Re: [GOABOOKCLUB] The Work of Peter Nazareth
augusto pinto
Don't understand why anybody should get mad. Normal people would whoop at being published in an international journal. Anyway stranger things have happened.
Talking about Lino Leitao, were you close to him? Like you, I recall that he too had the experience of being accused of writing a story based on a real life Goan and was berated for this.
He would translate from Portuguese too though I can't recall whether he did any for your anthology. I was browsng through a book on Jose Inacio de Loyola which he translated, and that suggested he was keen on understanding the Goa of old.
Augusto
Dear Augusto,
Salkey meant what he said. Most people I included in the anthology got pretty mad at me or never replied to my sending them copies of the anthology or wrote reviews they never sent to me or told me about.
The only two people included in the volume who thanked me were Lino Leitao and Ladis da Silva.!
Happy New Year.
Peter
From: Augusto Pinto [pint...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2014 5:10 PM
To: Nazareth, Peter
Subject: RE: [GOABOOKCLUB] The Work of Peter Nazareth
Dear Peter
You write:
The person from whom I got the most advice was Andrew Salkey, who was Jamaican (born in Panama, mother born in Haiti). He had edited several anthologies of Caribbean literature and I thought I could benefit from his advice.
>
> The biggest piece of advice he gave me was to be prepared to be hated by everyone included in the anthology.The last sentence sounds incongruous. Did you mean to say ...'hated by everyone not included in the anthology'?
What other advice did he give?
Augusto
>
> Best.
>
> Peter
>
> ________________________________
> From: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com [goa-bo...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of augusto pinto [pint...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2014 11:31 AM
> To: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: [GOABOOKCLUB] The Work of Peter Nazareth
>
> I'm taking the thread away from the SLML one because I think it would be better if we concentrate on Peter and his works exclusively as that will better help to archive his ideas and comments.
>
> Hi Peter
>
> What's your opinion o G S Amur? He is credited along with M K Naik with inventing the category of Indian English. Perhaps at that time a different nomenclature was used: was it Indo-Anglian Literature.
>
> Anyway, were you influenced by these genre builders to create your Goan Literature in English anthology?
>
> Augusto
>
> On Sat, Dec 20, 2014 at 10:07 PM, Nazareth, Peter <peter-n...@uiowa.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Ben,
>>
>> Thank you.
>>
>> I should add as a PS that Charles Davis was one of the few Americans I met who knew of Goans. A few months earlier, he had returned from giving a presentation at an Indian university. As he was waiting to leave, a Goan working at the airport came to talk to him. The Goan Davis that Goa was much better when it was under the Portuguese--because he thought Davis was Portuguese and he refused to believe he was Afro American.
>>
>> Later, Davis introduced me to his Indian friend, Professor G.S. Amur, who had invited him to India. Amur went on to write about "In a Brown Mantle" in his book of essays. Amur had himself been taught, I should say mentored, by Professor Armando Menezes.
>>
>> Best.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com [goa-bo...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Ben Antao [ben....@rogers.com]
>> Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2014 10:16 AM
>>
>> To: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com
>> Subject: Re: [GOABOOKCLUB] Sorowing Lies My Land
>>
>> Thanks, Peter, for addressing my curiosity. You’ve a generous spirit, in addition to a critical mind.
>>
>> Best regards
>> Ben
>>
>> From: Nazareth, Peter
>> Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2014 10:28 AM
>> To: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com
>> Subject: [Bulk] RE: [GOABOOKCLUB] Sorowing Lies My Land
>>
>>
>> Dear Ben,
>>
>> When I got to Yale, I was attached to the English Department. I attended one class in the Department and decided that that was not for me, that I had moved far from it. So I spoke to Charles Davis, Chair of Afro-American Studies who had read "In a Brown Mantle" and told the Seymour Lustman committee to offer me the Fellowship, and I told him that Afro-American Studies was the place for me. He gave me an office in the building. I began attending all the classes available.
>>
>> One of them was a class on selected Afro American literature taught by Charles Davis. And one of them was the first novel by Ishmael Reed, "The Free-lance Pallbearers." I understood nothing of the novel until Davis began reading it in class. It was very funny.
>>
>> Davis then loaned me a copy of Reed's just out novel, his third, "Mumbo Jumbo". He asked me what I thought of it. Again I understood nothing. But the novel had a blurb praising it highly: a blurb by Harold Bloom.
>>
>> I became aware of Bloom. I kept up with his work in a cursory way and got to know of his astonishing productivity. I am still amazed at how much he has done. He had a reputation of being a western critic--that is, a champion of European and Euro-American literature. And yet he praised "Mumbo Jumbo", which was in the voodoo, not western tradition.
>>
>> I have a lot of admiration for Bloom but I had already chosen my own direction. I had once wanted to read everything but now realized I had to be more selective. I could not read even all the Afro American literature that had been published.
>>
>> Incidentally, I, found all the literary sessions and seminars and conferences to be vague and without any practical conclusions, in contrast to my time in the Ministry of Finance. It took me a while to get used to this.
>>
>> Best.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com [goa-bo...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Ben Antao [ben....@rogers.com]
>> Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2014 6:57 AM
>> To: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com
>> Subject: Re: [GOABOOKCLUB] Sorowing Lies My Land
>>
>> Thanks, Peter, for that detail. As the cliché goes, 1972 was a watershed year in your life.
>>
>> When you were at Yale, you must have come across Harold Bloom who was teaching there.
>> I know you’ve shifted from the West in terms of your formation and studies in literary criticism.
>>
>> However, I‘m curious to hear your views on Bloom as a critic. I leave it up to you.
>> Please don’t feel you’ve to address this.
>>
>> All the best.
>> Ben
>>
>> From: Nazareth, Peter
>> Sent: Friday, December 19, 2014 6:40 PM
>> To: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com
>> Subject: [Bulk] RE: [GOABOOKCLUB] Sorowing Lies My Land
>>
>>
>> Dear Ben,
>>
>> 1972 was also a very productive year for me in the Ministry of Finance. However, I knew as my novel and book of criticism were going through the steps for publication--galley proofs, page proofs--that soon I would have to consider leaving the Ministry of Finance because I told the Head of my Department, Anthony Ocaya, that working for the government was like running up an escalator that was going down very fast.
>>
>> When I got the Fellowship to Yale, it was a very good time for Afro American literature and writers and I got a change to be introduced to a lot of writers and writings. I read a lot of Afro American, Caribbean and African literature.
>>
>> One consequence was that when I was invited by the University of Iowa, I was able to teach and write on African literature, Caribbean literature, and Afro-American literature.
