Whenever foreigners visit Paradise they always ask Darling and her friends to smile for the camera. Here are some of the things Darling and her friends have to smile about: stealing guavas, gifts from NGOs, singing Lady Gaga at the tops of their voices. But they all want to go to the real paradise in America or Britain.
Some outstanding passages (the entire chapter 'How They Lived' is remarkable) From shanty towns in Zimbabwe to wealth and ruin in Michigan, the story observes society and humanity through the eyes of a child. This 'child's-eye' formula is the only weakness in this story, with unsophisticated, blundering sections of naivete interrupting some excellent social observation and philosophy, and some great writing.
I read this in two big gulps over two days -- unprecedented, when it often takes me weeks to finish a regular sized novel. I've been having a hard time finding interesting books for my "no white dudes and preferable queer and or trans and or women of colour" reading goals at my small library (3/4 of the fiction is french) and so I snatched this up when I saw it, being something that I've heard high praise for, and then it snatched up my heart and I haven't been able to work on anything I should be doing because I have been reading and now I have that horrible pit in my stomach when a book guts you and I don't know what to do about it. Bulawayo's characters' voices cut me deep but also held me at arms length, lest I lapsed into the pity-voyeurism of white north …
I read this in two big gulps over two days -- unprecedented, when it often takes me weeks to finish a regular sized novel. I've been having a hard time finding interesting books for my "no white dudes and preferable queer and or trans and or women of colour" reading goals at my small library (3/4 of the fiction is french) and so I snatched this up when I saw it, being something that I've heard high praise for, and then it snatched up my heart and I haven't been able to work on anything I should be doing because I have been reading and now I have that horrible pit in my stomach when a book guts you and I don't know what to do about it. Bulawayo's characters' voices cut me deep but also held me at arms length, lest I lapsed into the pity-voyeurism of white north american women cornering children in bathrooms to lament about how horrible it is, 'over there'. Like it fixed me with a talking eye, as Darling says, saying, I see you out there, listening, and just because I'm telling you all this doesn't mean you really know how it is. I feel like that is a very personal interpretation on my part, as well, as a white north american, and I can imagine that every reader would engaged with this in really different ways. I don't know, I just, I won't be forgetting this book.
