The Sunday Mail
Doris Kumbawo
World-renowned author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s latest work of art, “Americanah”, is a timeless piece.
Her latest literary take is not only a jewel in the way it is written – each page adorned with beautiful words worn like a bride’s centre-piece, but in the way it tackles important issues that Africans world over continue to grapple with in the post-slavery and neo-colonialism era.
“Americanah” is as relevant for the “ordinary Zimbabwean”, (our intellectuals and activists bandy about this term in their prolific critiques as if some are more Zimbabwean than others), as it is for the Nigerian and other Africans at home or in the diaspora.
The chief protagonist and other characters in the novel are as real as the reader. As one reads, it is possible to identify with a little bit of each character either through their desire to be counted in the world for who they are, their internal conflict that sees some of them changing and re-changing their appearance and accent to fit in cosmopolitan societies, or the need to impress through various associations with what is white and therefore “good” and “acceptable”.
Adichie’s book is about a lot of things confronting black people, but the issue of identity resonates so strongly, it is impossible to miss. It is one I have been fighting and thinking about a lot lately in different but similar circumstances. I say “fight” because I often inadvertently find myself in the midst of fierce battles of which an African pronounces certain English words better.
But my fight is also inadvertent because whilst I appreciate the need for one to be articulate for effective communication, it often makes me sad when we as Africans sit there and disparage each other on how “you Zimbabweans say “thaaat” or how “you Kenyans say ‘thud’ instead of ‘third’. I have often asked myself whether what is important is the way you pronounce the word or whether you have communicated. It is ok if one speaks like a musalala (speaking through the nose), it is a reflection of our life journeys as individuals, where we grew up, went to school and who your teacher was et cetera, but I draw the line at us mocking each other for speaking English like an SRB (one with a strong rural background).
I mean, we are Africans for goodness sake. As the saying goes, “chirungu chakauya nengarava (English is foreign to us).” It came to us Africans via a ship – from overseas), so why is it so important to sound either British or American instead of who we really are when we speak?
As Zimbabweans, we have now celebrated 34 years of independence from colonialism, but clearly, as Adichie and other authors before her painstakingly point out, we are in more ways than one still struggling to de-colonise the mind. Perhaps nothing paints a more vivid portrait of our struggle than the fact that our men and women of all ages still go to such lengths in their desire to be light skinned, at the pain of even worse and mutilated skin conditions due to the effect of skin lighteners over time.
The issue of skin colour is not a relic which we examine in the museum of black identity of by-gone days. It is very much alive and an issue for today which finds testimony in the multitude of skin-lightening creams, tablets and injections that have successfully crept into African markets – Mupedzanhamo being no exception. As a dark-skinned woman who was the butt-end of many “kusviba kunenge pasi pe poto (dark as the bottom of a pot”), of course, one whose owner relied on firewood and not electricity for cooking) jokes when I was growing up, my heart always bleeds when I come across what Shimmer Chinodya described as “Fanta face and Coca-cola legs” in his book “Harvest of Thorns”. I fail to see how this artificial look which often screams out its own fakeness even to strangers becomes more attractive than one’s regular black skin.
Apparently our perception of beauty is still held prisoner by the images painted for us in the “dark” ages and still shackled to our history when we were considered the ‘‘wretched of the earth’’. But honestly we need to get over ourselves. Like Adichie, I cannot get over how my Ethiopian hairdresser and her fellow customers at a hair salon I patronised in the United Arab Emirates actually refer to other black people who are not from Ethiopia as Africans. As Adichie also asks, where exactly are they from? And all because they are light-skinned with long hair?
Speaking of hair, this is another sensitive issue that Adichie raises. Although I am personally attached to hair straighteners and regular weaves and braids, I do get the point, although with a different take on it. For me, and I hope for my fellow women, the idea is not to look white at all. As long as the idea is to complement my African beauty, I have no qualms with hair straighteners and extensions as they also serve a higher purpose for me – that of convenience in maintenance.
I still feel proudly African, and I have always felt so, even as other races admire and ask me to go into detail about specific hairstyles. I have no problems with – and in fact admire – those who rock a zuda (complete bald) or short hair if it suits their face.
I just feel certain hairdos, like certain clothes, have a better fit on some people than on others, and I am adamant that short hair does not do it for my face at all!
Having said this, however, watching the documentary “Good Hair” aired in May on DStv in which Chris Tucker globetrotts to explore African-Americans’ obsession with weaves, makes me question whether I have really figured out the whole black identity issue when it comes to hair.
Like the Shakespearean joker, when Tucker takes to the streets and tries to sell weaves and wigs made of African hair which, of course, no one will buy, you do indeed feel that ‘‘there is a method to his madness’’.
