Answers to some questions
Ruth Kapinskis

Bimala is being seduced by Sandip he is definitely a perpetrator and manipulator he is using his political standing and relationship with Nikhil to stay as a guest at his house so he can be close to his newest conquest Bimala. Sandip is relying on the naivety of Bimala and the righteousness of Nikhil to drive the situation and get Bimala.

What within Bimala’s religion or social situation would make her predisposed to behave as she does? That is, what is specific to the Indian culture and religion that might influence her education and readings?

Bimala was not exposed to male and female relationships before her marriage to Nikhil. The marriage as was tradition in India was arranged and she was chosen because she was not too beautiful and her palm was read by an astrologer who found her fit to be a good wife.
She was then married and moved in with her husbands family. Every girl dreams of being married and Bimala was very happy with her husband and her life until she was given attention by a man who used charm and calculated actions to seduce Bimala. Sandip by calling Bimala a Shakti the muse that motivates India, a goddess brain washes her into believing she has some magical powers. I believe Sandip is very charismatic and could convince the uneducated masses to believe and do what ever he wanted in the name of Mother India. Bimala was flattered and started to believe that she actually was Shakti incarnate. It was a ruse that engulfed her and caused great turmoil within her. Sandip is a snake.

Do you think there’s any way that Bimala might have avoided being treated as a Queen Bee?
I think that if she had a confidant, a close friend who could advise her and see the real Sandip for what he really was she may have had her eyes opened sooner. If her husband would have confronted her or told Sandip that he should leave. Her sister-in-law was trying to intervene on several occasions but Bimala views her as a snide trouble maker.

Are there any women within Indian culture that have been treated otherwise within social movements? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratibha_Patil First Woman President.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa First Indian woman to win Nobel Peace Prize.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijaya_Lakshmi_Pandit First Indian woman President of the United Nations.
and many more. In the past woman were considered equal to men then for a time in history they were not. Now in present day woman and man are equal by law even getting equal wages for doing the same job as a man. Something that we do not have as a law in the U.S.

Mao’s Great Famine/ Great Leap Forward

    I found an interesting documentary when I followed the link to the song “The East is Red”: a Cultural Revolution song in the Posting.  I watched a small snippet of Chinese history.  There was 4 years of collected testimony by a woman Zhuo Xun, she traveled across the country looking for people who would talk of the reign of Mao Zedong. A few of her family died of hunger in what is called the Great Famine.  She also interviewed a man whose family also starved to death, he wrote the book “Tombstone” which is banned in China but published in Hong Kong, his name is Yang Disheng.  I will link the documentary but I want to write a synopsis of the documentary first.  It is incredible and worth watching.

    The taking of Beijing in October 1949, Mao wanted to change the old fashioned Chinese society and traditions so he went to Moskow to seek help from Stalin, they struck an agreement and they signed the “Treaty of Friendship”.  Russia would supply arms, factories and advisers and China would give them rice, corn and wheat. Mao wanted to use the Soviet Union as a model for reform.  The first thing Mao did was redistribute the land, taking it from the land owners and giving it to the peasants to farm and produce enough food for all.  How ever it was reported that 1 million land owners were executed.  It has been said that the best years of Mao’s regime was the first two,1950-1952. For once the peasants worked the farms they owned.  Then Mao the liberator of Red China, said that the land plots should be joined or combined into communal land as many as 10,000 famililies farming in one commune, the person in charge was called a Cadre they made decisions about where and how much to plant, what fertilizer to use and how much of the harvest was to be given to the people.

Stalin died and in 1956 Nikita Khrushchev came into power in Russia.  Mao started loosing the power in China and he decided to have his whole country participate in a ruse they were to feel free to write what ever they wanted in regards to the way the country was being run.  It was called the “100 Flowers Campaign” the people were free to speak out against the regime. Mostly teachers and educated people wrote letters they were delighted in this exercise of democracy.  Mao did not waste any time deporting those 500,000 to 1,000,000 people who wrote their views were identified as rightists and threats to Mao, to re-education camps far away from there families close to a desert waste land on the border of the Gobi dessert.   Many of these people died and were buried in mass graves.  In 1958 people were afraid to speak out against Chairman Mao and he regained his control.  He increased combining the agricultural  communes to include more families so they could ramp up production to send the rice to Russia as payment for the arms according to the treaty. 

