods and laughter. My body, which had known mostly work and was accustomed only to being fed, washed and bruised, came to know the feel of Martin's hands, his mouth, and yes, the intimations of his penis".
"One task of literature," said Susan Sontag, in her acceptance speech for the Friedenspreis at the 2003 Frankfurt Book Fair, "is to formulate questions and construct counter-statements to the reigning pieties." One can't fault Lema for failing to attempt to "construct counter-statements to the reigning pieties", but the "formulation of questions" - on which I would place more emphasis in my understanding of the role of novels - is less well handled. What exactly is Lema questioning, what question is it - precisely - that she is asking about the place and the people about whom she writes? To establish that and to ask the question, in all its complexity and detail, is the material of an excellent novel.
In one of the final passages of the book, Doreen describes her life following insights she has gleaned from the ex-diplomat who has taught her about patriarchy ("He explained the meaning of patriarchy. 'It is a social system which has defined how men and women will relate in all spheres of life, including private life, right down to the way we love and have sex. It has determined how a father, brother, husband, uncle will treat the woman - the wife, sister, mother, and daughter related to them. It is an ideology that has given the man the authority to decide, to act, to give or withhold, to access or retain anything, really, almost everything. It is complex. It is a web in which, ultimately, even those privileged can become victims...like myself.' He stopped.").
She describes, in a kind of novelistic fast-forward, how her life has changed: "My life with Martin became more amicable. I made him my friend, defining how much to demand, learning not to expect much, and most importantly, slowly refusing to be hurt by him. When he travelled with the girl, I could ask about her without feeling any anger or jealousy. He was surprised and actually taken aback. I told him that I had accepted that what he offered me emotionally was all that he could offer. I no longer strived to demand love that was not forthcoming from him." Both of these passages - the quick overview of patriarchy and the effect on Doreen's life are the real stuff of this novel and here they are dealt with at speed, the words tumbling out, phrase after phrase, when each phrase, differently handled, is the content of a chapter. What the author is in such a rush to tell us, could be offered to us, rather, to understand; events and people given shape, in words, to reveal them to us.
Tony Simoes da Silva teaches English at James Cook University in Australia
