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The Watcher
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Posted: Friday December 3rd, 2004 05:11 |
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This is a series by Alexander Mcall Smith about a woman (Mma Ramotswe) who starts a detective agency in a small town in her country of Botswana. She is like an African Miss Marple. Lots of adventures and characters.
I have read three of these books so far and found them interesting and quite realistic as well as being funny and so on and then I learned that the author is white!! Gave me a shock when I found that out (it seems so authentic and well written).
What do you think of these books? Have you read them? What did you think of the author being white?
Apparently it is a very popular seires in Botswana
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Maggs
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Posted: Monday December 13th, 2004 13:25 |
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I read the first chapter of this book and had to put it down. Why? Because I felt the 'take-away' message was - would'nt it be so wonderful if Blacks could behave in this nice, gentle and submissive way!!
I'm tired of having to read books written by Whites who really feel they understand us and when you confront them about this they really don't understand what all the fuss is about.
Digressing for a moment, I remember reading a question/answer interview with Maggie Gee on the book - The White Family. When asked about being White and writing Black characters, she said she didnt see anything wrong with it. I immediately went out and got the book and read it. Yes, it's a well written book about a White working class family and one of its members, the daughter decides to marry a Black Brit after losing her husband (died from cancer)who was a Ghanaian.
The book looks at how the rest of the family deals with their daughter/sister wanting to be with Black men, and book also looks at Black homosexuality. My problem with this book and The Number One Ladies detective agency is that I really don't think they have the right to write about us. As Mike Phillips once said, if we don't write our own characters, then they will.
But my voice is a lone voice, the 'detective agency' has proved to popular with the likes of Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey fighting for the part in a movie version of this story; Mrs. George Bush has said its her favourite book at the moment; Richard and Judy are said to love it, so maybe one has to bypass the fact that the author is white and the protagonist is Black.
Maggie
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Vezz.
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Posted: Monday December 13th, 2004 17:50 |
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 @ Maggs.
I just couldn't get into it at all. Most of the people I see reading these books on the train/tube/bus are White. Maybe it's me, but I feel they feel they're experiencing life as a Black person just by reading these books.
Peace.
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facetygal
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Posted: Monday December 13th, 2004 21:54 |
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| I have come across them in the library, but I haven't read any yet. I must admit when I read the back of the book I wasn't taken by the storyline. I might give it a go if I come across it again
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babygirl44
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Posted: Tuesday December 14th, 2004 11:12 |
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| I too found the fact that the author is white slightly off putting but my friend lent it me as I was off work sick and had nothing else to read and to tell you the truth I loved it. Please give it a chance as it is an extremely entertaining read. The author is not trying to preach to black people and in some circumstances appears to think that the morals and way of life in Botswana is superior to those of the westerners who seem to only value money. I have gone on to read the sequel 'Tears of a Giraffe' and think that this too is a good book. I have to admit that I have never been to Botswana so am not sure whether his view is authentic but he must have lived there for a while as he would be taking a chance in talking in great detail about a country he has never lived in. Furthermore, Zadie Smith has written about white people in 'White Teeth' so as long as he isn't making sterotypes of black people, he can write about us too in my opinion. It paints a really nice picture of Botswana so much so that it is now somewhere that I would like to visit. It makes a change from seeing Africa painted as backwards by white people.
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Maggs
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Posted: Thursday December 16th, 2004 14:39 |
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Sorry! I know I sound a bit hard but surely we must have a chance to write about own lives as we see it; that wouldn't it be better if we were the ones to say how the world should be - from our pov. Not through a black character who happens to be created by someone who is not Black. Having lived in South Africa (not too far away from Botswana) and seen first hand the way Whites treat the Blacks is totally disgusting, to say the least. Africans are seen and treated as though they are some sort of sub-species of the human race, so that's why I'm little suspicious when White authors (especially African Whites like McCall Smith who is Zimbabwean) suddenly decide to create Black characters and make novels out of them.
You mentioned Zadie Smith creating white characters in her book White Teeth - well, my response is those of us who were born and have lived in the UK have had to know white people - purely because of survival. Knowing to anticipate them is necessary. But they have only recently gotten to know us, and now they think they are Black experts? As my father says, and he has just turned 70 and came to this country when he was 21, now they are beginning to listen to us but they were not doing this before.