   Children were taken and placed in schools so both parents could work either in construction or farming.  Family units disappeared, children sang songs that were military and communist propaganda, basically brainwashed. China was not a happy place, life was hard men and woman were separated into work gangs and stayed in separate dormitories.  No one cooked at home and people were fed at common canteens.  Since the Cadres did know much about farming and they were in charge of the communal agricultural for thousands of families the harvests were poor and what grew was taken and given to Russia for payment of their debt.  There was a shortage of food but since they did not want to look bad they lied about the harvests and had to give a percentage of the inflated harvest numbers to the government there was little for the people to eat.  Millions of people starved.  People ate stems of plants, tree bark and mud.  Cadres had the power of life and death they were corrupt and took more than their fair share of food.  A slogan at the time was,”he who does not work does not eat.”  Pregnant woman were starved to death.    A story was told that a woman traded her daughter for 2 loaves of bread, and then killed herself soon after.  Mao’s leaders decided that sparrows were eating the crops and had the Chinese people kill as many sparrows as they could.  They succeeded in killing off the whole population of sparrows and then the crops were eaten by bugs.

    Mao told Russia that China would pass the United Kingdom in steel production.  He then forces the Chinese people to manufacture steel all property was seized pots and pans were melted down to produce steel that was of poor quality. Hard work for a few years happiness for a thousand. Mao due to his edict that steel production must increase had forests cut down for fuel, took farmers to work in steel production. So less food was grown and harvested and in 1959 Mao is quoted saying, “when there is not enough to eat let 1/2 of the people die so the other 1/2 could live.”  Mao knew the plight of his people. No one dared to defy Mao Zedong. 

Some historians estimate that 1 in 10 people died from starvation.  Even Khrushchev begged Mao to stop starving his people.  By this time Mao was Crazed and he thought God wanted him to lead the Socialist movement.  People were so hungry they resorted to cannibalism they ate their own dead relatives.  Mao was the definition of Democide, it is the murder of any person or people by their government, including genocide, politicide and mass murder. Democide is not necessarily the elimination of entire cultural groups but rather groups within the country that the government feels need to be eradicated for political reasons and due to claimed future threats. (Wikipedia)   

The year 1962 saw the end of the,farms were privatized once more and free markets stopped the starvation of the Chinese people.  Here is the link  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-woaDniFQc

    When I read The Crazed I wanted to research the history before the time it was written.  I wanted to see how people lived before so it was not so shocking to read what happened in Beijing at Tiananmen Square.

Church Hierarchy Hypocrisy Not Man Vs Woman
Marina Gashe – a pseudonym for her actual name Rebeka Njau. Interestingly enough, in an interview with Gashe she is asked the question “what is the one thing which you hate most in life?” Her answer is as follows, “It is the hypocrisy of church leaders. Sometimes I think all churches should be demolished so that they can be built afresh on truer foundations. Even though I worked at the National Council of Churches of Kenya for a long time I did not attend church service and I don’t even now because I cannot stand the doublespeak. Through this perspective, it is clear that she has distaste for the two-sidedness of religion – it is probable that this may relate to the manner in which it portrays women?

I do not think that her view is about whether or not woman are portrayed in a positive or negative light. I think however she is talking about the Church leaders in which the last thing they are concerned with is the shepherding of their flock. She does not agree with the sermons that are preached to the people and the underlying greed which is the real motive for the infrastructure of the church. Sermons are about love and giving and the church and people leave and go out and take and hate.

How do you think this idea is represented within her work?

Marina refers the church as a place where people gather she compares it to a well. People are attracted to the church for spiritual needs as a well would provide for physical needs. She does not talk about her hate for the hypocrisy of church leaders in her writing.

