WLF Prize 2023 - Scholastique Mukasonga

[Leseratte]

I'm beginning to wonder how this author managed to garner so many votes as to push out the likes of Anne Carson from our list, ?

On the subject of "young" literatures:

- absolutely ALL literary traditions, in their oral form at least, go back centuries if not millennia
- some nations do indeed arrive "late" at writing things down: compare and contrast, for example, Greeks with Estonians
- would you describe the author in question as "purely" Rwandan? or is she Rwandan-French at this point? doesn't she live in Paris?

I think these questions are directed to me, therefore I´ll try to answer them as well as I can.
I´ve read only "Our Lady of the Nile" as yet, but I think that what attracts the reader is not so much the plot, which may have its fault, but her social take. Social themes and gender discussion, in this case feminine matters, but also race matters and what is more poignant, internal race prejudices added to the external ones. I learnt a lot about Rwanda and I liked specially the ironic approach on education @Cleanthess remarked upon which seemed unusual to me. Also the not always perfect combination of the oral mythical discourse with the educational narrative.

I agree with you that all oral traditions go back centuries if not millennia, but I think most of them were changed, some of them brutally, with the arrival of the colonizers. And was what or is put down in writing was usually is already the result of this confrontation and not the "pure" original narrative.
I believe that Mukasonga lived most of her life in France, but her Rwandan experience sits much deeper. Completing her education and living in France possibly made her gain a more distanced view on her own country and that made it maybe easier to write about it. But one thing about her impressed me very much when I read an interview someone posted here, I don´t remember the thread anymore. When asked if she had an unusual writing place, she mentioned a Parisian cemetery. She said, that was the place were she somehow felt near to her beloved people that had been murdered and remained without a decent grave.

 

[Liam]

Oh no, my dear, this was not directed at you, I was just trying to think it out loud, ?

I really AM wondering how Mukasonga managed to get so many votes from so many different people on this forum though!

 

[alik-vit]

Oh no, my dear, this was not directed at you, I was just trying to think it out loud, ?

I really AM wondering how Mukasonga managed to get so many votes from so many different people on this forum though!

We need to use "deep reading" (or it was "vertical reading"?) as Ellen Mattson recommended two years ago.

 

[alik-vit]

But one thing about her impressed me very much when I read an interview someone posted here, I don´t remember the thread anymore. When asked if she had an unusual writing place, she mentioned a Parisian cemetery. She said, that was the place were she somehow felt near to her beloved people that had been murdered and remained without a decent grave.

Such statements make any attempt of analysis of her books from point of view of aesthetics or litersture technique a pure nonsense, if not offensive. And there is no literature without aesthetician and technical dimensions. She just ties the hands of readers. I think it was her interview concerning the nomination for USA National book award for translated literature.

 

[Ben Jackson]

Indeed, it's sensitive question. But I would say, we should make distinction between artistic and historical values of book. It can be novel of great importance for this national literature, but with very average artistic qualities. I will include it in my curriculum for class devoted to the history of this literature. But when we speak about "world literature" in our context... I would say, what I said: it's OK. On the other hand, I see inner vice of this statement, because it's Iike: "we make artobjects for art museums, "natives" make artifacts for museums of anthropology", which is shameful colonialistic perspective, of course. Where is solution?

Loving your thoughts and insights from you all thus far. I will start reading her works after Antunes.