>>
>> My work in the Ministry of Finance was behind me but as I had worked there for seven years, it was an experience and led to knowledge that was useful and not to be forgotten.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Goa Book Club" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-book-clu...@googlegroups.com.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Goa Book Club" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-book-clu...@googlegroups.com.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Goa Book Club" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-book-clu...@googlegroups.com.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Goa Book Club" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-book-clu...@googlegroups.com.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Goa Book Club" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-book-clu...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Goa Book Club" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-book-clu...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
augusto pinto
Yes, I got to know Lino Leitao well. I did not meet him in Uganda but was aware of his story in Goa Today which was attacked as being gossip.
In 1977, when I drove through Toronto on my way to Halifax for a conference and a reading, I met someone I knew who had a copy of one of Lino's book of tales.
I borrowed and read it and thought it was very good, although it needed some editing.
Subsequently, I was to edit a lot of work by Lino, and he was always appreciative. Examples are his stories in the Goan anthology (set in Africa), his story in the African anthology I edited (set in Goa), his novel (for which I found a publisher), and his story "Aocident" published in The Massachusetts Review and Short Story International, which I thought was brilliant because of the range it covered in a short space: Idi Amin, the Expulsion, the soldiers, the Quebec separatist movement, the response that Goans never created anything in Uganda by drawing attention to the gomisi (busuti), etc.
He was working on a second novel and what he had written was brilliant (erotic and political and spiritual) but I don't think he completed it.
In my opinion, he was a very good short story writer but not so good as a novelist and he may not have had the range of skills to complete it. Maybe he knew this. He dedicated this novel to me but then dedicated a short story published in two parts in Confluence to me.
The editorial help I gave him did not mean I rewrote what he did. I just drew out the best in his work.
In my opinion, most Goans who read his work got stuck on the surface and thought it was gossip.
Ladis da Silva was a different kind of writer. He wrote history as story of which he was part. The editorial help I gave him was to tighten up and delete lines--as much as a third of his writing. He too was always very appreciative and gave me thanks. The only problem was that he did not learn from the editing I did how to tighten up his work. He sent his work to RIKKA edited by George Yamada (Japanese Canadian, originally Japanese American, who was imprisoned during WWII for pacifism) and was hurt when George turned his work down. George told me that Ladis needed to take a writers' workshop course. Well, I had the patience and interest to help edit his work and bring out what was in it.
Peter
To: Nazareth, Peter
Subject: RE: [GOABOOKCLUB] The Work of Peter Nazareth
Don't understand why. Normal people would whoop at being published in an international journal.
Talking about Lino Leitao, were you close to him? Like you, I recall that he too had the experience of being accused of writing a story based on a real life Goan and was berated for this.
He would translate from Portuguese too though I can't recall whether he did any for your anthology.
Augusto
Nazareth, Peter
Dear Augusto,
I am surprised that you say that I overlooked Leslie de Noronha. The first item in the anthology after my introduction is from "The Mango and the Tamarind Tree", pages 7-13 of JSAL (pages 1-10 of "Pivoting on the Point of Return"), followed by the evaluation Joseph Henry wrote of the novel (pages 13-14 of JSAL, pages 11-12 of "Pivoting". As for "The Dew Drop Inn", I wrote about it on pages xxiii-xxv of the new foreword in the book, based on my review in World Literature Today).
I once taught "The Mango and the Tamarind Tree" in a course on Third World Literature.
Leslie wrote a letter to Joe Henry after the issue of JSAL came out in which he said, "By the way, I am gay".
As for Lino's stories, Jose has placed a message on Goa-book-club in which many of Lino's stories can be accessed through the second link, including the story "Accident" which I consider a really good story. I sent it to Professor Ezekiel Alembi of Kenya who selected it and a story by Violet Dias Lannoy for a volume he was editing but after he had prepared everything, he suddenly died and the whole project collapsed.
Best.
Peter
To: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Fwd: [GOABOOKCLUB] The Work of Peter Nazareth
augusto pinto
Eugene Correia
I had missed reading this post. Yeah, it was known in the theatre world that Leslie was "gay". A relative of my cousin worked for him as his houseboy/cook. He would tell me that Leslie would have many male friends at his place, which incidentally I visited to say hi to the houseboy (now dead) when I was in Bandra (leslie wasn't there). I asked the houseboy who his boss was and he mentioned Leslie de Noronha. and told me he was a bachelor. The houseboy later married a maid and went to Kuwait.
I think Leslie worked as a research scientist at Glaxo Labs. I wish someone goes through his writings in The Examiner. Maybe, the Bombay University has copies of the paper, as Prof. George Moraes was keeping a copy of the paper in his room when he was head of the history department. I saw a stack of old copies of The Examiner in one room of his room.
Even those in Mumbai's theatre world can throw some light on Leslie. I wish I had asked Burjor Patel, one of the foremost personalities in the industry, about Leslie. Patel is back in Mumbai after a long innings at Khaleej Times in Dubai, and also involved once again in the theatre business.
As for theatre in Mumbai, read that Jesus Christ Superstar is being staged again. I had seen it in Mumbai when I lived there, in the 70s, produced than by Alyque Padamsee, the advertising guru, and now produced by his daughter Shazahn. Shazahn is daughter by Sharon Prabhakar, the singer, who played key role in JCS. His first wife was Pearl Padamshee.
That reminds me. Prof. Moraes had written a scathing review of JSC for one of Mumbai's papers.
eugene
V M
This evening I rec'd the latest book to review for Mint (previous
reviews here:http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Author/Vivek%20Menezes).
The book is 'And Home was Kariakoo: Memoir of an Indian African'. See
Canadian review here:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/mg-vassanjis-and-home-was-kariakoo-is-a-complex-exploration-of-the-concept-of-home/article21406448/
I was pleased to see your 'In a Brown Mantle' and 'The General is Up'
cited in the bibliography, under the category "The New (Asian)
African: Politics and Creativity (here J. M. Nazareth's fine 'Brown
Man, Black Country' is also included.
When I first encountered Vassanji's fiction many years ago - 'The
Gunny Sack' comes to mind - I was immediately struck by the resonances
between your writing and his, and recall discussing this with you via
the Internet. Do you agree that his ideas about Indian African
identity cohere with yours? Would you mind recounting the actual,
real-life connections you've had with Vassanji? This would be
interesting and valuable for me, and I am sure others.
Warm regards,
VM
Cellphone 9326140754 Office (0832) 242 0785
Nazareth, Peter
I met Moyez Vassanji and his wife Nurjehan Aziz in Toronto decades ago. I visited them often. I supported their journal, The Toronto South Asian Review, later The Toronto Review. The Review published many pieces by me, mostly literary criticism, some done at their request.