Do you think that her issue with church leaders is related to gender? 

 It may be part of her issue with the church leaders but I do not think it is connected to who, be it male or female, but the lies that are fed to the flock that angers her.

I found a very interesting take on Culture and equality of the sexes in Kenya where our author Marina Gashe is from. It seems that the author Ciarunji Chesaina, thinks that it will be very slow going for a cultural change to take place even though Kenya is working towards eliminating discrimination against woman. The Kenyan government in 1985 made an affiliation to the Maendeleo ya Wanawake a Kenyan woman’s non governmental organization. The article goes on to say that traditional practices and attitudes by the mother raising their children are detrimental to the change that is so desperately needed. Woman are considered the custodians of culture and if they rear their children as their mothers taught them they are perpetuating the inequality of the sexes. Kenyan woman have not recognized their need to change the way they rear their children no matter the economic success of the family the male child is still brought up to aspire towards the traditional male roles. The mothers ineffectually act as role models for their female children when they continue to act the traditional role to keep family harmony.

Social scientists have observed how difficult it is to effect change on the cultural plane. Nawal El Saadawi author of “The Hidden Face of Eve”, contends: Time and time again, life has proved that, whereas political and economic change can take place rapidly, social and cultural progress tends to lag behind because it is linked to the deep inner motive and psychic processes of the human mind and heart.

The heart of the problem lies the changes that men have undergone due to not having the resources to provide for their family, the role the woman have taken on providing for sustenance of their family by gardening and selling that produce at a market. The man in this family feels emasculated instead of grateful. There is confusion however due to traditionally the man still makes decisions as how the money should be spent. In this situation the woman either relinquishes the right to decision making or fights with her husband if she does not agree with decisions that are made by the husband. Both of these situations do not fodder equality between male and female.

Presently woman head 60 to 80 percent of households in Kenya and are doing so successfully, how ever they are not considered to for any managerial or top level positions in the workforce. They are socially handicapped due to the Kenyan Judicial system. Kenya’s Declaration for Human Rights whose first article reads: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in the spirit of brotherhood.” Unfortunately Kenya’s stand in regard to the equality of women to men before the law is only on the institutional and theoretical level. There is a basic gross discrimination against women, the roots of which are founded on cultural attitudes. They are taking the word “brotherhood” literally.

Woman are considered subordinate to their husbands and the men on payment of a dowry for their new wife consider the woman their property to discipline at they see fit. Legally if a man beats his wife and maims her and the police are called it is considered a domestic disagreement and best to be settled at home and not on the court dockets. Another area that woman have no rights is owning of property and if there is a divorce the woman is stripped of all ownership of mutual property. In the case of death woman traditionally did not own property but the woman’s children had the right to farm and provide for the widow so that she did not become a burden on the clan and all the children would be cared for. Clan law however does not exist anymore and individual land ownership does not consider woman to capable of land ownership leaving the woman stripped of her land without means to support her family the land goes to her male in-laws.

It was perhaps 50-60 years ago that a woman’s place in the United States was in her home and the father of the family was the breadwinner, the change from that concept happened due to economics its roots were deeply ingrained in family and cultures. But change happened. Now it is the norm for a woman/ mother to juggle both child rearing and contributing to the family financial health. The father working and pitching in with childcare and household chores. The change did not happen without family strife. Necessity was the force behind the change in roles and that will be what happens eventually in Kenya. If Kenyan society recognizes the need to evolve their culture so that men and woman have healthy relationships, equality between the sexes will happen.

<a href="http://www.crvp.org/book/Series02/II-10/CH25.htm&quot; title="CULTURAL ATTITUDES AND EQUALITY OF THE SEXES: FOREVER INCOMPATIBLE?"

The Poem the Man Inseparable

 

Léopold Sédar Senghor

In Memoraim

It is Sunday.

I fear the crowd of my brothers with stony faces.

From my tower of glass filled with pain, the nagging Ancestors

I gaze at roofs and hills in the fog

In the silence – the chimneys are grave and bare.