 

[Cleanthess]

I think that trying to figure out what Mukasonga is trying to do might help to understand her achievement. IMHO she's writing YA books about genocide, war, ruination, death and violence. It would be easy to categorize Mukasonga by grouping her work with other works about the suffering of Africans, but I'd prefer to allocate her to a larger and older tradition, rather than othering her into that smaller context.
Some authors, who experienced first hand, or were close to those who experienced first hand, harrowing situations, handle writing about those experiences by injecting distance, humor and humanity into their works.
Early Charles Dickens, when writing about stuff like prisons in Pickwick Papers or childhood deprivations in Oliver Twist, is an example of that strategy; massive artistic, material and personal success later in life provided a large enough buffer to allow later Dickens to write darker and more complex works.
Hideo Azuma, in his manga chronicle of the years he spent homeless due to his alcoholism and mental issues, Disappearance Diary, pointed out that he had injected as much distance and humanism as he could to make the book bearable.
Even the earliest story that we can date, according to some scholars, the tale of how humans "chose" eternal death for themselves, uses the humor and distancing strategy to deal with a difficult lived situation. There are many versions of that old story, none better told than Seamus Heaney's, found here: A Dog Was Crying Tonight In Wicklow Also
I could go on listing examples of this tradition, but other things these works have in common is that they are YA adjacent, they have an ethical purpose (or moral dimension), they resemble fables and folktales.
Considered within this larger tradition, one can better appreciate Mukasonga's set pieces inside their narrative frames: Mukasonga doesn't care for the packaging, but for the set pieces inside and the many different approaches she uses in them that allow her to bear witness to so much horror in a distanced, humanistic and occasionally humorous way. I'll share two of my favorites among her set pieces in a separate post to avoid making this post too long.

 

[Cleanthess]

Remember the Heaney poem I mentioned before?
When human beings found out about death
They sent the dog to Chukwu with a message:
They wanted to be let back to the house of life.
They didn’t want to end up lost forever
Like burnt wood disappearing into smoke
Or ashes that get blown away to nothing.
Instead they saw their souls in a flock at twilight
Cawing and headed back to the same old roosts
And the same bright airs and wing-stretchings each morning.
Death would be like a night spent in the wood:
At first light they’d be back in the house of life.
(The dog was meant to tell all this to Chukwu.)

Well, that poem is pretty close in spirit to a short story by Mukasonga, Titicarabi. The story is framed as a conversation between the narrator and her children regarding her life's morning spent in Africa and her awakening to the power of stories and books, with a final twist regarding how reality can be different depending on who's perceiving it, which nicely parallels the Titicarabi story itself. The story that triggered Mukasonga's narrator's reminiscences was Mr. Seguin's Goat and the book was African Mornings.

"Matins d'Afrique" took the story of that brave little goat from the book called Lettres de mon moulin. See? Well, I have a copy of this book, Letters from my Windmill, at home. It was a white man, one of my old teachers, who gave it to me. If you are good, one day, I will show it to you.

There was a village somewhere in Africa, but not in Rwanda, where people lived very happily. The fields they cultivated yielded such abundant harvests that, in their language, words like 'famine' or even 'hunger' did not exist. The rains always arrived on time. There was always an abundance of millet (Félicien explained that it was like sorghum), yams, and Taro roots. They traded their surplus for beautiful embroidered cotton loincloths that they called boubous and multicolored beaded necklaces that the women rattled while dancing. Their generosity was celebrated all around because they shared their food, with happy hearts and in large quantities, with travelers, pilgrims, beggars and foreigners who crossed their village and always left loaded with provisions.

"But how about bananas," objected Alphonsine, "they didn't even have bananas."

-" It didn't matter to them," replied Félicien, irritated by this interruption, "they didn't like bananas."
Everything was therefore for the best in the best of villages: the goats grazed on the thorny bushes, the children, when they were not learning at the marabout (it's like Sunday school, Félicien clarified), played in the courtyards, the women worked all day long, while the wise men, and all the men were wise men, sat under the big tree to exchange tales and, in the moonlight, the whole village gathered to listen to the griots who sang endless poems to the glory of the heroes of bygone eras, the ones when men were at war.
But one day Titicarabi arrived. Titicarabi was a dog. Not one of those stray, starving dogs that you kick away. No, Titicarabi was a dog of extraordinary beauty. If you looked at him, you could not take your eyes off him. So Titicarabi slowly crossed the village and, as he went along, the goats stopped grazing, the children stopped repeating the marabout's lesson, the women stopped working, the men stopped talking... "The whole village, from the old men to the last newborns on their mothers' backs, followed Titicarabi with their eyes. The marvelous dog went to sit under the big tree of the wise men.

