The Book Sense 76
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Writing Across Cultural Barriers
by Marcus Stevens

One of the memories of Africa that has stuck with me most vividly is the image of an old man I saw walking in the Cheringani Hills of Kenya 13 years ago. He looked ancient, bent over a walking stick and wearing a raincoat on a blistering hot day, as he trudged across the red, parched earth through a grove of twisted trees. He was following a herd of goats. I couldn't help wondering if this man had spent his whole life doing that, and if he had, what would that kind of life be like? Would it be possible for me to even imagine it?

I chose to explore Africa in fiction because it was foreign to me. Because it is still foreign to me, even though I've been to several different regions of the continent.

When I went to do research for my novel, The Curve of the World, I didn't formally keep a journal or take notes, but I did write. Camping with my wife and children in rural villages, plantations, and parks, I used a solar panel to power my laptop and wrote about whatever came to mind. Later, as I read later what I had written, I detected a disturbing theme of alienation -- a pervasive culture shock among the details, the faces and conversations. Every turn of a corner seemed to call into question some accepted given of my western background.

But there was also something I was drawn to, something that captivated me even as it unsettled me. I found myself asking the same questions that were prompted by the old man of Kenya: Do you see what I see? What do you see?

It seems to me that the answers to questions like these cannot escape the point of view of the one asking. Still, this search constantly invited challenges to the assumptions that support the worldview I have inherited.

This is not an uncommon theme of novels set in Africa. V. S . Naipaul lived for a while in Africa, in Uganda, but what he wrote about were the experiences of foreigners, people cast adrift by living without a country. The cultural alienation of his characters' lives is so complete that he typically doesn't give the African settings of his novels a name, leaving the reader to guess that A Bend in the River is set in Kisangani of Mobutu's Zaire. In a Free State must be Uganda, and the country in Half a Life sounds a lot like Mozambique. In other literature set in Africa, even completely fictional countries are common, though it is rare for writers to make up new kingdoms and tribes in Europe or North America (African Settings in Contemporary American Novels, by Dave Kuhne).

Joseph Conrad's portrayal of cultural distance and alienation in Heart of Darkness is as famous as our continuing fascination with his book. That work has perpetuated an image of Africa in our culture even for people who haven't read it. The title is commonly misused or misunderstood. It certainly sounds like it refers to Africa and Africans rather than to the brutal behavior of the European colonizers.

Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, in his brilliant collection of essays, Hopes and Impediments, addresses this phenomenon of Conrad's novel, accusing Western writers in general of using Africa as a kind of psychological foil.

I'm absolutely sure he is right. But I don't see how it could be otherwise.

We all cope with many of the same issues, but we also are separated by a huge gulf in how we perceive our struggle and how we answer our most basic questions. This is what fascinated me in a subject that was distinctly not my own backyard. At the end of my exploration, many of the experiences from my travels and also the books I read distilled themselves in my novel. These are all part of my wandering in a foreign world -- and, for me, the reason for beginning the journey in the first place.

A May/June 2002 Book Sense 76 Top 10 pick:

"A businessman who has crash-landed in the rainforests of Africa confronts his demons as his wife and son search for him. There is plenty of suspenseful adventure, along with a sense of unease. Every turn of the page brings that "Oh, no!" feeling, leading up to a surprise ending. This is a novel I can recommend to a lot of readers."
- Jeanne Michael, Odyssey Books, Grass Valley, CA

Further Reading:

• Erika Warmbrunn
• Jill Fredston
• Jeffrey Ford

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