I read the manuscript of his first novel, "The Gunny Sack", sent to me by Heinemann for review and I recommended publication. Moyez acknowledged me in the first edition. He was invited to be in the International Writing Program in 1987. We launched his novel here, in Prairee Lights Bookstore, and I taught it in my African Literature Class. Later, he visited the IWP and we launched his book of short stories in Prairee Lights Bookstore. I wrote a review essay on his fiction, "The First Tanzan/Asian Novel", published in Research in African Literatures.
He and his wife started TSAR Books, which published the previous edition of my novel "The General is Up".
I taught his novel "The Book of Secrets" in which the main character and the narrator is a Goan. I thought the novel was very good.
I lost touch with his writing and with him in the last few years.
He was born in Kenya and grew up in Tanganyika (later Tanzania). He knows both these places
well, particularly the city of Dar es Salaam, which I know only superficially. I don't think he knows much about Uganda and his understanding of Amin in "The Gunny Sack" is not very profound.
He chose to be a writer of fiction.
I chose to be a literary critic.
Best.
Peter
From: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com [goa-bo...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of V M [vmi...@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2015 8:07 AM
To: goa-book-club
Subject: Re: [GOABOOKCLUB] The Work of Peter Nazareth
V M
Thanks for filling in the blanks regarding you + Moyez Vassanji. In
his new book, the edition cited of your 'The General is Up' is from
TSAR.
Vassanji's previous book was also a travelogue/memoir - but of India -
and also a very personal meditation about the meaning of "home" by an
"African Indian". I did not like it very much - his novels are much
better - but here is the Globe and Mail review:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/portrait-of-the-writer-as-a-subcontinent/article1199000/
Warm regards,
VM
Eugene Correia
Nazareth, Peter
Thank you for sending me the two reviews of the non-fiction books by Moyez Vassanji.
In my earlier reply, I did not mention a couple of things. One of them is that I am one of the very few East African writers of fiction who has dealt with the government bureaucracy in terms of how it works, positively and negatively. Most of the other writers of fiction did not work in the government bureaucracy.
Many Goans were civil servants in the government, and Entebbe was a government town so most members of the Goan Institute were civil servants. But I was one of the few who worked in the Ministry of Finance, and perhaps one of just two Goans who dealt with policy and administrative issues, too many to name here.
The one person I know who brought the government into his writing was David Rubadiri in his novel, "No Bride Price", before I wrote "In a Brown Mantle". I have a chapter on Rubadiri's novel (and a novel by Charles Mangua) in my first book of literary criticism, "Literature and Society in Modern Africa." [By my title, I did not mean "Modern African Literature" but literature from which modern Africa could learn, something some critics have missed.]
Like any other novelist, Vassanji drew a lot in his writing from other writers. I recognized what he drew from my fiction in "The Book of Secrets" and "The In-Between World of Vikram Lall" (in which he drew from the epigraph I had used for "In a Brown Mantle". He was not a literary critic or professor of literature and did not know, as I do, that almost all novelists draw from other writers. Ngugi drew a lot from my "The General is Up" in his 768-page novel "Wizard of the Crow", according to Steve Ellerhoff who wrote on Ngugi's novel in a recent book on "Approaches to Teaching The Works of Ngugi wa Thiong'o", edited by professor Oliver Lovesey. This is perfectly all right. But I have a feeling that Moyez feels guilty about it.
Best.
Peter
________________________________________
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2015 6:18 AM
To: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com
Janet Rubinoff
Eugene, did you know that Chelva just died on Nov. 22 from a sudden heart attack in Montreal, just after his induction as a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. It was so sad; he was a relatively young man (62) and a lovely person. We all miss him a great deal!
Best,
Janet Rubinoff
Eugene Correia
Jeanne Hromnik
Eugene Correia
A para from the above article where Peter Nazareth is mentioned.
For example, in 1961, the literary magazine, Transition was founded in Kampala Uganda, by Rajat Neogy - himself an Asian - and devoted to ‘reflection of the cultural and social scene in East Africa: and its constant aim (is) to search and encourage writers and poets from East Africa.’ And the second issue of Transition in 1961 carried a one act play (The Deviant) by Ganesh Bagchi, an Asian. Then came the famous 1962 conference of writers of English expression that has been acknowledged as a formative event in the literary history of that part of the world. From this year onwards many other Indian authors would follow with one act plays and poems in anthologies all the way to the mid-1970s. They include Sadru Kassam, Amin Kassam, Peter Nazareth, Kuldip Sondhi, Jagjit Singh, and Sophia Mustafa.---The one below didn't open
The Magic of M G Vassanji: By Aamera JiwajiFor an East African of South Asian descent, Moyez Vassanji’s books can induce a trance-like state. It is provoked by the deep introspection of reading about our own land, culture and people. And meeting Vassanji, when he visited Nairobi towards the end of January to launch his novel The Magic of Saida, intensified that cloudy, deja vu feeling. Like his writing, he too felt familiar; known.
Besides, there ere are many articles on Vassanji. In one of the article
Eugene
On Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 2:17 PM, Eugene Correia <eugene....@gmail.com> wrote:I didn't know about this book. Need to have it.Eugene
---The Magic of Saida by M. G. Vassanji
Toronto. Doubleday Canada. 2012. ISBN 9780385667142
The Magic of Saida, set in India, East Africa, and Canada, is the latest novel by the prolific African Asian Canadian author M. G. Vassanji. Readers familiar with his six novels, two collections of short stories, and two books of nonfiction will recognize the contours of his tale of colonial history, racial hybridity, migration, love, longing, and guilt (see WLT, Sept. 2005, 84). But this novel also extends our understanding of German colonial history in Africa as well as the underrepresented stories of Africans in India and the valuable contributions of Indians to African history.
Kamal Punja, the protagonist, is a physician in Edmonton, Canada, whose ancestors traveled from India to East Africa in the late nineteenth century. His history is intriguing. Kamal was born on Kilwa, a small island on the south coast of Tanzania. He is a “chotaro”—a Swahili term for a mixed-blood—an offspring of an Indian father and an African mother. Kamal’s father abandoned his mother to go back to India when Kamal was a little boy. At the age of eleven, one of Kamal’s paternal uncles pays Kamal’s mother to adopt him, and eventually raises him as part of his Indian community in Africa, cut off from his African heritage. When forced to leave his birthmother, Kamal also leaves behind his childhood love, Saida—the African granddaughter of local poet Mzee Omari bin Tamim, a man with a complex relationship to the German colonizers.
As the story unfolds, Kamal goes off to university in neighboring Uganda, but history intervenes as Idi Amin comes to power, and Kamal and his friend Shamim—who eventually becomes his wife—immigrate to Canada. Thirty-five years later, Kamal, now a successful doctor and father of two children, is haunted by memories of his early childhood. He is drawn back to Kilwa by his magical bond and love for Saida, and the unresolved questions about why his mother relinquished him.
