inklingfair If it seems like 50% of the time I’m posting here, I’m sick, well, yes. I’m midway through my antibiotic course (responsibly, of course, wouldn’t want to accidentally engineer any superbugs) and settling down for a nap. Amy is napping in another room, miraculously not infected unlike Josh who now has a tickle in his throat. Maybe there is something to breastfeeding toddlers.
I just finished reading a book – The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection – and while it was entertaining, it didn’t quite match the spirit and tone of its predecessors. I suppose it’s because the struggles are no longer of the flavor of poverty and loneliness? Both Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi are happily married, with comfortable livelihoods and successful careers – even so much more than Clovis Andersen, the author of the detective book that got Mma Ramotswe started.
The first books were wonderful because of the radical narrative – here were two women without means but their wits, in a world where only men were expected to succeed, in a line of work dominated by men. And they make it. I remember weeping at the end of the first book when Mma Ramotswe thinks, “I am just a tiny person in Africa, but there is a place for me, and for everybody, to sit down on this earth and touch it and call it their own.” I had loved Out of Africa years before, but it’s quite different when a statement like that comes from a character who has lived through marginalization and hardship. Yes, the author is a white man, but I give him credit that he doesn’t insert whiteness into the story as a saving force. Now that I think of it more, Mr Anderson is quite the reverse – a failed detective who wrote a book. Is it a false humility? Is he McCall Smith’s Mary Sue? I don’t know. I do wish we had a real Motswana writing these novels instead of an old white dude. He seems to empathize well enough with women – though he does fall into the lazy practice of stereotyping “bad women” like Violet Lesotho.
I said I’d nap, so I will. And I’ll cut this ramble short.