He opened his pointed muzzle and began to speak. This did not surprise us much because in the tales of Rwanda all animals speak. But Titicarabi, as soon as he began to speak, did not stop speaking. He talked all day, all night, he talked for days and days, nights and nights.

The story of Matins d'Afrique did not say what tales he told, but his words were a delight and a joy to those who listened to him. Titicarabi had captured them in the golden net of his words and they had forgotten to guard the goats that devoured the millet fields, to feed the little children who had nothing to eat but their tears at the foot of the dust filled great mortars where the women used to pound the yams and taro roots. The enchantment of Titicarabi's endless speech had abolished the wisdom of the elders, erased the memory of the griots. A cloud of dreams covered the village.
But one fine day, Titicarabi interrupted himself and said to the villagers: "I, Titicarabi, am leaving you, I have other villages waiting for my words, but you must not forget them."
Titicarabi walked majestically back through the village. He took the road that lead to the river. Some young men, who followed Titicarabi to the edge of the fields, said that at the edge of the fields they saw only an emaciated, mangy dog that hobbled away on three legs.

That evening, the mirage of Titicarabi's beautiful words had dissipated and the villagers contemplated the extent of the disaster: the huts falling into ruins, the granaries gutted and plundered by monkeys, the goats turned wild again or devoured by hyenas, and the children with huge, distended bellies, dull, sunken eyes reduced to skeletons. The village was now a hamlet of miserable hovels threatened by drought and desert winds. They cursed Titicarabi. But in their dreams they still heard the wonderful words and some, in the secret of their hearts, awaited his return.

 

[alik-vit]

Great thanks for these explanations, @Cleanthess ! Much appreciated for very interesting approach to Mukasonga's works. But I think, here we have two problems: 1) where are evidences for this categorization of her oeuvre as YA books on Dissonant Heritage? Is she herself sees her project like this? 2) is there such thing as literature/fiction, which "doesn't care for the packaging"? Is not syntaxes itself and composition are "packing"?
I will try to read "Cockroaches" via your lenses.

 

[Leseratte]

I liked this interview with Scholastique Mukasonga very much, I think it sheds some light on her oeuvre. There is also a good interview in another thread I don´t remember if it is the same.

Interview with Scholastique Mukasonga - The White Review

Scholastique Mukasonga is Rwanda’s most celebrated author. Her eight works of memoir and fiction, all written in French, reckon with the country’s tumultuous twentieth century in graceful prose distinguished by its warmth, directness and moral charisma. Combining the authority of traditional...

www.thewhitereview.org

 

[Cleanthess]

Thank your for posting that interview Leseratte! And thank you for your reply, alik-vit.

I think that Mukasonga's own words in that interview confirm to a certain extent my readings of her work as injecting distance and humanism to the presentation of her painful memories as well as her thinking about her books as being addressed to the young, kinda like tales mothers tell.

Rather than a writer, I prefer to call myself a storyteller, as Rwandan mothers should be, because, as the saying goes, ‘Umuntu uca umugani ntagira inabi ku mutim.’ The one who tells a story has no hatred in their heart.

The novel gave me the distance necessary to widen my field of writing. It allowed me to approach themes such as the condition of women, traditions suppressed by missionaries, Rwanda’s history and its racist falsification by Western anthropology. Novels liberated me, and if they remain, like my first books, a form of therapy, I’ve found pleasure in writing them, the same pleasure that my mother, Stéfania, must have felt in those evenings when she brought me and my sisters into the enchanted world of tales

As for the tradition Mukasonga works within, see how brilliantly she coopts the plot of Mr. Seguin's Goat, one of the classics of young adult fiction, avant la lettre, having it resonate with the plot of her own Titicarabi. And how subtly she subverts the foreign traditions preached by missionaries by syncretizing them with African myths.