In his return to his origins, Kamal’s personal history unfolds in the context of other histories, including the ugly legacy of colonization, slavery, and personal deceits. Vassanji’s prodigious research provides insight into certain details of the German occupation of East Africa, the Maji Maji rebellion in Tanzania (War of the Waters), the slavery of East Africans and sexual exploitation of African concubines by Indians in Africa, the export of African slaves to India, the resulting African communities in India known as Sidis, and Idi Amin’s atrocities against Asians in Uganda forcing the exodus of Asians to global destinations, including Canada. The narration of the history of Kilwa and German colonization is thrice removed, reminding readers of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. Kamal, like many of Vassanji’s characters and the novel’s plot, is a reminder that identity, history, and memory are complex. Vassanji confounds popular understandings of history, refusing to provide readers with black-and-white answers to ambiguous historical questions.
Written in poetically intense language with a keen eye for detail, Vassanji’s signature sense of humor enlivens The Magic of Saida. This reader is captivated by the mesmerizing suspense that leaves all readers wanting more from M. G. Vassanji’s magical pen.
Asma Sayed
University of Alberta
Eugene Correia
For example, in 1961, the literary magazine, Transition was founded in Kampala Uganda, by Rajat Neogy - himself an Asian - and devoted to ‘reflection of the cultural and social scene in East Africa: and its constant aim (is) to search and encourage writers and poets from East Africa.’ And the second issue of Transition in 1961 carried a one act play (The Deviant) by Ganesh Bagchi, an Asian. Then came the famous 1962 conference of writers of English expression that has been acknowledged as a formative event in the literary history of that part of the world. From this year onwards many other Indian authors would follow with one act plays and poems in anthologies all the way to the mid-1970s. They include Sadru Kassam, Amin Kassam, Peter Nazareth, Kuldip Sondhi, Jagjit Singh, and Sophia Mustafa.
The Magic of M G Vassanji: By Aamera Jiwaji
For an East African of South Asian descent, Moyez Vassanji’s books can induce a trance-like state. It is provoked by the deep introspection of reading about our own land, culture and people. And meeting Vassanji, when he visited Nairobi towards the end of January to launch his novel The Magic of Saida, intensified that cloudy, deja vu feeling. Like his writing, he too felt familiar; known.
Besides, there ere are many articles on Vassanji. In one of the article
Eugene
I didn't know about this book. Need to have it.Eugene
---The Magic of Saida by M. G. Vassanji
Toronto. Doubleday Canada. 2012. ISBN 9780385667142
Kamal Punja, the protagonist, is a physician in Edmonton, Canada, whose ancestors traveled from India to East Africa in the late nineteenth century. His history is intriguing. Kamal was born on Kilwa, a small island on the south coast of Tanzania. He is a “chotaro”—a Swahili term for a mixed-blood—an offspring of an Indian father and an African mother. Kamal’s father abandoned his mother to go back to India when Kamal was a little boy. At the age of eleven, one of Kamal’s paternal uncles pays Kamal’s mother to adopt him, and eventually raises him as part of his Indian community in Africa, cut off from his African heritage. When forced to leave his birthmother, Kamal also leaves behind his childhood love, Saida—the African granddaughter of local poet Mzee Omari bin Tamim, a man with a complex relationship to the German colonizers.
As the story unfolds, Kamal goes off to university in neighboring Uganda, but history intervenes as Idi Amin comes to power, and Kamal and his friend Shamim—who eventually becomes his wife—immigrate to Canada. Thirty-five years later, Kamal, now a successful doctor and father of two children, is haunted by memories of his early childhood. He is drawn back to Kilwa by his magical bond and love for Saida, and the unresolved questions about why his mother relinquished him.
In his return to his origins, Kamal’s personal history unfolds in the context of other histories, including the ugly legacy of colonization, slavery, and personal deceits. Vassanji’s prodigious research provides insight into certain details of the German occupation of East Africa, the Maji Maji rebellion in Tanzania (War of the Waters), the slavery of East Africans and sexual exploitation of African concubines by Indians in Africa, the export of African slaves to India, the resulting African communities in India known as Sidis, and Idi Amin’s atrocities against Asians in Uganda forcing the exodus of Asians to global destinations, including Canada. The narration of the history of Kilwa and German colonization is thrice removed, reminding readers of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. Kamal, like many of Vassanji’s characters and the novel’s plot, is a reminder that identity, history, and memory are complex. Vassanji confounds popular understandings of history, refusing to provide readers with black-and-white answers to ambiguous historical questions.
Written in poetically intense language with a keen eye for detail, Vassanji’s signature sense of humor enlivens The Magic of Saida. This reader is captivated by the mesmerizing suspense that leaves all readers wanting more from M. G. Vassanji’s magical pen.
Asma Sayed
University of Alberta
On Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 11:13 AM, Jeanne Hromnik <jeanne...@gmail.com> wrote:
V M
I have finished my review of 'And Home Was Kariakoo' by M.G. Vassanji,
and will post here when published in a couple of weeks.
One of the last chapters of this very personal "Memoir of an African
Indian" is entitled: The New (Asian) African: Politics and Creativity,
and includes some comments about Rajat Neogy, Bahadur Tejani, Ammin
Kassam, Yusuf Kassam, and Ngugi and yourself...
"Peter Nazareth's novel 'In a Brown Mantle', written just before Idi
Amin had his dream, presents and extremely pessimistic portrayal of
the Asian's fate in Uganda. (The country is actually given a
fictitious name, and the Asian home and family are hardly portrayed).
In the novel, Deo D'Souza is an idealistic young Goan who leaves his
civil service job to work for the political party that brings the
country its independence. He is assertive about his African-ness. But
he is never fully accepted - "When will you return home?" is a taunt
he often hears. fed up with the racism, and the cynicism, political
corruption, and betrayal that had set in, he leaves the country,
saying, "Goodbye Mother Africa - your bastard son loved you."
A tough, moving testament. But one has to pause here: loved you? No
longer loves you? What then does it mean to belong? There were Asians
who never left Uganda even after Idi Amin's dictat - and were never
heard of again. I met an Asian woman in Vancouver who told me, after
visiting her Ugandan homeland more than twnety years after Idi Amin,
"I did not mind seeing that Africans had taken over my father's
business. At least that way they could come up." That's belonging from
the gut.
For three decades Peter Nazareth championed African literature. Dozens
of writers passed through his department in Iowa City. but he never
visited his native Uganda. I have given this phenomenon much thought,
and have convinced myself finally that the turning-away from Africa by
many Asians was not from bitterness, entirely, but also from pain and
grief."
