Kaleidoscope

The Oxford English dictionary defines the word “kaleidoscope” as a tube containing mirrors and pieces of coloured glass whose reflections produce patterns when the tube is rotated.

To my great horror this same little book, a pocket dictionary, contained no definition for “autism”, the subject of a story set in suburban Johannesburg, South Africa.

Kaleidoscope is Barbara Erasmus’ first novel, published by Penguin back in 2004.

Thankfully, I found the definition in Oxford’s larger Dictionary and Thesaurus. Autism is “a mental condition in which a person has great difficulty in communicating with other people. Simply put. But the condition is much more complex than one would care to imagine.

Any reader of this blog post may be wondering about the writer’s preoccupation with dictionary definitions. The writer has adopted the meticulous practice of one of Kaleidoscope’s main characters, Claire, in finding meanings to things not previously understood. Claire adopted this practice since her school days and, in spite of her sister, Kate’s, misgivings and irritations at this practice, it has served Claire well in her life both as a woman and female actuarial scientist in a male-dominated work environment.

The jacket blurb to Kaleidoscope describes autism by quoting the words of the quiet, sensitive child from the narrative;

“They think I’m perfect when they see me. I cry on-cue. I move my arms and legs. My fingers and my toes both add up to ten. Their specialists tick all the columns on their rating scale. They won’t find out, None of the tests they run will show my secret. My subtle imperfections will complicate the lives of everyone who loves me.”

It is fortunate that this child, Amy, does have a small circle of people, her mother and father, her grandmother, and her aunt and uncle, who do indeed love her, even though they are haunted and troubled by their own genetic make-up and faults in their personalities which they all learn to accept has contributed naturally to this girl’s condition.

On the subject of Autism, one could not help recalling the nineteen-eighties film in which Dustin Hoffman delivered an award-winning performance as an autistic adult in Rainman. And, indeed, this film emerges as an intertext, much later in the story.

The story’s title is apt, as it defers narrative space to Amy’s mother, her sister, and their husbands who attempt to account for the child’s condition and grapple with their own thoughts and feelings on how to deal with this special child. Amy’s mother, Kate, is an artist, a talented theatrical performer, while her mother’s sister, Claire, is an actuary, preoccupied with statistics and how to arrive at solutions to problems through them.

Claire, as a character, comes across as the most sympathetic to the child’s needs, and is such a character to which I, as reader, endure to most with all the empathy that I can muster. Her sibling, husband and brother-in-law characterise her as an impersonal, humourless person, unable to love affectionately and through her perceived heart and soul into her relationships with others. This is ironically so untrue.

I have enjoyed the way Barbara Erasmus has weaved her narrative together through the eyes of a handful of characters, as though she were delicately twisting and turning a kaleidoscope, throwing up an array of colours in different shapes and forms. The characters’ narratives are self-reflective, and the reader is able to trace the genetic origins of the girl’s condition which is later diagnosed as Asperger’s Syndrome. Predictably, there are feelings of guilt from each one of the characters, but it feels as though those expressed by Claire are more heartfelt.

Ms Erasmus acknowledges in great detail the sources of inspiration and information to which she owes her research of her debut novel. Since this novel’s first appearance in our book stores, Ms Erasmus has been a prodigious novelist of note, having published no fewer than four novels since 2004.

Even with Insects was published soon after Kaleidoscope in 2005. Kaleidoscope was nominated for the Sunday Times Fiction prize and the Commonwealth Best First Novel award. Our Bookslivesa website notes vaguely that Even with Insects “is about relationships”. They also mention that Ms Erasmus’ third novel, Chameleon, deals with white collar crime and was published in 2008. Finally, Below Luck Level, returns to the human condition and the illnesses with which it is afflicted in twenty-first century society, in this case, Alzheimer’s.

Searching for alternative reviews and critique’s of Barbara Erasmus’ debut novel, I came across her WordPress website and was gratified in finding some qualified opinions on the book.

Jen Crocker, a freelance writer based in Cape Town, had this to say about Kaleidoscope. She felt that the novel was “powerful and absorbing” and emphasised the story’s roots in the strained relationship between “two very different sisters”.

Janet van Eeden made a very good point when she mentioned that this novel was a refreshing exception to the literary norm in shifting focus away from stories related to apartheid in South Africa.

And Dr C Lombard, a psychologist at the Unica School for Learners with Autism in Pretoria (mentioned in the novel) is complementary in his impressions on Kaleidoscope;

“Autism is an extremely complex disorder that is rarely understood unless people have been exposed to its victims or have done a vast amount of research. On reading Kaleidoscope, I was quite amazed at the incredible insight Erasmus has developed concerning the minds of people with Asperger’s Syndrome. I believe Kaleidoscope will make a truly significant difference as regards society’s awareness and understanding of Asperger Syndrome.”

