The Devil that Danced on the Water is a 2002 memoir/detective story by Aminatta Forna in which the author tells the story of her childhood and investigates the causes of her father’s execution (“The Devil that Danced on the Water”). I first came across this book while on a search for contemporary novels that dealt with the experience of postcolonial African identity. However, my search was for novels and so I did not get a chance to read this book. After reading through reviews and summaries, I was able to gain a general understanding of the memoir’s plot and major abstractions.  As a result of exploring ideas of self-representation, personal and shared memory, identity, authority and more in ASTU, Forna’s memoir seems to offer a compelling understanding of these concepts.  Forna is an Afro-European writer born in Scotland and raised in Sierra Leone, she also spent parts of her childhood in Iran, Thailand and Zambia. Having grown up in 1970s Sierra Leone, national unrest as a result of post-independence civil conflict is a major part of Forna’s life (About Aminatta Forna).

The memoir offers various links to the concepts explored in ASTU, memory is a major theme in the memoir. Both personal and shared memory are central to this text because of the position of Forna’s text within the larger context of civil war and national memory (The Devil that Danced on the Water: A Daughter’s Quest). Similar to Forgiveness and Persepolis, Forna’s memoir contributes a unique experience of national tragedy in Sierra Leone. Like Missing Sarah, Forna’s memoir is her own story as well as that of her father’s. Therefore, her methodology and research process are central to the production of her story. Forna makes use of similar methods to De Vries such as interviews with the men associated with her father’s death (Brittain). We have explored the memoirist’s research process considerably in Missing Sarah by highlighting who De Vries cites in telling another’s story, observing how Forna does this could provide for an interesting analysis as she tells the story of a different family member, her father. Additionally, Forna’s memoir can be viewed as a counter-narrative similar to Knighton’s Cockeyed, as it challenges the historical exclusion of women of color, particularly African women, from the literary marketplace. Furthermore, as Victoria Brittain highlights, the memoir “gives a more personal framework for understanding the horror” that challenges the western media coverage of the conflict in Sierra Leone which depicted the nation’s conflict as having been fueled by “a generation of drug-fueled youths” (Brittain).

Forna’s memoir differs from the texts previously studied in ASTU due to the narrator’s post-colonial, African diasporic characteristic. Ideas of self-representation can be analysed differently through the diasporic lens and even more so when situated within the postcolonial context. Forna’s memoir allows for an exploration of ideas we have not investigated in ASTU such as colonial trauma and cultural hybridity. In choosing this memoir, I was driven by my interest in postcolonial literature because of the dynamic ways’ identity can be understood through contemporary African literature. Using my newfound understanding of life narratives and self-representation, I can combine this with my interest in African literature in order to show how the genre of African and diasporic life-narratives can offer future ASTU students a different understanding of self-representation and life writing.

Works Cited

About Aminatta Forna. n.d. March 2019. <https://aminattaforna.com/about-aminatta-forna.html>.

Brittain, Victoria. The truth about Daddy. 18 May 2002. 16 March 2019. <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/may/18/politics>.

Weekly, Publisher’s. The Devil that Danced on the Water: A Daughter’s Quest. 2002. 16 March 2019.

Inspired by the lyrics of a song that played from my laptop while looking through the site Post Secret, the famous rapper, Q-Tip, a member of the 90s hip-hop sensation A Tribe Called Quest, says in the song What, “what are the youth if they ain’t rebelling”. I found the significance of these words uncanny as I read through the secrets posted anonymously by people whom I would guess were mostly under 25 because it highlighted the nature of the youth. The site’s sheer existence showcases the need humans have for unity and solidarity especially when engaging in taboo activities. The posts that struck me most were those that were admissions of guilty pleasures and mostly harmless, inappropriate activities. These kinds of posts, combined with a recent reading of Kate Douglas’sYouth, Trauma and Memorialization: The Selfie as Witnessing, got me thinking about another taboo activity that is a topic amongst many popular and scholarly conversations, the nude selfie.