Nazareth, Peter
What you have presented about what Vassanji says about me proves that he is not a good literary critic.
He has taken Deo D'Souza's story at face value instead of reading between the lines. It is at the very end that Deo recognizes he has behaved like a bastard: he took bribes, placed them in a Swiss bank account, and fled--and so is now alone. His story is a confession, a Catholic confession in which he wants his sin to be lifted and yet he does not confess the big sin--so conscience figures turn up in his confession to draw his attention to what he did wrong, most important of all being Pius Cota (note the saintliness of his name).
When applying the voice of Deo D'souza in the novel to me, Vassanji does not seem to know that my book "Literature and Society in Modern Africa" came out shortly after the novel, just after the deadline of the Asian expulsion. In this book, my own voice, as opposed to that of my narrator, can be heard clearly.
I have said many times that I have not gone back physically to Uganda but my work has gone back. Many writers discover that they have to go into exile in order to let their writing develop. This is presented in "The General is Up" at the end: Ronald wrote the story he could not have written if he stayed and he left it in the hands of someone who could get it published and take it back.
I did not turn away from Africa. My writing did not turn away from Africa. Susan Kiguli wrote a poem, "Place of My Birth", which she dedicated to me. When Jameela Siddiqi in London--author of two novels, "The Feast of the Nine Virgins" and "Bombay Gardens", the latter of which she dedicated to me although we have not met physically--asked Kiguli why she dedicated the poem to me, she said it was because I never gave up on Uganda.
An interview with Vassanji appeared some years ago in AWAAZ in which he did not mention any other East African Asian writers. The same issue contained an interview I did with Jameela in which I said that there was the one good Asian syndrome. It seemed to be a reply to Vassanji.
Vassanji may have pondered a lot but he is not a good literary critic.
Incidentally, the poet Rasiah Halil from Singapore, whom my wife and I first met when she came to the International Writing Program, wrote and a poem in Malay dedicated to us. She told me that if we had not come to the US, I would not have been able to write about Singapore literature. I should add I would not have been able to do work on Goan Literature. And on Caribbean literature, particularly the work of Naipaul, Selvon, Salkey and Sasenarine Persaud. And on Ishmael Reed. There would not be around a hundred interviews I conducted with writers which are now available on-line. They include interviews with Ugandan writers. And with Vassanji.
Peter
________________________________________
From: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com [goa-bo...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of V M [vmi...@gmail.com]
V M
Thanks for the comments and thoughts regarding Vassanji's mention of you in his new 'And Home was Kariakoo.'
In fact, I find that chapter - The New (Asian) African: Politics and Creativity - probably unnecessary to the book.
Almost all the other chapters take the form of a relatively straightforward travelogue around Tanzania, generally undertaken via public buses boarded from "frantic Ubungo Station" in Dar es Salaam.
Vassanji ventures right up to the borders with Congo and Malawi and Mozambique, to Mwanza on Lake Victoria, across the water to Zanzibar, and up and down the coastline from Tanga to Kilwa. You really believe him when he writes, "there were moments when the thrill of travel and discovery was such that I wished I could go on and on, from place to place, and never stop. But I was not young anymore, and one lives with constraints: twice I had to be told Enough, and reluctantly, facing an inviting, unvisited landscape, I turned back. I had to stop."
Here is another passage from 'And Home was Kariakoo', this time from the short first chapter, entitled appropriately 'Going Home':
Nazareth, Peter
Dear VM,
Moyez does not seem to have visited Uganda and does not seem to understand
Uganda and what happened there. Neither, to reiterate, is he a good literary critic.
I am going to quote from what you quoted from him about "In a Brown Mantle" and
made my comments in block letters.
He [THE NARRATOR, DEO D'SOUZA] is assertive about his African-ness. But
he is never fully accepted - "When will you return home?" is a taunt
he often hears. [THIS IS A TAUNT FROM ONE CHARACTER, THE CORRUPT
MINISTER OF DEFENCE] fed up with the racism, and the cynicism, political
corruption [HE TOO HAS BECOME CORRUPT AND PUT MONEY INTO A SWISS
BANK ACCOUNT, ALTHOUGH PIUS COTA TALKED TO HIM AND TRIED
TO STOP HIM AND TELL HIM TO SUPPORT HIS PRIME MINISTER], and
betrayal that had set in, [OF WHICH HIS IS THE BIGGEST BETRAYAL]
he leaves the country, saying, "Goodbye Mother Africa - your bastard son loved you."
A tough, moving testament. But one has to pause here: loved you? [THIS IS
THE IRONY OF DEO'S STATEMENT. HE HAS BEHAVED AS A BASTARD,
ALTHOUGH HE LOVED THE COUNTRY.] No
longer loves you? What then does it mean to belong? [IT SHOULD MEAN
NOT GETTING CORRUPT] There were Asians
who never left Uganda even after Idi Amin's dictat - and were never
heard of again. [I STAYED ON BUT LEFT NEARLY THREE MONTHS LATER
WHEN I RECEIVED THE SEYMOUR LUSTMAN FELLOWSHIP AT YALE.
THERE WERE OTHER ASIANS WHO STAYED ON AND I DID HEAR ABOUT
THEM.] I met an Asian woman in Vancouver who told me, after
visiting her Ugandan homeland more than twenty years after Idi Amin,
"I did not mind seeing that Africans had taken over my father's
business. At least that way they could come up." That's belonging from
the gut." [BUT IT MAY NOT BE BELONGING FOR A WRITER. MY FRIEND
PIO ZIRIMU WROTE TO ME, "UGANDA IS YOUR HOME. SCOOP OUT WHAT
YOU CAN AND BRING IT HOME." PIO WAS KILLED BY AMIN.]
Best.
Peter
Sent: Monday, February 09, 2015 6:38 AM
To: goa-book-club; Adolfo Mascarenhas
V M
Nazareth, Peter
Dear VM,
Maybe Vassanji was making a very Tanzanian judgement, not a Ugandan judgement.
With the putting of Idi Amin into power--you can read in "The General is Up" who put him into power--the problem increasingly became how to stay alive and yet to keep writing in a way that not only opposed the regime but also revealed how the regime worked and the forces behind that regime.
This was not only a problem of "Asians".
Amin turned against Asians last of all the peoples in Uganda. Nobody knows how many Africans (to use that distinction used in East Africa) he killed.
A few years ago, it was written in one of the Ugandan papers that Amin killed 700,000 people. One of his sons in Uganda disagreed. He said Amin killed "only 70,000 people".
There was nothing exactly like this in Kenya or Tanzania.
When I worked in the Ministry of Finance, in the later years as Senior Finance Officer, I was involved in many projects to improve Uganda--water supply, the taxi business, schools. Everything began going down the drain within a short time of Amin being put into power.