And, perhaps Darold Treffert, author of Extraordinary People – An Exploration of the Savant Syndrome, gives a very accurate depiction of the two sisters, the autistic child and the story;

“Claire is ice blue, triangular, beautiful. Her speciality is lists, she remembers them verbatim. Katherine is red, multi-angled, a chameleon slipping into whatever role she is playing and making it seem authentic. Amy won’t let anyone cross her boundaries, she is a butterfly that has folded her wings and crept back into her cocoon. Kaleidoscope is a novel about shifting perspectives within a family brought about by the birth of an autistic child.”

Kaleidoscope, short enough to be read over a few days, is engaging enough for me to seek out Barbara Erasmus’ subsequent novels which I look forward to reading sometime later this year.

* Look out for a review on Karen Jaye’s phenomenal story For the Mercy of Water

The Cliff

Before you read my latest poem let me just mention where it was originally published.

It was my first published poem in an earlier blog entitled Poetrymarks which you can view if you have access to Google’s Blogger (is that what it’s called? Yes, I think that’s it). That blog is still running, although I’ve just not had time to administer it lately.

I decided to include this poem, amongst others, in a portfolio of works to the South African literary journal; Baobab South African Literary Journal for New Writing.

Do not, however, be fooled by the title as it has in the past included works from South Africa’s best-known, and indeed, Africa’s foremost literary giants through the years. This journal is one of the country’s longest running, but unfortunately due to financial constraints and, I would gather, time constraints, it has been published haphazardly over the years.

One of Baobab’s editors contacted me yesterday to let me know that my contribution/s have been included in the latest edition of this magazine, however, I did not gather what works he had decided to publish. Nevertheless, I have decided to include that portfolio as a series of works in this blog for your reading pleasure. It comes in the form of ten poems, three short stories, seven short academic and literary essays, and one longer essay.

I will publish these works in the coming weeks, alongside my regular posts. Here’s hoping that you at least enjoy your reading. You are welcome to write to me if you feel a need to read something yesterday.

In the meantime, here is the first poem which came about on one of those musing days.

Most North Americans who are budget-savvy will be familiar with the term “financial cliff”. On that particular day I was thinking of the precarious state of most of the world’s economies, its civil strife’s and the potential for the unrest in the Middle East to descend into a third World War.

I was also thinking about the significant changes happening in my own personal life which, thankfully, are not all bad, rather it is a positive curve, it is just a little scary at times.

New beginnings and changes often are, aren’t they?

the cliff

a man
saddened with heavy weights
his heart black and brutal
stands on a cliff

the cold element of the rock
coarses through his limbs
his body stiffens
he looks up

into the deep, dark night
and sees the stars
some die
some still flicker

he sees a new star
so bright, it leads him away from the cliff
yet so far
it causes him to serenely smile

 

Ignorance is not bliss

today we burnt the only mattress on which we would have slept tonight

today we littered our streets with rocks and burning tyres from vehicles which would

have taken us to our only destination

a place called hope

 

This poem was received well, critically and subjectively, when it was first published.

I wrote it with the small community of Sir Lowrys Pass (near Cape Town) in mind after they uncharacteristically took to their streets to voice their frustrations at being put at the back of the queue for basic services and its delivery.

To my mind they form part of the most marginalised of our greater Western Cape community.

Some readers recognised and understood what I was feeling and thinking about when they read these few short words.

The majority did not recognise that the ignorance I spoke of was not confined to this poor community that was foregrounded in my poem.

Sir Lowrys Pass village is one of many, small poor communities in the Western Cape that has been ignored by most Capetonians, from urban city workers, blue collared, white collared, or peripheral, to well-attired Party loyalists whose means of protest entails the throwing of human excrement in spite of its consequences.

From city and government employees to the  elected officials who are paid by the working electorate to deliver available resources to all citizens, including refugees from other African countries.

The village’s inhabitants struggle daily with many of the same problems that most poor, unemployed South Africans are faced with each day; HIV/AIDS, a lack of education, alcoholism and drug-addiction, as well as gangsterism.

The main problems facing this impoverished community appears to be housing and sanitation which was promised by the mayor of Cape Town after able-bodied and frustrated members of this community took to their un-tarred roads and yards, burning and trashing everything within reach of them, including the very makeshift beds that they slept on. This happened over a year ago.

They live on the fringes of a very fertile and vast area of land which is world famous for its grapes and deciduous fruits, some of them are able to gain temporary, seasonal employment, picking grapes and apples, and for the rest of the year they and their families go hungry, stuck in the back of beyond.

Young mothers who fall pregnant against their own free will are unable to provide adequately for their little ones who cry at night, hungry and thirsty for just a little something as we on the Cape Flats have become used to saying.

Poor, uneducated youths at the moment face a bleak future challenged by their peers to abandon all hope and enslave themselves to those addictions and vices already mentioned.

