-
Eduardo Galeano,
Open Veins of Latin America (1978)
"The system speaks a surrealist language. In lands that are empty it proposes to
avoid births; in countries where capital is plentiful but wasted it suggests that
capital lacking; it describes as "aid" the deforming orthopedics of loans and the
draining of wealth that that results from foreign investment; it calls upon big
landowners to carry out agragarian reforms and upon the oligarchy to practice social
justice." (p.8)
Review:
I'm not quite sure why i decided to pick Open Veins up again, i think it might
have been some of the novels i read at the beginning of last year, Clean by Alia
Trabuco Zeran, which is set in Argentina, and Crooked Plow by Itamar Viera
Junior, which is set in Brazil. That, and the fact that i finally got around to reading
Vincent Bevins' The Jakarta Method in the middle of the year.
Open Veins is a book of context, in that it provides substantial context to the
past and present of Latin America, but also in that it requires some context for its
words to take root in the reader. For me, having read Benedict Anderson's Imagined
Communities, in addition to The Jakarta Method, provided some context for
the events of the independence movements of Latin American nations, as well as to the
history of the United States' political violence in the 20th century. As for the
colonial and imperialist resource exploitation, well, that's a fact of life across the
third world.
The reason i mention the matter of context, is because i found Open Veins of Latin
America to be a difficult book to read, because it presented me with a forest of
facts, with subtle relations snaking between. I kept finding myself lost in a very
complex narrative, and it was only when i found a fact related to something outside the
forest, that i felt equipped to navigate its vines again.
-
Tete-Michel Kpomassie,
An African in Greenland (1981)
"But if I were to live out my life in the Arctic, what use would it be to my
fellow countrymen, to my native land? Having tried and succeeded in this polar venture,
was it not my duty to return to my brothers in Africa and become the "storyteller" of
this glacial land of midnight sun and endless night? After the degradation of
colonization and the struggle for independence, wasn't it the task of educators to open
their continent to fresh horizons? Should I not play my small part in that task and help
the youth of Africa open their minds to the outside worid?" (p. 261)
Review:
I don't know if An African in Greenland is a book i'd have stumbled upon all by
myself, it was curated by Katja for Reading the
Globe 2026, and i'm very glad to have read it. Travelouges are rarely a genre i seek
out, but this one stands apart from the tales of European travellers setting foot in a
distant land.
Of course, it isn't utterly untouched by the discourses of colonialism and imperialism,
for one thing, the preface is written by Jean Malaurie, a French anthropologist, who
claims to have been the one who encouraged Kpomassie to write of his travels in the
first place. This is a little farfetched; Kpomassie mentions writing in his diary
several times over the course of the narrative, sometimes devoting entire evenings to
writing.
But it isn't just Malaurie's preface, Kpomassie, over the course of his narration is a
colonial subject who becomes a post-colonial subject, following Togo's independence from
France in 1960. He educates himself in French as well as in English, and this in turn
facilitates his journey, long in both distance and duration, to Greenland, and frames
his experiences within colonial and post-colonial discourse. The author's epistemic
frame is most visible when he describes the traditions of the Inuit; the text's style in
these moments seems familiar, it reminded me of the observations Claude-Levi Strauss
made in Tristes Tropiques, another travelouge, this time written by a trained
French anthropologist.
Where Kpomassie's work differs somewhat is in the comparisons he makes of Inuk traditions
to Togolese traditions, the ones he grew up with, themselves a subject of the
anthropological gaze. This imparts Kpomassie's narrative a degree of alterity from the
strictly European perspective, without liberating it completely from the literary field
of the modern travelouge. Regardless of these considerations, i did really enjoy
reading the book.
-
ओमप्रकाश वाल्मीकि,
घुसपैठिये (2003)
"इस फैसले से किसन और मंगलू अवाक रह गए थे। किसन ने विरोध किया। लेकिन
उसे बोलने से रोका गया। पंचों का फैसला परमेश्वर का फैसला कहकर बात खत्म करने की कोशिश की
गई।
किसन लगातार बोलने की कोशिश करता रहा। लेकिन कुछ लोगों ने उसे धकिया कर बाहर
निकाल दिया। तेजभान के लोग उठकर खड़े हो गए थे। लाठियाँ फिर से लंबी होने लगी
थीं।
किसन हताश होकर लौटा था। पीछे-पीछे मंगलू भी आ गई थी। बिरमा ने उनके उतरे चेहरे
देखे तो सब कुछ समझ गई। घर में मातम-सा छा गया था।" (p. 28)
Review:
घुसपैठिये can be translated into English as Infiltrators
and it was written by Omprakash Valmiki, a luminary of Dalit literature in Hindi. This
is perhaps the first Hindi book i've read through in half a decade, and I think it may
have single-handedly reignited my interest in Hindi literature.