The reserves of the country quickly dropped so low that the Central Bank stopped publishing figures.
The problem Uganda faced not only affected Asians: it affected everyone, except for the thugs (many of whom were not from Uganda).
Danson Kahyana, who wrote one of the blurbs for "The General is Up" did a long series of interviews with me from where he was, studying for his Ph.D. in Stellenbosch University in South Africa because I knew much more about Uganda than he did. He was told by his external examiner, Dan Ogwang from Kenya then working in South Africa who came here on a visit, that I had an encyclopaedic knowledge. Kahyana wants to publish a book out of the interview with me. He had to interrupt while preparing for his Ph.D. defence last year.
I got the Seymour Lustman Fellowship at Yale just before it might have become dangerous for me to stay on in Uganda. What would have happened if Amin realized that I was a writer and I could be useful after the deadline, when he wanted to give the impression that he was not against Asians? My brother John (working in the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, which became part of the Ministry of Finance after I left) was still in Uganda at the time. He was called up by someone I will not name here and asked whether he would accompany Amin to a conference in Libya. He was told that he knew his (John's) brother (me) had citizenship problems and Amin was powerful and could solve the problem. My brother asked for time to think about it and then he turned it down. He was getting ready to go to London to study at the London School of Economics and he left Uganda.
I left Uganda at a time when I was ready to expand my writing.
After coming to the University of Iowa, I also did work on Chinese literature (fiction and criticism). Some of what I did was referenced in my second book of criticism.
Best.
Peter
V M
Thanks very much for expanding and detailing your points about Uganda.
They are well-taken, it is a fact that Vassanji puts all the East
African Indians in the same bag when he talks about belonging, eliding
considerable differences in the specific histories of each country.
Though he visits Kenya, for example, he does not mention the Indians
who helped win independence for the nation - talk about "belonging
from the gut." - and stay committed, about which Goan chapter Cyprian
Fernandes has written beautifully here:
http://cyprianfernandes.blogspot.in/2014/11/before-leaving-kenya-dignity-grace-and.html
Someone like Aquino Braganza over in Mozambique similarly does not
compute in the reckoning behind 'And Home was Kariakoo'.
Of course, there is nothing wrong about that. Vassanji's book is
rather moving in its affection and attention for the specifically
Khoja story - every dusty town he turns up in Tanzania he heads
straight to find the khano, the community meeting house, While
liberally quoting the established colonial history and literature -
Burton and Speke and Stanley - he explicitly wants to know, "where am
I in this history" and so looks for his own strand in the East African
Indian story. His book is not meant to be authoritative, but very
personal, and I certainly liked much of the sum of of it very much. It
is only in the chapter where he cites you and other writers, and a
couple of other places where he makes sweeping value judgements about
East African Indians that he falters, oversteps the available points
of fact to excessive generalizations.
Warm regards,
VM
> [goa-bo...@googlegroups.com<mailto:goa-bo...@googlegroups.com>] on
> behalf of V M [vmi...@gmail.com<mailto:vmi...@gmail.com>]
> [goa-bo...@googlegroups.com<mailto:goa-bo...@googlegroups.com>] on
> behalf of V M [vmi...@gmail.com<mailto:vmi...@gmail.com>]
>> [goa-bo...@googlegroups.com<mailto:goa-bo...@googlegroups.com>]
>> on
>> behalf of V M [vmi...@gmail.com<mailto:vmi...@gmail.com>]
>>
>> Dear Peter,
>>
>> Thanks for filling in the blanks regarding you + Moyez Vassanji. In
>> his new book, the edition cited of your 'The General is Up' is from
>> TSAR.
>>
>> Vassanji's previous book was also a travelogue/memoir - but of India -
>> and also a very personal meditation about the meaning of "home" by an
>> "African Indian". I did not like it very much - his novels are much
>> better - but here is the Globe and Mail review:
>> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/portrait-of-the-writer-as-a-subcontinent/article1199000/
>>
>> Warm regards,
>>
>> VM
>>
>> On 1/24/15, Nazareth, Peter
>>> [goa-bo...@googlegroups.com<mailto:goa-bo...@googlegroups.com>]
>>> on
>>> behalf of V M [vmi...@gmail.com<mailto:vmi...@gmail.com>]
>>>>>
>>>>> Dear Augusto,
>>>>>
>>>>> Salkey meant what he said. Most people I included in the anthology
>>>>> got
>>>>> pretty mad at me or never replied to my sending them copies of the
>>>>> anthology
>>>>> or wrote reviews they never sent to me or told me about.
>>>>>
>>>>> The only two people included in the volume who thanked me were Lino
>>>>> Leitao
>>>>> and Ladis da Silva.!
>>>>>
>>>>> Happy New Year.
>>>>>
>>>>> Peter
>>>>>
>>>>> ________________________________
>>>>> To: Nazareth, Peter
>>>>> Subject: RE: [GOABOOKCLUB] The Work of Peter Nazareth
>>>>>
>>>>> Dear Peter
>>>>> You write:
>>>>> The person from whom I got the most advice was Andrew Salkey, who was
>>>>> Jamaican (born in Panama, mother born in Haiti). He had edited
>>>>> several
>>>>> anthologies of Caribbean literature and I thought I could benefit from
>>>>> his
>>>>> advice.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > The biggest piece of advice he gave me was to be prepared to be
>>>>> > hated
>>>>> > by
>>>>> > everyone included in the anthology.
>>>>>
>>>>> The last sentence sounds incongruous. Did you mean to say ...'hated by
>>>>> everyone not included in the anthology'?
>>>>>
>>>>> What other advice did he give?
>>>>> Augusto
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Best.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Peter
>>>>> >
>>>>> > ________________________________
>>>>> > From:
>>>>> > [goa-bo...@googlegroups.com<mailto:goa-bo...@googlegroups.com>]
>>>>> > behalf of augusto pinto
>>>>> > To:
>>>>> >> [goa-bo...@googlegroups.com<mailto:goa-bo...@googlegroups.com>]
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >> To:
>>>>> >> [goa-bo...@googlegroups.com<mailto:goa-bo...@googlegroups.com>]
>>>>> >> To:
>>>>> >> --
>>>>> >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>>>> >> Groups "The Goa Book Club" group.
>>>>> >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
>>>>> >> send
>>>>> >> an email to
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >> --
>>>>> >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>>>> >> Groups "The Goa Book Club" group.
>>>>> >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
>>>>> >> send
>>>>> >> an email to
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >> --
>>>>> >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>>>> >> Groups "The Goa Book Club" group.
