Maryse Conde’s novel Segu tells the vivid story of a family hurtled into the chaos of a rapidly changing world. Conde does a phenomenal job of putting readers into the mindset of her many colorful characters allowing readers access to thoughts and motivations behind these characters’ actions. The story is exceptionally intricate and yet the individual stories all feel interconnected back to the Traore family who are the focus point of the novel. Various themes all play a part in the telling of Segu. From religion to the transatlantic slave trade, from family to commerce, all these themes come together to form a story that ultimately spans cultures, continents, and centuries. This paper will be focusing on the themes of family and religion. The first thing people usually do when encountering or learning about a culture or civilization different from their own is to instantly begin comparing and contrasting the two, especially the family unit. The vast differences between Bambara, Fulani, and Muslim cultures in various parts of Afrca alone are great. When compared to a European style of living, it might as well be a whole other world entirely. A striking attribute of the Bambara people displayed in the novel is the size of their family units. A main character that a good portion of the novel surrounds, Dousika Traore, is father of twenty something children bore by legitimate wives and at least two illegitimate children bore by a concubine and another by a slave. On top of his own large family, Dousika lives in a compound with his own brothers along with their own individual families. The interconnectedness of the family and the ties between them are undeniably loyal, however the actual feelings they hold for one another are an entir... ... middle of paper ... ...ekoro a “dirty nigger” and stating that she would never marry a stinking black. A striking point after this encounter is when Tiekoro explains the events to Siga and contemplates how the terms black and Negro have no meaning to him. In his mind he is a Bambara nobleman. In Gorée, following the storyline of Naba, renamed Jean Baptiste as a slave, a glimpse of Christianity’s racism is seen. Slaves were separated into two distinct groups, one smaller group was made up of the domestic slaves who worked for officers of the local fort on Gorée, signares, or various officials working on the island, the second and staggeringly larger group was “human cattle huddled into the slave houses.” This seemingly indistinct separation of African people into domestic slaves and slaves who would ultimately perform arduous physical labor seems reminiscent of slave practices in America.
Even though, the subject matter of family and religion plays a huge role in the story, they wouldn’t have been as immense if other themes such as migration, labor, colonialism, and commerce weren’t offered as well. In Segu, Maryse Conde represents imperialist aggression and the European colonization of Africa through the tale of a kingdom. Through the pretense of Europe’s greed, and the religions of Christianity and Islam, came Segu’s downfall. What happens to the Bambara family in Segu is the depiction of the changing lives of Africans nationwide. How the people of Africa confronted the change is symbolized by the three sons of a compound ruler. Yet, in part from the misfortunes that are depicted, there lies an appealing story about religion, diversity, and culture in the motherland.
... of language and education is the most important in this story and society. The make use of two different languages in a narrative, provides a reader a perplexing yet fascinating image of characterization and customs. Multilingual story telling pushes the reader to decelerate and acquire supplemental focus on the expressions which are in the small fragments, however as soon as the reader has figured out the foreign words, he or she acquires a priceless picture of the theme of this story. The panorama of native words and phrases, cultural perceptions, and class dispute taken from the incorporation of two different languages are helpful for the reader to obtain significance that he or she couldn't gain if exclusively one language was employed in the story. Just as the power of language is applied to unveil a society, a better comprehension is provided to the reader.
In all, Tademy does a great job in transporting her readers back to the 1800s in rural Louisiana. This book is a profound alternative to just another slave narrative. Instead of history it offers ‘herstory’. This story offers insight to the issues of slavery through a women’s perspective, something that not so many books offer. Not only does it give readers just one account or perspective of slavery but it gives readers a take on slavery through generation after generation. From the early days of slavery through the Civil War, a narrative of familial strength, pride, and culture are captured in these lines.
Back then, it was unacceptable for a woman to take care of a man. However, that belief no longer exists because education is now deemed important. Having a woman help in the house can help meet the bills. Moreover, when kibar families started sending their daughters to school, the community no longer considered educating women a disgrace. The kibar are families whose wealth has been passed on for generations, who live together in a large complex, and share a budget (Meneley 1996: 64-65). In other words, kibar’s financial status can be the equivalent of rich people in the United States. As a result, of the community moving forward, as well as, their views towards kibar families, Zabidi women’ roles have transformed from a passive to an active role inside and outside the household.
...heir novels, The Round House and The God of Small Things. Both of these authors present ancient religious and cultural traditions – namely stories of the windigoo and the concept of Love Laws – as deciding factors in how the characters in their novels interact with each other and how the plots develop. Past events, Pappachi’s disappointment and Linda Lark’s abandonment, are shown to be important to the way that characters live their lives in both of these novels. In both The Round House and The God of Small Things historically prevalent struggles such as the ones between native and foreign religions and the ones between white people and non-white people are shown to be incredibly influential on the ways that the characters of the present view the world and those around them. In both of these works the authors show that the past is a massive influence on the present.
The events of Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart and the film Sugar Cane Alley detail the lives of a fictionalized Nigerian village and sugar cane harvesters in remote Martinique, respectively, during similar time periods of the 1900s. Both works contain explicit references to Christianity, and how the imposition of religion and white culture have negatively affected the African characters. European religious practice was used as a means of pacifying as well as terrifying the Umuofian people and the inhabitants of Sugar Cane Valley.