At their feet sleep my dead, all my dreams are dust

All my dreams, the liberal blood spills all along the streets, mixing

with the blood of the butcheries.

And now, from this observatory as from a suburb

I watch my dreams float vaguely through the streets, lie at the hills’ feet

Like the guides of my race on the banks of Gambia or Saloum,

Now of the Seine, at the feet of these hills.

Let me think of my dead!  

Yesterday it was Toussaint, the solemn anniversary of the sun 

and no remembrance in any cemetery.

Ah, dead ones who have always refused to die, who have known

how to fight death 

By Seine or Sine, and in my fragile veins pushed the invincible blood,

Protect my dreams as you have made your sons, wanderers on

delicate feet. 

Oh Dead, protect the roofs of Paris in the Sunday fog

The roofs which guard my dead

That from the perilous safety of my tower I may descend to the streets

To join my brothers with blue eyes

With hard hands.

I think that Senghor is remembering his home in Senegal. He writes of the rivers in Senegal and the rivers in Paris. Where he was educated and became a French Citizen. He joined the French military. He asks the spirits of the dead from his life to protect the roofs of Paris. German planes could bomb France and Senghor calls to God asking for protection of his dreams and protect him when he leaves safety and descends to the streets to join the French soldiers with blue eyes to fight beside them duringWorld War II.

Senghor’s political and literary careers were inextricably linked. Residing part-time in France, he wrote poems of resistance in French which engaged his Catholic spirituality even as they celebrated his Senegalese heritage. He was the first African invited to join the Académie Française, and was awarded honorary doctorates from 37 universities, in addition to many other literary honors.

Senghor co-founded, with Aimé Césaire, the Négritude movement, which promotes distinctly African cultural values and aesthetics, in opposition to the influence of French colonialism and European exploitation.
Négritude which attempted to focus on distinctive African themes and values, hoping to draw his country’s literature from the traditional French culture. Controversial, some saw Négritude as anti-white, though supporters claimed it simply shifted focus on multi-culturalism which helped strengthen African identity in Senegal. His poetry has been translated into several languages including English. His own writing style is said to be mystical and have received worldwide critical acclaim. He has said that his own work would have been superficial had he remained simply a teacher and not become more involved in Senegal’s growth. His influences were broad, borrowing from American and French poets and his lithesome style attempted a departure from traditional styles.
Senghor was not only a prolific writer, an influential personality in Senegal, but he was also an influential contributor to global discussions on civilization and humanism.

Negritude was both a literary and ideological movement led by French-speaking black writers and intellectuals. The movement is marked by its rejection of European colonization and its role in the African diaspora, pride in “blackness” and traditional African values and culture, mixed with an undercurrent of Marxist ideals. Its founders (or les trois pères), Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Léon-Gontran Damas, met while studying in Paris in 1931 and began to publish the first journal devoted to Negritude, L’Étudiant noir (The Black Student), in 1934.

The term “Negritude” was coined by Césaire in his Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1939) and it means, in his words, “the simple recognition of the fact that one is black, the acceptance of this fact and of our destiny as blacks, of our history and culture.” Even in its beginnings Negritude was truly an international movement–drawing inspiration from the flowering of African-American culture brought about by the writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance while asserting its place in the canon of French literature, glorifying the traditions of the African continent, and attracting participants in the colonized countries of the Caribbean, North Africa, and Latin America.

The movement’s sympathizers included French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Roumain, founder of the Haitian Communist party. The movement would later find a major critic in Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright and poet, who believed that a deliberate and outspoken pride in their color placed black people continually on the defensive, saying notably “Un tigre ne proclâme pas sa tigritude, il saute sur sa proie,” or “A tiger doesn’t proclaim its tigerness; it jumps on its prey.” Negritude has remained an influential movement throughout the rest of the twentieth century to the present day.http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5666#sthash.e6GKNlel.dpuf

Do you think that the Negritude movement made a difference in our view as Americans of the black Africans residing in Africa today?  Give some specific examples of how your individual view has changed since reading the literature and poetry of African authors.