>>>>> >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
>>>>> >> send
>>>>> >> an email to
>>>>> >
>>>>> >
>>>>> > --
>>>>> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>>>> > Groups "The Goa Book Club" group.
>>>>> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
>>>>> > send
>>>>> > an email to
>>>>> >
>>>>> > --
>>>>> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>>>> > Groups "The Goa Book Club" group.
>>>>> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
>>>>> > send
>>>>> > an email to
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>>> Groups
>>>> "The Goa Book Club" group.
>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>>>> an
>>>> email to
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> #2, Second Floor, Navelkar Trade Centre, Panjim, Goa
>>> Cellphone 9326140754 Office (0832) 242 0785
>>>
>>> --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>> Groups
>>> "The Goa Book Club" group.
>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>>> an
>>> email to
>>>
>>> --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>> Groups
>>> "The Goa Book Club" group.
>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>>> an
>>> email to
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> #2, Second Floor, Navelkar Trade Centre, Panjim, Goa
>> Cellphone 9326140754 Office (0832) 242 0785
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "The Goa Book Club" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email to
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "The Goa Book Club" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email to
>>
>
>
> --
> #2, Second Floor, Navelkar Trade Centre, Panjim, Goa
> Cellphone 9326140754 Office (0832) 242 0785
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "The Goa Book Club" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "The Goa Book Club" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to
>
>
>
> --
> #2, Second Floor, Navelkar Trade Centre, Panjim, Goa
> Cellphone 9326140754 Office (0832) 242 0785
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "The Goa Book Club" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "The Goa Book Club" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to
>
>
>
> --
> #2, Second Floor, Navelkar Trade Centre, Panjim, Goa
> Cellphone 9326140754 Office (0832) 242 0785
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "The Goa Book Club" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to
Jeanne Hromnik
Nazareth, Peter
Dear Jeanne,
Moyez completely misread and misinterpreted the conclusion to my novel "In a Brown Mantle", as I have shown by analysis of the novel. Perhaps he did not read the novel, though that it unlikely since he used as epigraph to his novel "The In-Between World of Vikram Lall" an extract from the epigraph to, and the title of, my novel.
What is worse is that not only has he misinterpreted my novel but he has applied to me personally what the protagonist did. If he had looked at my book "Literature and Society in Modern Africa,"published one week after the Asian deadline, he would have found that my views were different from those of the protagonist of the novel. Deo D'Souza was corrupt, took bribes, put the money into a Swiss bank, and ran away. Deo was an egoist and misinterpreted the zen koan that his friend and the prime minister told him about. This scene with the koan is up to the reader to interpret and to see how Deo had misinterpreted it, which Moyez did not do.
I left after the deadline of the Expulsion to accept the Seymour Lustman Fellowship at Yale granted for my novel. I did not want to accept it because at that time, though stateless because my Uganda citizenship had been taken away, I had been Exempted from leaving. But my friend from Makerere days, Joje Waddimba, who was Chief Planning Officer in the Ministry of Planning, took me to his car and persuaded me to leave the country with my wife and daughters. He said he would come to see me off at the airport--and he did.
I drew from this scene in "The General is Up" but it was reversed: David Kapa went to tell George Kapa's home to tell him that he was leaving the country and George tried to persuade him to stay.
Additionally, David left before the deadline before he had to.
I don't know whether you know that the manuscript of Moyez's first novel, "The Gunny Sack", was sent to me by Heinemann to evaluate. I evaluated it and recommended publication. What would have happened if I had been as lousy a critic as Moyez was with my novel?
I launched his novel on behalf of the IWP and taught it in my class when he was in the International Writing Program in 1988. I recommended his name to the Interim Director of the IWP.
I taught his first five novels for several years in my African Literature course.
Best.
Peter
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 2:52 AM
To: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com
V M
With regard Cyprian's blog post (an article written as companion to
GALF2014's commemoration of Kenyan's Independence), I think you are
correct that he is writing from an established post-colonial
perspective regarding the Goan/Indian choices in Kenya. In a way not
too different from Vassanji, in that several decades have passed, so
he/we can look back through a longer lens.
By contrast, Peter's writing, choices and perspective shared is
grounded immediately in the years of rapid change - and in the case of
Uganda, descent into massacre and madness - and the same is largely
true of your father's valuable 'Brown Man, Black Country', which I
refer to quite often for its outstanding contemporary and historical
detail. In my upcoming review of Vassanji's book, for example, I
found in your father's book a rather delicious quote from a British
official who touted East Africa as "an America for the Hindus"!
Also, I remain very struck by the powerful verses JM Nazareth wrote,
"To the African: No Guest am I"
""Why do you call me "guest",
When here I have my home,
When here my father lived and died.
My mother too, and a brother?
Their graves lie there within this City's bounds,
Where I muself was born,
My children too - all three of them.
Must they and I leave this land,
Be strangers to it
Because yours kin is black and mine and theirs is brown,
Your folks came here some scores of years ere ours?"
These stanzas strike me as apposite, interestingly twinned refrain to
this verse by Armando Menezes, which was read out at my wedding in Goa
20 years ago:
""Upon a low gray hill there stands a church:
They say it was there that they christened me.
There too, my mothers sleeps, there I alone
Would pray - pray and forget this fruitless search.
Land of my fathers! may'st thou also be
The land my children shall be proud to own."
Jeanne, given what you have shared, I think you would probably like
and enjoy reading Vassanji's 'And Home was Kariakoo' and also its
longer, even more meditative predecessor about India.
Warm regards,
VM
Nazareth, Peter
Okot p'Bitek, famous all over Africa for his classic "Song of Lawino", faced the problem of critics only looking at his "Songs" and not the other books he published. Taban lo Liyong faced a comparable problem in that he mixed up many forms. I have written novels, literary criticism, radio plays. This is a very Ugandan thing--to write in different forms and to mix up forms. Okot said there was something in common with all his writings: to realize who is to make decisions about Africa.
If readers read only my fiction but ignore my literary criticism, they don't know the half of what I am doing and saying--and what I am saying about how things work and how to use strategies to fight powerful forces--for example my radio play uses the form of radio and breaks it up to show how to decolonize the mind.
Best.
Peter
________________________________________
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 9:20 PM
To: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com
V M
I thought about this last line from your email above recently - "what
powerful forces--for example my radio play uses the form of radio and
breaks it up to show how to decolonize the mind".
and Amitav Ghosh that took place at the spiffy "new" Central Library
in Goa, the first in what is intended to be a series of book and
writing events sponsored by the civic do-gooding group, Panjim First
(I hope this auspicious beginning leads to many more events).