You see, in the excerpt quoted above, which has been drawn from the second story in the
collection यह अंत नहीं (This is Not the End) there is a
line that refers directly to पंच परमेश्वर, a short story by
Munshi Premchand, which every child that studies Hindi in school is tortured with at
least twice over the course of their education. That line is a direct jibe at Premchand,
and upon reading it, my ears have perked up, for Valmiki's story, calls into question
the Gandhian idealism of Premchand's realist storytelling.
I won't go into too much detail, but Premchand's story is one that seeks to inspire
Hindu-Muslim unity, in it, two old friends who differ in their faith and have had a
falling out, are reunited in the justice meted out by the village panchayat. The reality
of village panchayats is very different; Valmiki explicates this in This is Not the
End where a young girl from a lower caste is attacked by an upper-caste man on
her way home from working in the fields. The man's intent was unsurprisingly, sexual
assault, but Manglu, the girl, fights Sachinder off and runs home to tell her parents.
On hearing Manglu's story, her parents wish to suppress the issue, they are aware of the
violence that a fight for justice will bring upon them, and the lower caste community at
large. Manglu's older brother Kisan on the other hand is home at the moment, on holiday
from university, and his education has instilled a strong sense of justice, and he
stands by his sister. Kisan fights to bring the case before the village panchayat.
This is where it all goes south; unsurprisingly, the panchayat, in its trenchant
casteism, sides with the dominant caste Sachinder, indicting him, but letting him off
with no more than a slap on the wrist. Kisan is nonplussed, the values he has learned in
the city seem inoperable in his own village (they're also inoperable in the city, but
that's a different story, in this collection, in fact), but Manglu remains resolute,
"This is not the end," she says, as the story concludes.
And that's just one story in a collection of twelve.
-
Jamaica Kincaid,
A Small Place(1988)
"For almost not a day goes by that I don't hear about some dictator, some tyrant
from somewhere in the the world, who has robbed his country's treasury, stolen the aid
from foreign governments, and placed it in his own personal and secret Swiss bank
account; not a day goes by that i don't hear of some criminal kingpin, some investor who
has a secret Swiss bank account. But maybe there is no connection between the wonderful
life that the Swiss lead and the ill-gotten money that is resting in Swiss bank vaults;
maybe it's a coincidence. The Swiss are famous for their banking system and for making
superior timepieces. Switzerland is a neutral country, money is a neutral commodity, and
time is neutral, too, being neither here nor there, one thing or another." (.epub)
Review:
A Small Place is a book that feels extremely intimate to me. Jamaica Kincaid
writes in anger, dissecting the imperialist exploitation of Antigua and Barbuda, she
names every party responsible, both external to the miniscule island nation, and
internal. She draws out the relations between the wealth of Europe and a select few on
Antigua, and the poverty and disposession that ails the isle. And in that anger, humour
weaves its way in, bitter irony at the state of the world, relentless goading directed
to those who fail to apprehend the politcal and economic constitution of the world, or
refuse to. Levity in rage is an entanglemant i am closely acquainted with.
My favourite part of the book, however, was when Kincaid spoke of stealing books from the
library. Now, i would never have had the courage to steal from a library myself, but i
do remember my expeditions to the annual book fair, where a few of my friends and i
would surreptitiously ransack the place, competing to find out who could steal the most.
For myself, i remember, in 2018, i stole twenty, it was a windfall! Enough to last at
least four months. I think i've read those books to absolute shreds, they still live on
my shelves, their pages covered in caterpillars of notes and annotations.
It is rare for me to find elements of my worldview so sharply reflected in a book,
though, of course, Kincaid and i do have our differences, subtle though they may be.
-
Bipan Chandra,
In the Name of Democracy: JP Movement and the Emergency (2003)
"The main justification given by JP for his movement was that it aimed at ending
corruption in day-to-day life and politics, whose fountainhead was Mrs Gandhi, and to
defend democracy which was threatened by her authoritarian personality, policies and
style of politics. Her continuation in office, he said, was 'incompatible with the
survival of democracy in India'. Mrs Gandhi's primary defence of the Emergency and her
main criticism of the JP movement was that its disruptive character endangered India's
stability, security, integrity and democracy. 'In the name of democracy it has been
sought to negate the very functioning of democracy,'" (.epub)
I really don't have much to say about this one, i read it in order to learn more about
the Bihar Movement, having perused Anand Patwardhan's early filmography, and found
myself intrigued. The author has also been on my radar since i read Aijaz Ahmad's book,
In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, where Ahmad mentioned Bipan Chandra
among a number of Marxist historians. There's really not much more to say, it is quite
an informative text, i learned a lot from it, and it mentions Patwardhan a few times,
tying it directly to the source of my curiosity. This is not to say that i believe that
the book is above criticism, but i will not be taking up that criticism here, it would
be too flippant.
-
Muriel Spark,
Not to Disturb 🐛 (1971)
"'I'll see the Baron in the morning, I have to talk to him,' says Mr.
Mcguire.
'Too late,' says Lister. 'The Baron is no more.'
'I can hear his
voice. What d'you mean?'
'Let us not strain after some vulgar chronology,' says
Lister. 'I have work for you.'" (.epub)
Review: Click Here