 Senghors’ poem shows a connection between France and Senegal, or more generally Africa, often made through reference to rivers or locations, especially the Sine and the Seine River that runs through Paris.

The Gambia is named after this majestic river, which is one of the most navigable waterways in Africa. It runs for 1100 Kilometers from its The River Gambia (The Smiling River)
source in the futa Jalon highlands, in Guinea (Conakry), to its mouth in the Atlantic Ocean. Six hundred Kilometers of these course like a knife through The Gambia, splitting the country into two halves with its banks fringed by tropical forest, bamboo and mangrove swamps. Villages and towns occur several meters inland where people pursue vocations tied to the river. Fishing is one of them.    http://www.visitthegambia.gm

The Saloum River rises about 105 kilometers east of Kaolack, Senegal, and flows into the Atlantic Ocean. The significant Saloum Delta is located at its mouth, which is protected as Saloum Delta National Park. The river basin lies within the Serer pre-colonial Kingdom of Saloum. Mangrove forests occupy a 5-kilometer belt on either side of the river almost 70 kilometers upstream.  (Wikipedia)

Paris is a river town. Ever since the first human settlements, from the prehistoric days and the village of the Parisii tribes, the Seine has played both a defensive and an economic role. The present historic city, which developed between the 16th (and particularly the 17th) centuries and the 20th century, translates the evolution of the relationship between the river and the people: defense, trade, promenades, etc.   http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/600

The natural region of Sine-Saloum is located north of The Gambia and south of the Petite Côte. It encompasses an area of 180,000 hectares. It is in this region that the Saloum Delta National Park is located. It is a river delta formed by the confluence of two rivers: the Sine and the Saloum.
Because it flows so slowly, this delta allows saltwater to travel deep inland.     http://www.senegal-online.co.uk

Toussaint (French for All Saints’ Day, literally All Saints)

I feel a sincere empathy for the character in this poem when he says “Yesterday it was Toussaint, the solemn anniversary of the sun and no remembrance in any cemetery”.  What was Senghor trying to say?       

 

                                                                               

Intimate Relationship of Poet and Poem

 

 

Our Group realized that the poets personal lives are closely tied to their writing, and that to understand the meaning of the authors writing you must know the background and the motive of the writer.  So closely linked that it is impossible to glean any meaning from the writings until you look into the background and include the time and condition under which the words were written.  Who, what, where, when and why are all questions that need to be answered about the writers of these poems.  We noticed the writers we have read have a few common threads.  They are all men and they were born in a place that was colonized by a foreign country also they were either sent away to be educated by the same people who were colonizing their country or their education had a strong western influence.  In Africa especially, many different foreign countries colonized and in some cases terrorized the natives of that land.  Literature comes from the author/s working through the conflicts that arise from living in that particular situation.  The writer sees himself as a voice for his society and literature is the medium by which it is heard.  We will attempt to show that intimacy of the poet to their poetry.

Angola      Augustino Neto              South Africa   Dennis Brutus; Mazisi Kunene; Keorapetse Kgositsile

Senegal    Leopold Sedar Senghor

 

 

Roots of Romanticism and Questions Answered

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Should magical realism be secluded to where it originated from?

  Absolutely not, reading the work of Marquez was very entertaining it felt like an escape from reality.  Although there was not any one character I would admit to identifying with there were many facets of behavior that I can relate to.  Marquez takes the mundane to the limits of imagination.

Are magical realism and romanticism the same movements but within different worlds?

I am going to say that magical realism and romanticism are the same type of movements both are used to take the minds of the masses away from the daily oppression of reality and change their focus to other possibilities.    I think that romanticism differs from magical realism in that magical realism deals with reality with a strange and bizarre twist and romanticism is the abandonment of reality and deals more in athletics and aspirations.  I think that magical realism and romanticism exists in all worlds.

Is a connection between Marquez and Poe too much of a coincidence or is there some kind of influence derived from Poe by Marquez?