It is a relief that Black authors like Andrea Levy and Zadie Smith and others are making their mark in the literary world, and I'm happy about that. And I hope that there will be a time when it does not matter what racial group a writer is from, they will be free to create characters from different races besides their ownl. But the Anglo-Saxon still has some distance to go.
Maggs
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Maggs
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Posted: Monday February 28th, 2005 16:30 |
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 Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 7:18 pm Post subject:
I found this (below) on another site and thought I'd pass this to all to you guys. My position is that I hate the fact white writers see us as he new fashionable thing to write about. But I might be wrong. What do you think?
..................................................................................................................................
Is there not a danger in lumping all African countries together? The characteristics and aspirations of all Europeans are not the same, so why should those of Africans?
I would expect the people of Botswana to be different to Nigerians, just as the English are different to the French. And why should people who are second or third generation British or American Afro-Carribeans know any more about the people of Botswana than someone who has lived there for years.
Fiction is fiction, and requires imagination to write it and read it.
There are some readers who look for things to be offended about, and the fact that a white author has the effrontery to write about an African is considered an offence in itself. So should writers only ever write about their own lives and experiences
..................................................................................................................................
Look 4wrd to your responses,
Maggs
Last edited on Monday February 28th, 2005 16:33 by Maggs
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Iris
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Posted: Wednesday June 1st, 2005 08:23 |
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Ahm, you might be dead center right. But, please, can you recommend what i should read to get a BETTER insight of what it might be like to live in Botswana? Do I stand a chance? Do you want me to know?
I am (too) white. But it's not MY fault, is it?
I liked the lady detective agency and it did make me feel like exploring more of Africa.
Thanks for your recommendations
Iris
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Maggs
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Posted: Monday September 19th, 2005 01:06 |
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Sorry - can't recommend any books on Botswana but I did live in South Africa (post-Apartheid). On whether or not I want you to 'know', I dont know what you mean. And on you being White, how could that be your fault?
ThanxLast edited on Monday September 19th, 2005 01:08 by Maggs
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Precious Stone
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Posted: Sunday September 25th, 2005 14:51 |
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| I picked this book up in the bookstore and to be honest with you after the first 2 pages I replaced it onto the shelf.
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Maggs
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Posted: Sunday September 25th, 2005 17:54 |
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Hi Precious,
I dont know when White writers will realise that Black people are coming into their own when it comes to describing their lives. Like i said prviously, i feel this writer would like Black people to be like this. Perhaps he has difficulty in accepting the real thing.
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Posted: Sunday September 25th, 2005 18:09 |
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Exactly.
I've come to realised that there are a lot of good Black writers out there, and if I am going to spend my few pennies on books I'll rather buy books by Black writers.
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Posted: Wednesday October 12th, 2005 12:15 |
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Just thought you would like to know that Alexander McCall Smith (Number one Ladies Detective Agency) is answering questions line - online 'in' The Guardian Unlimited tomorrow (Thursday 13th). A friend has posted this question to him:
Do you believe that it is possible in this day and age, when black people (those of us in the West and S/African blacks who are no longer living under oppression) are becoming more accomplished in writing about their experiences, that there is still a need for people from other races to write about black people?
Let's see what he has to say...
Take care
M
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flower90012001
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Posted: Friday March 10th, 2006 00:40 |
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| I read all these books on the beach whilst on holiday. I absolutly loved them! They were very well written and the main character is portrayed very cleverly, she comes across as being incredibly warm and loving and yet also very tough and uncomprimising. Traits which I feel most women reading the book can recognise in themselves! A thouroughly good read and I dont think it makes any difference that the author is white-he has succeeded in writing a wonderful book full stop.
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Tate1
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Posted: Friday March 10th, 2006 22:42 |
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Maggs wrote: Sorry! I know I sound a bit hard but surely we must have a chance to write about own lives as we see it; that wouldn't it be better if we were the ones to say how the world should be - from our pov. Not through a black character who happens to be created by someone who is not Black. Having lived in South Africa (not too far away from Botswana) and seen first hand the way Whites treat the Blacks is totally disgusting, to say the least. Africans are seen and treated as though they are some sort of sub-species of the human race, so that's why I'm little suspicious when White authors (especially African Whites like McCall Smith who is Zimbabwean) suddenly decide to create Black characters and make novels out of them.