In Mr. Seguin's Goat, the tale of a young thinking goat who came to a bad end because it didn't listen to its human, Mr. Seguin. Said goat, having heard the heroic tale of another goat who fought all night against the big bad wolf, bravely fights all night against the wolf before losing its battle. (Shades of a certain Jacob who fought all night against the angel of the Lord before losing his own battle. Interestingly enough, that same angel of the Lord had saved Jacob's father, Isaac, from being killed by having a goat sacrificed instead of Isaac.)

In Mukasonga's story humans come to a bad end by listening to a messianic talking dog, Titicarabi. Titicarabi's parting words resemble a lot those of another Messiah whose birthday party is around the corner.

Two final points:
1. Cockroaches and The Barefoot Woman were memories written before fictional techniques gave Mukasonga "the distance necessary to widen my field of writing", so they might be different from her other books.
2. As I understand it, Young Adult fiction differs from children fiction by, among other things, its focus on death and other more mature themes, and by not having mandatory happy endings. In the very first official YA novel, The Pigman, the pigman dies, after all.

 

[alik-vit]

Finished "Cockroaches". If it's really YA literature, I'm not its target group and I'm very suspicious to this kind of poetics. Actually, it's very difficult to say something about this text as text. It's simple, straightforward narrative, set of short chapters devoted to the life in the atmosphere of race hatred from the end of 1950s to early 2000s. The setting is Rwanda. The three main characters are the Tutsi (innocent victims), the Hutu (devilish persecutors), the White people (hypocritical cowards). The centre of gravity is of course not the form or structure of this book, but its testimony. But for understanding of testimony you need the knowledge of its context. Testimony on historical event needs analytic, not synthetic tools. And here you can't receive these tools. The roots of this terrible atrocities, the mass killings of Hutus in 1973 in Burundi are out of focus. As any historical evidence this one is biased too. As a text it's not of great interest too, I'm afraid. I feel myself very uncomfortable, when I write this about book with such terrible content, but it's book and it's impossible to say: it's good book just because it gives the voice to victims.

 

[Leseratte]

Finished "Cockroaches". If it's really YA literature, I'm not its target group and I'm very suspicious to this kind of poetics. Actually, it's very difficult to say something about this text as text. It's simple, straightforward narrative, set of short chapters devoted to the life in the atmosphere of race hatred from the end of 1950s to early 2000s. The setting is Rwanda. The three main characters are the Tutsi (innocent victims), the Hutu (devilish persecutors), the White people (hypocritical cowards). The centre of gravity is of course not the form or structure of this book, but its testimony. But for understanding of testimony you need the knowledge of its context. Testimony on historical event needs analytic, not synthetic tools. And here you can't receive these tools. The roots of this terrible atrocities, the mass killings of Hutus in 1973 in Burundi are out of focus. As any historical evidence this one is biased too. As a text it's not of great interest too, I'm afraid. I feel myself very uncomfortable, when I write this about book with such terrible content, but it's book and it's impossible to say: it's good book just because it gives the voice to victims.

I´ll have your impression in mind when I´m going to read the book. Actually I haven´t got it yet.

 

[Liam]

Started Cockroaches a couple of days ago, and so far, I like it!

Have to disagree with alik's analytic vs. synthetic remark: this is a personal testimony, a memoir, she's not trying (nor required) to be analytic; from the very first page (her dedication) where she lists the names of family members who had died in the genocide, you know that this is going to be a very emotional (i.e. personally slanted) piece of writing.

It's somewhat similar to one of the "voices" in Alexievich: she's just telling her story as simply as she possibly can, but with much poetry enclosed in that simplicity.

Additionally, this may be a question of translation: the English translation that I'm reading is excellent! Will say more when I'm done with the book.