I found a reference to this influence found in the Seattle Times however, I think that this influence won Marquez a Nobel Prize.

“Strange Pilgrims” by Gabriel García Márquez  This newly reissued 1993 story collection by the Nobel laureate makes a perfect starting place for newcomers to García Márquez (“One Hundred Years of Solitude”). Its 12 tales show an Edgar Allan Poe influence infiltrating the magic realism for which the Colombian author is best known. (Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times book critic)

 

How is romanticism viewed by people outside of the US and Europe?   I could not find a reference to romanticism outside US and Europe. But I found much proof of how romanticism is viewed by people in the US and Europe.

Although the movement was rooted in the German Sturm und Drang movement, which prized intuition and emotion over the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the events of and ideologies that led to the French Revolution planted the seeds from which both Romanticism and the Counter-Enlightenment sprouted. The confines of the Industrial Revolution also had their influence on Romanticism, which was in part an escape from modern realities. Indeed, in the second half of the 19th century, “Realism” was offered as a polarized opposite to Romanticism.^[6] Romanticism assigned a high value to the achievements of ‘heroic’ individualists and artists, who’s pioneering examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society. It also vouched for the individual imagination as a critical authority allowed of freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas. (Wikipedia)

I also thought that this was a good synopsis of romanticism I found on the US Embassy Web site.

The Romantic Period, 1820-1860: Essayists and Poets
By Kathryn VanSpanckeren

The Romantic movement, which originated in Germany but quickly spread to England, France, and beyond, reached America around the year 1820, some 20 years after William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had revolutionized English poetry by publishing Lyrical Ballads. In America as in Europe, fresh new vision electrified artistic and intellectual circles. Yet there was an important difference: Romanticism in America coincided with the period of national expansion and the discovery of a distinctive American voice. The solidification of a national identity and the surging idealism and passion of Romanticism nurtured the masterpieces of “the American Renaissance.”

Romantic ideas centered around art as inspiration, the spiritual and aesthetic dimension of nature, and metaphors of organic growth. Art, rather than science, Romantics argued, could best express universal truth. The Romantics underscored the importance of expressive art for the individual and society. In his essay “The Poet” (1844), Ralph Waldo Emerson, perhaps the most influential writer of the Romantic era, asserts:

For all men live by truth, and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.

The development of the self became a major theme; self-awareness a primary method. If, according to Romantic theory, self and nature were one, self-awareness was not a selfish dead end but a mode of knowledge opening up the universe. If one’s self were one with all humanity, then the individual had a moral duty to reform social inequalities and relieve human suffering. The idea of “self” – which suggested selfishness to earlier generations – was redefined. New compound words with positive meanings emerged: “self-realization,” “self-expression,” “self-reliance.”

As the unique, subjective self became important, so did the realm of psychology. Exceptional artistic effects and techniques were developed to evoke heightened psychological states. The “sublime” – an effect of beauty in grandeur (for example, a view from a mountaintop) – produced feelings of awe, reverence, vastness, and a power beyond human comprehension.

Romanticism was affirmative and appropriate for most American poets and creative essayists. America’s vast mountains, deserts, and tropics embodied the sublime. The Romantic spirit seemed particularly suited to American democracy: It stressed individualism, affirmed the value of the common person, and looked to the inspired imagination for its aesthetic and ethical values. Certainly the New England Transcendentalists – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and their associates – were inspired to a new optimistic affirmation by the Romantic movement. In New England, Romanticism fell upon fertile soil.
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/publication/2008/05/20080512215714eaifas0.1850855.html#ixzz2tjE4OCki

 

 

Could it be the same as how we view magical realism?

  I think that romanticism (more lofty) is not the way I view magical realism (disguising reality).

Question taken from our WordPress post.

He (Marquez) concludes his Nobel Lecture by saying that we as a society should try to create an “opposite utopia” in which races condemned to earth will have a second opportunity.