The memoir of Old Elizabeth is an important historical document as it presents both the story of slave women as well as giving large amounts of insight into the way that religion influenced the lives of slaves and how it played a part of their daily lives. This intersection of religion and gender shows the added hardships that women had to face in comparison to their male counterparts. Elizabeth’s narrative is A typical as it put’s most of the focus on her gender rather than her race, which directly conflicts with the typical slave narrative which focuses mainly on the ways that race influences the life of the author or subject of the narrative.
Nujood shares her background by introducing the village of Khardji, the place where she was born. Nujood states, “women are not taught how to make choices [where she’s from]” (Ali & Minoui, 2010, p. 23). To exemplify the power men hold within her country, Nujood shares her mother’s story. At the age of 16, Nujood’s mother was married off to Ali. Four years later, Ali decided to enlarge the family by choosing a second wife. Nujood’s mother had no say. Nujood makes it clear her family is less fortunate. She describes her village as “little stone houses without
Many of life’s fantasies can resemble someone from our past or someone we care about. Every so often, a reader may come across a story that feels as if the narrator is telling the story through his or her own life experiences. The nonfictional story “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” is a convincing third person limited omniscient narration by Harriet Jacobs, and it shows a diverse use of extreme cruelty and hardship slaves resisted in their condition and created their own ways of living, which allow the readers to learn how narrators can use their emotions and feeling to explain their life experiences. The story’s main purpose was to show how slaves created their own culture and ways of life through the bible and their religion, Jacobs
We have all heard the African proverb that says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” The response given by Emma Donoghue’s novel Room, simply states, “If you’ve got a village. But if you don’t, then maybe it just takes two people” (Donoghue 234). For Jack, Room is where he was born and has been raised for the past five years; it is his home and his world. Jack’s “Ma” on the other hand knows that Room is not a home, in fact, it is a prison. Since Ma’s kidnapping, seven years prior, she has survived in the shed of her capturer’s backyard. This novel contains literary elements that are not only crucial to the story but give significance as well. The Point-of-view brings a powerful perspective for the audience, while the setting and atmosphere not only affect the characters but evokes emotion and gives the reader a mental picture of their lives, and the impacting theme along-side with conflict, both internal and external, are shown throughout the novel.
It is important to note that Elizabeth Warnock Fernea herself is a brilliant writer, and her piece of Guests of the Sheik offers a very in debt analysis of an Iraqi village that would not be seen from most outsiders. How while Fernea concedes the fact that she is not an anthropologist she was married to one and the first two years of their marriage they lived in an Iraqi village called El Nahra. Since she lived in a village that has hardly any social contact between men and women, Fernea is able to give us a beautiful account of what the women’s life style, roles, and other aspects of a women’s life in an Iraqi village. While women are not treated incredibly badly there lifestyle was a lot different than the one an American woman would live. One of the primary directions of Fernea’s study are to show how the author could be credible in ultimately idealizing her culture and peoples in this ethnography. She uses her Self authority to convince the reader of that and her interactions with other women. The
The opening of the novel places the reader not in Falola's shoes as a child, but rather as an adult scholar attempting to procure information from his own family. This proves easier said than done as Falola takes us through the process of obtaining specific dates in a society that deems them irrelevant. By examining the difficulty that Falola has in this seemingly simple task, the reader begins to understand the way in which time and space are intertwined and weighed in Africa. This concept of "connections between words, space, and rituals" encompasses the way that Africans perceive the world around them - as a series of interrelated events rather than specific instances in time (Falola 224). This approach also stems from the concept that the family unit, the village, and the elders come before the individual in all instances, making a detail such as a birthday unimportant when it comes to the welfare of the whole. Introducing the reader to the complexities of African conventions, Falola expands their minds and challenges them to view the forthcoming narrative with untainted eyes.
It is the most dehumanizing and intrusive aspect of every human’s life that it touches. Slavery is the very institution that affects the social, economic, and cultural aspects of every person’s life. Although many people viewed slavery as a necessity, others have strong critiques of the institution. We are able to gain knowledge of these very critiques by the first-hand accounts of Mary Prince in the narrative The History of Mary Prince and From the Darkness Cometh the Light by Lucy Delaney. In the narratives, Prince and Delany communicate to the reader a plethora of critiques to slavery. The most powerful critiques that Prince and Delaney agree upon are the destruction of family, the condition of the slaves, and the moral that it creates on the lives of the people most affected.
“The Harem Within” is a life story that portrays Mernissi’s childhood experiences while growing up in her family house in Fez, Morocco. Fatema Mernissi was a daughter of wealthy landowners and agriculturalists family. Even though she was raised in indulging and a privileged neighborhood, detached from the poverty most Moroccans experienced, her childhood was spent in the limits of her household shape. Mernissi was raised in a “classical domestic harem”, which abides of extended family and was designed to keep the women sheltered from men outside of the family and the public in general. Occasionally, this exceedingly limitation nurtured feelings of frustrating separation and isolation. Mernissi’s upbringing in this habitat influenced her progress as a scholar and writer.
Every culture has several similarities and differences that impact the way they do things. Several of these cultures have distinct traits and traditions that make them differently from other cultures. I believe these differences make each culture different and unique. The two cultures that I have chosen to compare and contrast with each other is Kenya and India. In this paper I will discuss the similarities and differences in each of the culture’s families in context, marital relationships, and families and aging. These are important aspects of these cultures and to examine them will give me a better knowledge of both of these cultures.