Members of the youth throughout history are known for pushing boundaries and changing social orders and most times, revolutionary ideas begin as covert, guilty pleasures and taboo activities. I would like to consider nude selfies as extremely controversial forms of witnessing within a greater social movement. To extend on Kate Douglas’s proposition that selfies are a new form of life narrative and witnessing (Douglas), I would like to put forward the idea that the taking nude selfies, and distributing them, is a minor form of witnessing within a larger social movement. Nude selfies present a branch of selfie witnessing that is considered taboo and is often discussed in reference to its negative impacts. However, in the age of modern technology where information is both easily accessible and readily available, nude selfies have come to have numerous other effects on individual identity and solidarity amongst the youth.

Nudity has its own history, however, general popular opinion views nudity as appropriate in private situations but taboo in public. Nude selfies challenge this view of nudity in both areas, firstly, the actual taking of nude selfies is considered shameful and dangerous as a result of the negative implications such as, body shaming, blackmail and revenge and desensitisation (Nanny). Secondly, voluntarily sharing nude selfies is considered taboo because it challenges the idea that the nudity is something that should remain private. However, young people today are breaking these boundaries.

Sharing nude selfies has become a normalised cultural practice for those who take and/or share them. For some, it is a form of digital intimacy to be shared between individuals or kept privately, for others, it is an act of empowerment, especially for young women, as nude selfies can be used to advocate for the body positivity movement. Matthew Hart in his article Being Naked on the Internet: Young People’s Selfies as Intimate Edgework from the Journal of Youth Studiessuggests that nude selfies taken by young people can be viewed as a form of edgework. While society tends to view to “risk-taking in the adult world” as “a cultural norm and acceptable form of behavior”, when it comes to young people and risk-taking there is more focus on its negative effects (Hart). In light of the negative impact nude selfies can have on young people, provided they are taken by those who are of age and with informed consent, it can be argued that nude selfies and their distribution are a way in which young people situate themselves within an atmosphere of changing social norms and indeed, what are the youth if they aren’t rebelling?

Works Cited

60+ Hippie Quotes with Odd Twists You’ll Relish. n.d. 5 November 2018.

Douglas, Kate. “Youth, trauma and memorialisation: The selfie as witnessing .” Memory Studies(2017): 1 – 16 .

Hart, Matthew. “Being Naked on the Internet: Young People’s Selfies as Intimate Edgework.” The Journal of Youth Studies(2016): 301 – 315.

Nanny, Net. Sexting Can Have Long Term Negative Effects for Teen. 18 January 2018. 7 November 2018.

Q-Tip. “What.” The Low End Theory. By A Tribe Called Quest. 1991. Online Recording .

Secret, Post. Sunday Secrets. 2 November 2018. 4 November 2018.

I, Rigoberta Menchu and The Arts of Resistance exhibit currently on display at the UBC Museum of Anthropology are two seemingly different bodies of work that are based on the narratives of the indigenous people of Latin America. I, Rigoberta Menchu is a testimony written by a twenty-three-year old Rigoberta Menchu from Guatemala. She takes on the responsibility of speaking on behalf of the marginalised people of Guatemala. The Arts of Resistance exhibit contains collections of clothing, masks, paintings, drawings and artefacts from all over Latin America with the primary function of presenting Latin American responses to social and political turmoil through art. Both pieces of work, despite being different in the form they take, serve a primary function of resisting the social and political institutions that have oppressed and silenced various groups within the Latin American community while celebrating and restoring a sense of pride in the indigenous Latin American identity.

A particularly striking piece in the Arts of Resistance exhibit was the Defence of Maize (Sunnucks, 2018) piece in which the silhouette of an older woman holding a shotgun, aims the gun at engineers of transgenic maize. The context for this piece provided in the information was helpful as it explained the socio-political situation in which the piece was produced. However, in order to understand the issue with more clarity I read through an article titled Past and Future Collide as Mexico Fights Over GMO Corn by David Alire Garcia. The Mexican government legalized the intervention of foreign transgenic maize producers who would produce maize at a significantly lower price and eventually drive local maize producers further into poverty. From the article I learnt that maize is one of Mexico’s main exports and so the country is very reliant on its production. Additionally, maize has cultural and religious significance to members of various indigenous groups (Garica,2013). The piece brought about a number of ideas, the quality of womanhood being the first of these. In most societies, women and the poor are the most marginalized members leaving wealthy men as the usual holders of power. Additionally, women, particularly in Latin America play an important role in carrying indigenous culture as a result of their marginalization (Byam, 2008). In depicting an elderly, poor woman holding a shotgun, the artist immediately hands power over to the woman, who represents the poor and indigenous societies of Mexico, and simultaneously resists the existing power structures.