You mentioned Zadie Smith creating white characters in her book White Teeth - well, my response is those of us who were born and have lived in the UK have had to know white people - purely because of survival. Knowing to anticipate them is necessary. But they have only recently gotten to know us, and now they think they are Black experts? As my father says, and he has just turned 70 and came to this country when he was 21, now they are beginning to listen to us but they were not doing this before.
It is a relief that Black authors like Andrea Levy and Zadie Smith and others are making their mark in the literary world, and I'm happy about that. And I hope that there will be a time when it does not matter what racial group a writer is from, they will be free to create characters from different races besides their ownl. But the Anglo-Saxon still has some distance to go.
Maggs
I totally agree with you Maggs. I've lived in Zimbabwe, Botswana & South Africa. The attitude and mentality of the white folks there is just out of this world (much worse that here). They get away with treating Black people very badly and many Southern Africans don't actually see anything wrong with their behaviour. I went to a boarding school where the majority of pupils were white so I know first hand that their mentality (both the young & old) is warped when it comes to Black people & they have some kind of irrational superiority complex......
So, how can a white person who has grown up in this environment be able to tell our story and be true to African people? How can any white person, for that matter? I have no interest in reading these books, I will only read them for comparative purposes after I've read books about us & by us.
Can you recommend any Southern African authors?
With regards to Zadie Smith: The over-representation of white people and their way of life (not only in the media but in every aspect of life) means that any Black person is actually well-equipped to write about them. However, the same does not apply to them, as they can only base their perception of Africans from stereotypes or maybe the few Black people they may encounter/interact with, whereas we are constantly bombarded with their 'details' whether we like it or not.
Tate
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flower90012001
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Posted: Sunday March 12th, 2006 01:17 |
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@ Tate
I am not going to get into this becuase frankly i can't bothered its too late! All I can say is that there are some serious double standards going on in your post! You may think that you have suffciently explained your reasons for this but take another look at what you wrote and you will see how great these double standards are.
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Posted: Sunday March 12th, 2006 22:29 |
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@ Flower
I do not expect you to comprehend how any African person feels about these books. It is quite evident that you could NEVER understand (I really don't care about you understanding anything relating to Africa or Africans, but since you insist on participating in discussions that do not concern you I have wasted a little of my time to respond).
However, I do expect you to defend your people's wrong-doings because that is what you do!! So, you will probably come up with another equally defensive response so that you can have the last word!!
Last edited on Sunday March 12th, 2006 22:31 by Tate1
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flower90012001
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Posted: Sunday March 12th, 2006 22:55 |
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Tate1 wrote: @ Flower
I do not expect you to comprehend how any African person feels about these books. It is quite evident that you could NEVER understand (I really don't care about you understanding anything relating to Africa or Africans, but since you insist on participating in discussions that do not concern you I have wasted a little of my time to respond).
However, I do expect you to defend your people's wrong-doings because that is what you do!! So, you will probably come up with another equally defensive response so that you can have the last word!!
Your post roughly translates as "blah, blah, blah, I have no answer to your point so I will ignore it!"
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Posted: Monday March 13th, 2006 20:48 |
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flower90012001 wrote:
Your post roughly translates as "blah, blah, blah, I have no answer to your point so I will ignore it!"
Even better your post translates as "it's best to keep my head stuck up my arse so I won't show my abject ignorance!"
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flower90012001
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Posted: Tuesday March 14th, 2006 03:26 |
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Rockette wrote: flower90012001 wrote:
Your post roughly translates as "blah, blah, blah, I have no answer to your point so I will ignore it!"
Even better your post translates as "it's best to keep my head stuck up my arse so I won't show my abject ignorance!"
Come on now, you arent even trying, very poor.
btw dear i am most definitley not ignorant you are the only one (ok not the only one!) who has been shown to possess this trait!
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Posted: Tuesday March 14th, 2006 03:30 |
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| Advisory..this thread is being monitered..
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Posted: Tuesday March 14th, 2006 03:35 |
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| good. its a shame though because it is such an amazing book it deserves an amazing thread and it got a b**chy nasty one. Although this does not surprise me. Since i decided to comment on it, i am no longer surprised when other posters start b**ching.
