I say ‘thoughts’ but what I really mean is perhaps feelings. I read very little non-fiction and when I occasionally do, it is in the form of news (sparingly), essays or once in a long while, a biography. Apart from news, it is important to me that any lengthy fiction or non-fiction I read makes me ‘feel’. And man, did the essays in The Little Virtues make me feel! It shouldn’t anymore, but it remains a wonder to me how similarly human we all are at our most basic level, no matter what space and time we inhabit or occupy. These Essays are raw, intimate and full of self-discovery on what it means to be human. Here are a few thoughts on some of my favourite essays:

England: Eulogy and Lament & La Maison Volpe

I thought this was hilarious and but at the same time packed with sober truths about an immigrant’s relationship with their host country. What struck me was how similar some thoughts and feelings were to what I have personally experienced being an immigrant in Europe, though our backgrounds could not be more different. She extols the ordered beauty of England compared to that of Italy, but laments its lack of warmth in interpersonal relationships, the bland food and unimaginative clothing and lack of style.

My Vocation

Ginzburg ruminates of her ‘vocation’ meaning her writing. I especially identify with her thoughts on how our personal happiness or unhappiness, or what she refers to ‘our terrestrial condition’, has the power to impact our creative process(es).

Silence

Ginzburg writes, ‘The silence with ourselves is dominated by a violent dislike for our own existence, by a contempt for our own soul which seems so vile that it is not worth speaking to’. She writes of two kinds of silence; silence with oneself and silence with others. Throughout the essay, silence becomes a synonym for various conditions such as loneliness, depression, guilt among others.

Human Relationships

How does the way in which we relate to others, from infancy to old age, evolve? In this essay, Ginzburg lays out her personal emotional development from childhood through teenagerhood to early and late adulthood, and how her relationships from parents to early friendships impacted that and in return how that influenced her relationships with her family, her children, her friends and the greater community. On children she writes ‘We did not know that there could be such fear, such frailty, in our body: we never suspected that we could be so bound to life by a chain of fear, of such heart-rending tenderness. - the baby in the pram which we are pushing is so small, so weak, the love which binds us to him is so painful, so frightening!’

The Little Virtues

How do we decide what virtues we teach our children? Ginzburg makes a case for prioritising the big virtues; Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money, courage in place of caution and a contempt for danger, frankness and a love for truth in place of shrewdness, love instead of tact, a desire to be and to know instead of a desire for success.

I loved how generously Ginzburg shares intimate thought processes that we all perhaps have but do not have the courage to articulate them even to ourselves. It is worth mentioning that almost all essays are written with the backdrop of the second world war, escaping the national socialists to Italy, the losses that her family incurred and how all that changed her.  

I have not been so effectively blown away by a writer the way Khadija Abdalla Bajaber has just done in her debut, The House of Rust, for a long time. I first met the author virtually in a writing class organised by the 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing winner, Makena Onjerika through the Nairobi Writing Academy, before I knew of her yet to be published book. I was curious about almost all of my co-students and so upon googling her, I came across some of her poetry (truly compelling) and her short stories published in Enkare Review, Lolwe and Down River Road. I was sufficiently struck by her fluid and imagery-rich prose that, when I learned that she had won her Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize, and that her debut novel was about to be published, I had to immediately pre-order it.

 

House of Rust is a richly woven story, both in its imagery and its prose. A young girl in Mombasa loses her father to the seas, and she sails off in a boat made of bones accompanied by a talking cat, in search of him. On her journey she encounters not just talking monsters, but also the truth of who her father really was/is.  By sailing out to the sea she also embarks on a personal journey of self-discovery. The story is steeped in the magical realism of the tales and myths that are synonymous with Mombasa. Khadija Bajaber’s prose is truly a beauty to behold. The writing is heavy with imagery but not weighed down by it. It is written with a fluid, skilful craft and with what feels like instinctive ease. The imagery has such a cutting clarity that I sometimes had to pose to catch my breath.

 

To read House of Rust is to walk on Mombasa’s, and its Old Town streets, to smell its spicy cuisine and the brine from the sea, to feel magic a hair’s breadth away from your skin. Khadija has managed to distil Old Mombasa, with no little magic of her own, into an exquisite piece of writing. I cannot sufficiently say how utterly excited and awed I am, to witness the birth of a writer who I am sure with this book, will be a hallmark in literature. Her prowess in prose is a rare gift straight from the gods of storytelling. I cannot wait until enough people have read the book so that I can freely discuss the absolute stellar beauty of this book, without spoiling it for too many would-be-readers.  

I bought The Havoc Choice a few months ago, but I kept dithering on opening it, because I did not feel ready yet to confront the weighty issues that it addresses. I finally got around to reading it, and I am glad that I did. Only one word can sufficiently describe the story that Wanjiru Koinange tells in her debut novel; Important. The story is centred on a political family in Kenya. At first it seems that Kavata, the daughter of a long-time corrupt politician, will be the main character. By mid-story we however realise that the story is much bigger than that. Having grown up under her father’s shadow and witnessing his corrupt ways, Kavata abhors politics. She is therefore devastated when her husband becomes a political protégé of her father, against her wishes. Blind to her privilege and the inherent power that comes with it, she makes choices that will have devastating effects on not those close and around her. The book fictionalises the post-election violence of year of 2007/2008. Some of the most horrific events that characterised that part of Kenyan history, are given human faces and are steeped in emotional truths that one dare not deny. The book ends with no concrete resolutions and rightly so. Mirroring in part what happened after the politically driven violence, some characters end up in government with no justice for the victims. I had to think about Yvonne Awuor’s Dust while reading The Havoc of Choice. Despite the two writers being very different in their writing styles, these two books, albeit in different ways, confront how Kenya as a nation has dealt with its past failures and its shared traumas, or perhaps better put, how it has failed to deal with these issues. Would it be too ambitious, to hope to put this book, and perhaps Yvone Awuor’s Dust too, in every young Kenyan’s hands? One can only hope that art like this, will act as a catalyst to later generations, giving them a paradigm shift in quitting to relegate their moral responsibilities to those in power, as we and our parents have done.

Watch the review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akas7Fo6Tuw

Why does it have to be pain that brings out the most exquisite art from us? Chimamanda's Notes on Grief are drenched in her pain on losing her father. If you follow her on social media, you might know that less than a year after her father's death, she has also lost her mother. It is clear that these notes were written while her mother was still alive. It is eerie to be reading how heartbroken she is/was, how afraid she was that she was going to lose someone else when she writes "... Okey calls me a little earlier than usual and I think, Just tell me, tell me immediately, who has died now. Is it Mummy?", while you know she is about to lose her mother too, and she doesn't yet know it. It makes you as a reader feel almost culpable in the immense pain she is about to be drowned in all over again. In her post on losing her mother she wrote, "How does a heart break twice? ...Times make memories. And now that is what is brutally left. The shock. The sense of sinking, of surfaces giving way, of falling through forever. The world feels wrapped in gauze. Everything is hazy and unclear.This is how a heart breaks twice, this feeling of being utterly lost."
Chimamanda's words and her sentences are crisp, even more crisp than usual. She gives words to the shapeless chaos of grief with ruthless economy, and yet with such cutting clarity that she inevitably pulls you in to mourn with her. I do not know what she will write after the recent death of her second parent, and I feel guilty for even thinking about it. But it is true, there is a beauty, a depth in art that can only come from a place of pain. The only downside to this slim publication is its disproportionately high price.