I, Rigoberta Menchu does this from the beginning of the testimony. Menchu, as a poor, female Guatemalan takes power by simply sharing her story. It can be said that the old woman pictured in the Defense of Maize is the visual incarnation of an older “metaphorical” Menchu. While Menchu does not physically attack her oppressor, she does so through her testimony which points a “gun” at imperialists and the current political state. Based on the response received by various critics, it can be said that Menchu reached her target audience.

Both the Arts of Resistance, particularly the Defence of Maize, and I, Rigoberta Menchu are pieces of work that have very clear intentions. They are an example of the effectiveness of art in resisting and drawing attention to social and political issues. Women and power are the two main concepts in the pieces, both of them aim to place power in the hands of the powerless and in doing so they cause viewers and readers to question the authorities that are responsible for distributing oppression. Often the first step taken toward resistance is to question, by evoking this feeling of inquiry they are both extremely effective in illustrating and achieving resistance.

Word Count: 599

Works Cited

Byam, Melanie. The Modernization of Resistance: Latin American Women since 1500. 2008.
https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgireferer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1096&context=undergrad_rev

Garcia, David Alire. “Past and Future Collide as Mexico Fights Over GMO Corn.” Reuters, 12 November 2013.

Sunnucks, Laura Osorio. Defense of Maize . Museum of Anthropology . The Arts of Resistance. Vancouver, 2018.

Hello,

Welcome to my blog! My name is Reneilwe, which directly translates to “we have been given”, everyone calls me Nei, I don’t have a preference at all either name works just fine. I am an African by birth and by choice, a feminist and a daydreamer, to name a few of my self-proclaimed titles. Here you’ll find some of my many thoughts and hopefully you’ll enjoy reading them.

Initial thoughts

I am very unfamiliar with the genre of graphic novels and reading Persepolis was a great introduction to the world of graphic novels. I am familiar with a few semi-autobiographical novels which made Persepolis all the more interesting to read. I felt as though I was experiencing the novel as well as reading it due to the images created by Satrapi in the memoir.

The memoir’s focus on Iran’s political climate at the time as a key influence in Marjane’s life connected very well to the idea of the Sociological Imagination which we have been learning about in another CAP class, Sociology. The Social Imagination is a concept born from a book written by C. Wright Mills which aims  to highlight the link between personal problems to public issues. Satrapi’s memoir exemplifies exactly that due to it’s constant mention of the role of historical events and issues on Marjane’s life. The issues and experiences she faces are usually intertwined with, influenced, and often interrupted by, the revolution that is taking place in Iran. She portrays this influence through many various panels in the memoir as well as through the narrative texts paired with these images.

To make mention of one of these, in the chapter titled “Kim Wilde” we see a slightly older Marjane walking and singing along to a song which is a personal experience of hers as it showcases what most would consider a normal young girl coming of age and listening to popular music. This experience is interrupted by the “guardians of the revolution” who stop Marjane in order to put her “back on the straight and narrow by explaining the duties of muslim women” (Satrapi, 2000). Satrapi provides a narration of this experience in order to give readers an understanding of the historical place that Marjane is in while showing us through the images in the panel  what Marjane is experiencing on a personal level. We see her smiling in satisfaction at her newly acquired Kim Wilde CD, enjoying the music and singing it privately.

These particular panels, like many others in the memoir, highlight the main concept of the Sociological Imagination which aims to connect personal experience to public issues. Marjane’s experience, while being extremely personal, represents a larger issue in Iran, that of censorship.

I found this connection between the two courses quite interesting and viewing the sociological imagination through a literary lens helped me understand the concept a lot better. It broadened my understanding of Persepolis as a graphic novel while giving me an example, through Persepolis, of how personal issues link to public problems.

Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis, Pantheon Books, 2003