A student in the audience asked Amitav Ghosh an interesting question
about using the colonial language and colonial forms to write about
colonialism. I wish I had recorded or immediately transcribed his
answer, which immediately struck me as brilliant and true. Ghosh spoke
about being very careful - about being aware at every step at the way
the colonials had framed ideas and history, and about the necessity of
consciously turning the tables, to write in a new way and in a new
vocabulary of ideas. It struck me then that this is very much what you
have been doing for many years with your unique, many-layered style of
criticism.
Not exactly related, have you read this interesting article on Iowa
and its impact on American literature from the Chronicle of Higher
Education? http://chronicle.com/article/How-Iowa-Flattened-Literature/144531/
Warm regards,
VM
http://chronicle.com/article/How-Iowa-Flattened-Literature/144531/
V M
I read recently that you were an early supporter and champion of
Transition Magazine, during its founding years in Uganda. Would you
mind recounting your recollections of the birth and development of the
publication? I'd be most grateful.
Warm regards,
VM
Nazareth, Peter
I got to know Rajat Neogy when I went to Kampala Indian Secondary School. He was two years ahead of me. He started a magazine called Friends. Later, half of the students and teachers were transferred to a new school, Kololo Secondary School. Rajat taught there briefly before going to England for further studies. He edited the first issue of the school magazine, The Kololian. He brought it out when he was in England and sent it in.
G.C. Baghi, who was a teacher (as was his then wife) asked me to edit the second issue, which I did.
When Rajat returned from England, I was in my last year at Makerere University College. He told me that he was planning to bring out a new magazine, Transition. He asked me to write something for the journal, and I told him I wanted to write on Wordsworth. He agreed but did not like the piece I turned in. Murray Carlin, my favourite professor at Makerere, suggested I write on D.H. Lawrence. I did. Rajat thought it was brilliant but wanted to change the title from "The Philosophy of D.H. Lawrence" to "D.H. Lawrence and Sex". He brought it out in two parts. He received a very favorable letter from someone in India after the first part came out so Rajat decided to send me an honorary payment of 100 shillings.
I wrote more things for Transition after that.
But I did not have anything to do with the publication of Transition.
In the later years, there was the controversy about the magazine being published by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the organization mentioned in the piece you sent me from the Chronicle of Higher Education. If you want to know anything more about this side of the story, read between the lines of Chapter 10 of "The General is Up".
Rajat always was a good editor. He also was very charismatic.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Peter
________________________________________
From: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com [goa-bo...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of V M [vmi...@gmail.com]
V M
Thanks for these recollections. As you know, Transition was very
impactful and influential almost immediately after inception, was
revived in Ghana, and is now published from Harvard. Currently, the
emerging great writer/novelist/photographer Teju Cole (who has twice
attended GALF) is on its Editorial Board. I first became aware of the
publication vis this excellent essay on Francis Xavier and the Goans
by Naresh Fernandes
http://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/transition-archive-t84
Will re-read your Chapter 10 from 'The General is Up' soon.
About CIA funding during the Cold War years (or even now) it is
neither surprising, or particularly perturbing to me. It's old hat
actually. Over the years, we have also learned that Stephen Spender's
superb Encounter Magazine (where Francis Newton Souza first achieved
international attention via his essay 'Nirvana of a Maggot') was
funded by American intelligence. Also that abstract expressionism and
"Modern Art was a CIA weapon"
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html.
Even here in India, the Imprint Magazine that I grew up reading from
cover to cover in the late 1970's turns out to have been CIA-funded
http://www.outlookindia.com/article/An-Imprint-Of-A-Different-Sort/228785.
Perhaps I am wrong in my attitude towards all this, which is,
basically, who cares?
Warm regards,
VM
Nazareth, Peter
The whole connection with magazines got exposed by Ramparts magazine in the late sixties. Ngugi wrote a letter to Rajat to ask him what this meant for Transition. Rajat said he did not know about the connection and when the news came out he went into a deep depression. He said that famous/infamous organization never interfered with editorial policy.
That was not quite true. One issue was edited by somebody who was sent from the USA. It was after the overthrow of a certain person--whose country Rajat went and revived his journal but fled after the democratic antagonist was overthrown.
The person who edited that issue wrote the article to confuse the readers, not to take a right-wing approach.
This means many articles got published by Transition that were not ideologically controlled. After all it gave the magazine credibility.
The person who wrote the article became a famous academic regarding Africa.
The editor was a powerful person in the academic world of African Studies in the US when I came here. He was South African. He wrote a crazy review of my first book of
criticism, which was lousy in that he did not really read my book when he dismissed it by attributing things to the book I never said and ignoring some of the things I did way. I attacked him in the introduction to my second book of criticism, The Third World Writer: His Social Responsibility.
Rajat fled to Uganda after the coup in his country of exile. A friend of mine told me he saw Rajat standing out a big hotel in Kampala and handing out dollar bills to walkers-by.
When Transition was revived in the US, the planners wrote to me to write for the journal. I asked about the earlier connection and they denied there would be any connection.
But I never wrote for them. What turned me off was the issue dedicated to Rajat when he died in California. His portrait on the cover looked great but the two tributes to him, one by Paul Theroux and the other by the person who wrote the article for the issue I mentioned above, were horrible.
I think you know that Wole Soyinka edited Transition briefly, naming it "Ch'Indaba". I wrote an article published in this issue on a South African writer.
Incidentally, I met Stephen Spender at a party at Northwestern University. I sat next to him and talked with him. I mentioned Dom Moraes but he was utterly indifferent to Dom.
Best.
Peter
________________________________________
From: goa-book-club@googlegroups.m [goa-bo...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of V M [vmi...@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2015 11:47 PM
Frederick FN Noronha * फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या * فريدريك نورونيا
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajat_Neogy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajat_Neogy
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/11/world/rajat-neogy-57-founder-of-journal-on-africa.html
http://www.chimurenga.co.za/archives/2816
http://www.chimurenga.co.za/archives/2816
http://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/transition
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublication?journalCode=transition
Nazareth, Peter
Dear Frederick,
Thanks for informing us about the links.
Interesting how many of the "great intellectuals" named worked for the same congress (not Ngugi) and distorted things.
Somebody who is interested might read my chapter on Theroux's two novels (then two) and my chapter on his "twin" (the hint given in the titles of the two chapters in my book "The Third World Writer: His Social Responsibility."
Incidentally, the biography about Naipaul (I forget the name of the author) says that Rajat Neogy taught at Makerere when Naipaul was there. Rajat never taught at Makerere. I am not sure he received a degree from his studies in England.
He seems to have had a breakdown when he returned from Ghana to Uganda.
He was a good editor. That was his strong point.
Peter
Sent: Friday, March 20, 2015 12:28 PM
To: The Third Thursday Goa Book Club
Subject: Re: [GOABOOKCLUB] The Work of Peter Nazareth