The website of The Sir Lowry’s Pass Community Empowerment Project states that it was founded because there are many of us who want to help. I invite you all to pledge your support in any way that you can.

 

All That We Have Left Unsaid

Women’s Day is commemorated as a public holiday, one of many, in South Africa. It is in recognition of brave mothers and daughters who made painful sacrifices towards attaining the freedom of their children in the struggle against apartheid which ended officially with the country’s first democratic election in 1994.

It will be celebrated this Friday, 9 August, 2013.

It is appropriate that I dedicate my review of Maxine Case’s ALL THAT WE HAVE LEFT UNSAID to those mothers and daughters, including my own mother and her daughters.

ALL THAT WE HAVE LEFT UNSAID is a refreshing, but touching account of one Cape Town woman’s relationship with her mother. It is a universal story of loss and regret to which most readers and writers can relate.

The opening pages of this novel, published by Kwela Books, an imprint of NB Publishers, are indeed spirited as we engage emphathetically with the story’s protagonist, Danika, both as adult and child,  in her relationship with her mother who is not unlike our own (Coloured) mothers on the Cape Flats.

Danika’s father, stereotypically characterised as a hard drinker of whisky, acts out antagonistically against her mother, her older sister, Lili, and indeed herself, disagreeing with everything in their household that suggests sensibility and rational behaviour during the troubling nineteen-eighties of apartheid South Africa in the throes of a severe restrictions and an imminent State of Emergency against the eacalating and justified civil unrest, predominantly amongst black youths and union-affiliated workers.

Danika’s heroic and brave mother takes the side of the disenfranchised and oppressed, while her father, frustrated by deteriorating working conditions in the Eastern Cape motor car factory where he works, disapproves of the civil unrest which is universally intended to bring about democracy, freedom and basic human rights to all South Africans, particularly black South Africans.

Significantly, the angry father echo’s the increasing marginalisation of the Cape Coloured communities who are gradually being excluded from the bargaining tables for freedom and human rights, or at least are placed in the middle, as privileged citizens, between the white oppressors and the black oppressed.

The characterisation of Danika’s father is masterful and it is left up to the reader to decide whether to sympathise with or reject the abusive man against the focalisation of the relationship between mother and daughter.

The story is refreshing mainly because it shows familiarities with our own innocence as children within our families.

The story takes a grim turn after it is revealed that Danika’s mother is dying of cancer, and is a stark  reminder  that childhood is not always blissful.

In this narrative the child focaliser learns of family divisions, but is unable to understand why they exist.

Irony is deployed thoughout the narrative as the adult protagonist, remains distanced from her professionally successful sister (although she too, is successful in her own right as a woman in a patriarchal environment).

As her mother slips into a coma, she leaves clues with her younger daughter as to why these divisions in their family have occurred. Indeed, with politics and unrest in the background, it is a grave tragedy that engulfs this middle class Cape Coloured family. But it is the physical and emotional distance between mother and father that appears to be the root of this family’s tragic failure to connect and communicate effectively and passionately.

The narrative voice is layered, switching at regular intervals from the adult observing her mother’s decay to that of the child observing her mother in the family kitchen and her mother’s reactions to her husband and their divided family.

The mother’s emotional and physical disintegration occurs during the narrator’s childhood. Through the adult narrator’s focalisation of her ailing mother we are also drawn into a material world and its division between have’s and have not’s. In her mother’s case, it is a question of choosing between private or public medical care. The mother stubbornly declines her daughter’s suggestion of benefiting from private medical care. It is as if she wishes to express her own personal solidarity with those that suffer because they are poor, or less privileged.

Neither Danika, nor her sister, and indeed their father, are able to understand May’s behaviour. The mother’s name is symbolic, mirroring the socialist May Day occasion and the history behind its existence.

Through subtle textual nuances and observances of  Cape Coloured culture, the familiar reader recognises this landscape instantaneously.

With reference to the binary oppositions mentioned above, the story is balanced tenuously between the focaliser’s adult urban world of progress and female independence and the earlier years of a sheltered childhood which ironically emphasises the perceived privilege a Coloured suburb over African townships, but less affluent than white suburbia, mainly due to the prejudice of the country’s rulers and the institution of the Group Areas Act, a trademark (or should that be read as landmark?) of the then government’s apartheid legacy.

The novel’s author, Maxine Case, was hailed as a bright new South African literary voice. ALL WE HAVE LEFT UNSAID deservedly won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book, Africa regions, a hopeful beacon for emerging writers from Cape Town, particularly for stories as yet untold.

Maxine Case was awarded with a fellowship at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program in 2009. She spent three months in Pittsburgh as a City of Asylum/Pittsburgh guest writer-in-residence. She is now living in New York City where she is working on her Master’s degree in Fine Arts.

 

• Look out for my review of a controversial character in BETE DE JOUR which emanated from a conversation I had with my sister