Roundtable

A View from the Balcony

(Poet, Amatoritsero Ede in conversation with novelist, M.G. Vassanji)

Amatoritsero Ede: MG, it is exciting to have you on MTLS. First, do kindly give us an idea of the central ‘gist’ of your very latest novel, which comes out this October.

M.G. Vassanji: The latest book is not a novel but what I call a travel memoir. It is called And Home Was Kariakoo: A Memoir of East Africa. In it I describe my travels in Tanzania and Kenya, relating them to my own life, my experiences, and my interests. In the process I also unearth some little-known but fascinating histories. The book came about partly out of my frustration at seeing the places that I relate to intimately and that I love described in a “them-us” manner by fleet-footed travellers reporting to their constituents. One such writer is Paul Theroux, who wrote Dark Star Safari. He is an adventurous, an intrepid and brave traveller, and makes many interesting and valid comments and observations; in the 1960s he even spent some time in Uganda and wrote for a literary magazine there. But the tone of this particular narrative is “this is what Africa is like.” He does not know the language, shows no intimacy or empathy with the people or the landscape. For example, he goes to a town called Mbeya and calls it a “habitable ruin.” “In a town like Mbeya I understood the sense of futility… In such towns I felt: no achievements, no successes, the place is only bigger and darker and worse.” Well, I visited Mbeya. I spent a few days in a lovely old house overlooking a mountain, which in the morning would be covered in mist. It reminded me of another town, at Lake Victoria, where I did my National Service when I was nineteen. To me the place is beautiful, and I have a friend and translator there; I gave a reading at the Mbeya Club and there was a wonderful and enthusiastic literary discussion afterwards. Sure, there is enough to criticize in Mbeya (electricity was sporadic in the house), but that is true of everywhere. In my turn, I wanted to write an intimate narrative of Africa, from within, so to speak. I could see humour where outsiders can’t; I could find nuances and relevance and beauty, which escape them.

A.E.: Dark Star! Theroux is famously connected to V. S Naipaul, who was described by Derek Walcott as V.S. Nightfall on account of the same habit of misrepresentation/demonization you note in Theorux; very apposite… Particular literary spaces usually lay claim to the successful writer as part of their cultural capital; you are a ‘Canadian’ writer by dint of immigration and naturalization. Is it in order to also say that you are a Kenyan writer and a Tanzanian writer?

M.G.V.: I would say so. But this is accepted more and more nowadays; many countries allow dual citizenships, don’t they? Immigration or naturalization does not change your memories, or your history, your traditions, your sense of space and sound. You arrive with a larger worldview than that of the native. But immigration does gradually shape your perspective and broadens your worldview and your concerns even further, perhaps deepens them; and of course often it also provides you the opportunity to create and write. And so of course I am also a Canadian writer. But too much, too precise, or too insistent a labelling can get annoying. You don’t write with a flag by your side. You write, and that’s it.

A.E.: These days it is fashionable for some younger and newer crop of African writers to reject the tag ‘African writer’ due to postmodern notions of global citizenship. What is your feeling about this?

M.G.V.: Tags or labels are contextual. There is a time and place to call someone an African writer, a Canadian writer, or an American writer; I think a concern with being labelled arises from the fact that often the labels are used in a dismissive sense. Thus “multicultural” may dismiss you into a transient margin that is patronized; it gives as it takes away. I’m not concerned by labels; my work speaks for itself. And to me, anyone can be tagged, everyone is, in a sense, “ethnic.”

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