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Posted: Thursday March 23rd, 2006 00:34 |
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Hi there, first let me say sorry for not coming back sooner to the site to check on responses. It's just that my last response on this thread has been up for some time so I thought it was dead and buried so its great that Tate and others has contributed.
But what's with the flaming!!! Please let's discuss and agree that everybody has their opinions and are entitled to them. Let's respect that. At the end of the day, yes Mc Smith's books are popular with black and white people and I cannot argue with how his approach has appealed to lots of readers so I know that my viewpoint is not popular.
As someone who is trying to write herself (check the detective story under creative writing) I have this fear (not just for myself but other black writers) that we could be overtaken by white writers who have black characters, and I dont mean as minor characters. Mike Phillips once said that if we do not create our own characters, then they would do it for us. And although there are Black writers we should be proud of, we cannot 'lax and say everything is cool but we have to keep on with the writing and reading to make sure we keep ourselves in check and keep ourselves real!
There seems to be quite a growing number of white authors who have black protagonists in their books. To name a few: Maggie Gee (The White Family and My Cleaner); American crime writers James Patterson; Janet Evanovich (even though the author does not mention colour, it is clear that the prostitute Lula is Black because she such a stereotype) and John Grisham's novel The Last Juror. If you check Patterson's novel which features the black cop Alex Cross who works for the FBI, you will notice that Patterson never allows Cross to slip into any internal commentary. I wonder why that is? Grisham does similar in the Last Juror. I feel because Gee had success with The White Family (which about a white working class family having to come to terms with their daughter/sister marrying an African and then when he dies of cancer she ends up marrying a Black British man) she goes on to try another, this time about a white middle class woman's experiences of 'coping' with a Kenyan domestic. I read somewhere recently that she wants to write something with the Black British writer Bernadine Evaristo.
If I still have not made my point clear, then read this extract written by the African American actor/writer Cleavon Little:
"More important than even the directors and producers, the writer is crucial to the success of black television shows," says Cleavon Little. (Mr. Little, who starred in the Broadway hit "Purlie", was also a featured performer in the film "Blazing Saddles" as well as television sitcoms such as ABC's "Temperatures Rising.") "Usually when stories are bad, black stories on television, it's because you have white writers who are attempting to write about something they haven't experienced. Most writers usually write out of their own experience, that's when they're best. But not with black shows. Here you have white writers trying to imagine experiences they can't conceivably know about… If a writer is writing out of his own experience and I, as an actor, am working with the material, I can act, move my body, get into the emotional feel of an authentic situation.
"The biggest problem I've had in acting is having to say things written for black characters by whites that could never have come out of that character's experience. It can be as simple as the difference between a character saying, 'I think that you should sit in that chair,' and, 'you oughta sit down.' But it's awful, and finally hurts the show because if the actor can't believe it the audience certainly can't… There is a different set of timing for how blacks should work comically, and most whites are simply unaware of it. If you look at Jewish comedy, it comes from Jewish writers and it comes from an authentic level. It's funny because it's consistent from the bottom up. But black comics in television are saddled with a bunch of white writers who don't know how to write for their timing; consequently, many black sitcoms are literally without substance. The problem for television comedy about blacks is simple-white writers got to give it up!"
But look what happens when we attempt to write about them. Last year I was in South Africa and bought the new controversial biog of the Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer. The book was titled: No Cold Kitchen. It was penned by an Oxford graduate Ronald Suresh Roberts, who is Trinidadian. The story is that in the beginning Gordimer agreed to have Suresh write this biog. She gave him private letters and documents etc but when she read the first draft she wasnt happy with the way he used the material. In other words, she didnt like the way she came out because as you read the book you realise that she exaggerated about her contributions to the struggle and she was quite b**chy about a fellow 'fighter' who lost her life in the struggle. So she withdrew her 'permission' and told her publisher in US that she wanted the book stopped. So stopped it was. Nobody is going to offend the Nobel laureate.
But Suresh was having none of it so he went to publisher to publisher then eventually he found one that would print it, in SA. The only problem is that the publisher is unknown and they cannot release the book overseas. At this point Suresh is seen as a 'uppity' black foreigner and is not popular in the country as cartoonists paint him as someone who wants to taint their great writer. But luckily he is being embraced by SA govt.
So what do we make of this? Are we to read that when we write about white people/white characters we have to cross our dots and tees? I'd like to know what you all think. And please, no flaming.
Thanks
Maggs
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