Feminism goes mainstream Part 2

 1. How to say Babylon gives an account of the life Safiya Sinclair has led till now. She was born to Rastafarian parents in Jamaica. Her father was a reggae singer. After emperor Haile Selassie (of Ethiopia) visited Jamaica in 1966, he embraced Rastafarian ways totally. This is an outlawed fundamentalist cult which was later banned in Jamaica. Its members grow their hair long and do not comb them, like the devadasis in Karnataka.

Safiya's mother was bright but got no opportunities in life. Safiya and her 3 siblings were abused and oppressed by the father. All are very bright. Safiya is a poet and after school she became an international model. On the basis of the exposure to American society, she managed to enroll herself in colleges and helped her siblings too. One of them is a Rastafarian.

Safiya gives a moving account of her and her family's ordeal. Her writing is concise. In Rastafarian lingo, Babylon stands for everything in the 'corrupt' Western culture. Her account convinces us that patriarchy and fundamentalism are two sides of the same coin.

2. Prize women is based on an actual event in Toronto in 1926. In that year, an eccentric lawyer leaves a part of his large fortune, not having any direct descendants, to that woman in Toronto who produced the most children in the decade following his death. The court stepped in to find out such a woman and its efforts are known as the Great Stork Derby in Toronto from 1926 to 1936. 

This was the time of the Great Depression also. Therefore the derby attracted a lot of attention. The court held that the award would exclude stillborn babies and children born out of wedlock. Eleven families competed in the race and 7 were disqualified. The remaining 4 received $ 110000 each or $ 2.23 million at 2023 prices. Three of the 4 families had to pay back the relief money that had been granted to them by the City of Toronto earlier.

On the basis of this event, Caroline Lea has written her novel. It features 2 women, Lily and Mae. It begins very well, describing the daily torture Lily and her son are subjected to by her husband. Mae is a poor typist but manages to marry her rich employer. He loses everything in the depression. Both women compete in the race but Lily does not make it due to male prejudices against Italian immigrants and women in general. Mae shares her booty with Lily and lesbian love between them is hinted at. It is clear that the author is looking back at past times with the lenses of the present.

A compelling read which however, loses its mojo in the middle.

3. Lessons in chemistry  shows the life of Elizabeth Zot in the decade following 1950s in USA. Elizabeth is a brilliant, self-taught and self-made scientist who has encountered discrimination from the very start of her life. She loses her research job and funding and manages to survive by running a cookery show on TV. In this show, she treats the ingredients and their combinations like a great ongoing chemical process and manages to elevate the status of cooking in the eyes of her audience.

Elizabeth has encountered only difficulties in her life but for all that, her approach to life is upbeat and positive. That is the redeeming feature of this humourous, well-written novel.

Feminism goes mainstream

 I hear that there is a backlash on Tik Tok and a regressive view that women should go back to baby rearing and keeping the house is increasingly popular.

In literature however, the spurned, oppressed female has caught the attention of writers and readers alike.

I allude to 3 recent books.

1. How to say Babylon, a memoir by Safiya Sinclair, 37 INK, Simon & Schuster, N.Y. 2023 (book in 4 parts, 29 chapters, 352 pages)

2. Prize women by Caroline Lea, Penguin Random House, U.K. 2023 (book in 3 parts, 45 chapters, 322 pages)

3. Lessons in chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, Penguin 2022 (45 chapters, 400 words)

The last one is wildly popular today and has been converted into a popular TV series along with translations in 42 languages. The other two have been critically acclaimed.

All have suppression of women as their leit motif. Their popularity means that the audience is into the message of different shades of this suppression.

Read my next post for a short description of each book. Do read them.

Old and current crime stories

 I have started translating The wheel spins by Ethel Lina White in Marathi. It is a project for myself and it is turning out to be enjoyable.

The novel was first published in 1939 as a crime club publication. It was adapted for the big screen 3 times and for radio several times. Alfred Hitchcock's The lady vanishes came out in 1938, a year before the book was published. Later screen adaptations were in 1979 and in 2013!

The plot revolves around Iris Carr who finds that a lady she spoke to on the train, a Miss Froy has just vanished. The novel spans over the train journey and ends in London. Just a little before that, Ms. Froy is found as a sedated, totally bandaged patient who is meant to languish in a mental hospital.

A single, young woman who battles all sorts of difficulties during this brief period of time is a subject which seems to lure movie makers in nearly a century.

What strikes me however, as my translation begins, is that the novel is a work of literature. It has a literary style and it draws out its characters with deft literary touches. Sometimes the effort goes overboard but it is an absorbing read.

What a contrast with the contemporary thrillers - not crime books but thrillers! A derogatory category name actually. What is aimed at is titillation and not covering any depth.

Arguably, thrillers came to the fore with Fredrick Forsyth's books. Others that followed in this genre are fast-paced, have continuous action and they employ a very basic style of writing. Character building makes way for a whole lot of information about geography, secret service agencies and the police force, the weaponry, government plans, coups etc. Their narrative always stays on the surface as no effort is made to explore any depth. It is a money-making business and the front running authors employ a research staff to ensure that they get their details right.

Millions of copies are sold and the authors are rich people.

What they churn out is action which keeps you hooked as long as you are reading. Once done, you shake yourself  and promptly forget most of what you read.

Not so with literature. Tiny details in it remain buried in your mind and come to the fore unexpectedly. Its characters are truly your companions.

We had an old Penguin copy of The wheel spins. The cover had a green border and my father always kept it with him for Bombay- Poona train travel of 4 hours, a fraction of the Trieste - London journey in the novel. The well-thumbed book was in tatters and its pages came loose. It had to be discarded, much to my dismay.

I mentioned this to my brother some years ago. He remembered it well and gave me the site of some Australian publisher. I actually downloaded and printed the book free from this website, courtesy my college room printer!!