With this in mind, how do you re-interpret the ending of the novel? Does knowing what Marquez truly believes allow you to envision the ending as a strong cautionary tale rather than a hopeless closure?

In answer to Professor Rogers question and the above take on his question.

I don’t believe the One Hundred Years of Solitude, was meant to be a cry for help or a wakeup call.  I think that the novel provided the stage in which we could visualize a different time and place and be educated to the history of Columbia and the plight of its people.  Alternately the ending was not unexpected in view of the rest of the novel.

 

Tayeb Salih Character Connection

Our group decided to do the life of Tayeb Salih. Each of us was responsible for a piece of Tayebs Salih biography that interested us the most.  We hope you enjoy the readings and find the questions we posted thought provoking.

 

 

 

Tayeb Salih Character Connection

According to an interview from 2002, Tayeb Salih started his Journey going to intermediate school in the Sudan, after he attended the only secondary school in Sudan he had left his village at the age of 10.  He went to London when he was 23-24 years of age.  Salih said, “That is when I became an outsider.”  He did return to Sudan for a brief time as a teacher.  But returned to England where he lived the rest of his life until 2009. Much of his material for writing comes from his own life and experience in the Sudan, pulling from many of the people in his family and village.  He said that his mother was the most like Bint Majzoub.  His own grandfather was mirrored in the narrators’ grandfather.  He only stopped short of saying he used himself and experiences with other family members and acquaintances as material for the two main characters.

Salih was born in 1929 and grew up in the Merowe area of northern Sudan, in a village called aac-Dabba. His was primarily a farming family, but included some merchants and Islamic scholars, and Salih was sent to a khalwa, or Islamic religious school, as a youth. He departed al-Dabba at the age of ten to study at the Wadi Sayyidina School in Omdurman, one of Sudan’s two principal urban centers, and studied agricultural sciences later at Khartoum University in the capital city. Changing direction, he went to England to study economics and political science at the University of London, and took education courses at the University of Exeter as well. Returning to Sudan, he taught for a time, and became a scriptwriter for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Returning to England in time, he came to head the drama department of the BBC’s Arabic-language television division. His career also included a stint with the Sudan Broadcasting Service, a post as director of information for the government of Qatar on the Arabian Peninsula, and work as an adviser to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He married a Scottish woman, with whom he had three children.

“The Season of Migration to the North” is told by an anonymous Sudanese-born narrator who grows increasingly obsessed with his doppelganger, a man whose life and career seems to have foreshadowed his own.

 

Who or what is his doppelganger?

 

 Mustafa is that character he is dubbed Mustafa by the village people it means “the black Englishman” 

These two characters the Narrator and Mustafa Sa’eed had a similar educational background to Tayeb Salih. The three journeyed to study at Khartoum and then to England but unlike Salih they returned to Sudan to share their education with their people.

 

Of the three who do you think wasted their education?  Mustafa, the narrator or Salih?  Why?

 

In the introduction Laila Lalami says, “The two main characters in the book, the unnamed narrator and Mustafa Sa’eed, travel between north and south; they move between Eastern and Western traditions; they speak English and Arabic; they live, at one point or another in a village and in a city; they are foreign men in a white world, or foreign-educated men in a black world.”  In the interview mentioned above, Salih  states that there is a misconception of Islam in the West and Laila Lalami writes in the introduction, “Islam is portrayed in the book as it is lived, not as it is imagined.  The characters appear to consider religion on part of their lives, but are not defined by it.” (Introduction xiv)

 

Do you think that Salih is also being described in Lailas’ Introduction?

 

I believe that Mustafa did not die in the flood either by accident or suicide but had faked his death and planned to return to England and assume another identity. I think the author Salih left that possibility open as a body was never found it did not wash up on shore with the other bodies.   Mustafa also just shared his last wishes with his wife and gave the letter to her to give the narrator in case of his death.

 

 Premonition or Premeditation? 

Remembering Writer Tayeb Salih “Writers and Company” 7/24/11. http _www.cbc.ca_player_Radio_Writers+and+Company_2011_ID_2047561604_.htm