 

[alik-vit]

Started Cockroaches a couple of days ago, and so far, I like it!

Have to disagree with alik's analytic vs. synthetic remark: this is a personal testimony, a memoir, she's not trying (nor required) to be analytic; from the very first page (her dedication) where she lists the names of family members who had died in the genocide, you know that this is going to be a very emotional (i.e. personally slanted) piece of writing.

It's somewhat similar to one of the "voices" in Alexievich: she's just telling her story as simply as she possibly can, but with much poetry enclosed in that simplicity.

Additionally, this may be a question of translation: the English translation that I'm reading is excellent! Will say more when I'm done with the book.

Always it's great to know, when the book, that's not clicks with you, do it with somebody else)))

P. S. "she's just telling her story as simply as she possibly can", which is nothing but one of rethoric tools, of course.

 

[Liam]

which is nothing but one of rethoric tools, of course

Yes, but I am more interested in asking why she's using it in this book, in particular. I think it has something to do with recapturing "innocence": telling the story through the eyes of a child, before her (the child's) world is wiped away by atrocity and bloodshed.

I don't know if she adopts a similar voice in her other books, I suppose we shall see,

 

[alik-vit]

Yes, but I am more interested in asking why she's using it in this book, in particular. I think it has something to do with recapturing "innocence": telling the story through the eyes of a child, before her (the child's) world is wiped away by atrocity and bloodshed.

I don't know if she adopts a similar voice in her other books, I suppose we shall see,

Hmm, it's interesting. But big part of this book is account on her youth and last part devoted to return to Rwanda as mature person. Can't say it's telling trough the eyes of a child. And even so, the eyes of a child is gaze too.

 

[Liam]

^I'm still at the beginning though, so as I said, we shall see...

 

[Cleanthess]

Many of Mukasonga's best moments depend on her mastery of tone. For example, she has that Gallic smiling irony we associate with Voltaire or Anatole France.

In the following excerpt, Mukasonga shows how Rwandan villagers were told that their issues with food scarcity were caused by an European dictator who invaded other European nations, but if they sacrificed some of their resources to the war effort, abundance will come back to their village.

I did not come here to lie to you, he said.
You all know, and especially you, the elders, how many famines our Rwanda has endured.
But listen carefully to what I am going to tell you: this Ruzagayura famine is not like the other famines. It has traversed our entire country, it didn't overlook any chiefdom, any sub-chiefdom, any hill.
It seems to have a map of our country like the whites have. It knows exactly were to go so it doesn't spare anyone.
So listen to me with all your attention, because I'm going to tell you a great secret. And that secret is a secret that bwana Ryckmans told me. You all know who bwana Ryckmans is, he is the chief military commander in Usumbura, he commands the whole of Ruanda-Urundi and above all, don't forget, he is the godfather of our king, mwami Mutara Rudahigwa.
So this is what bwana Ryckmans told me: this Ruzagayura famine, it came to us from Hitler, the leader of the Germans who attacked the Belgians, the English, who attacked everyone. And he also attacked us Rwandans and he found no better way to defeat us than to sabotage the horizon from where the rains come.
So he thought that by starving us Rwandans, we would no longer cultivate the fields, that there would be no more men for the portage or for working in the mines of the Congo. And that the soldiers of all the countries fighting on the front line would have nothing to eat and nothing to protect themselves from the mosquitoes that bring malaria and there would be no more iron nor copper to forge cannons and guns.
Hitler thought that this way it would be easy to win the war, but Hitler was wrong, because Bwana Ryckmans has gathered a lot of trucks in the Congo, so many that they can't be counted, and he has recruited a whole army of drivers. They will come from the Congo to our rescue. They are full of bags of flour, rice, beans. They are loaded with cassava that doesn't kill those who eat it. The trucks are coming, get your baskets ready to fill them. Bwana Ryckmans will save Rwanda.
The people on the hill clapped their hands as one does for a leader. The big jugs of sorghum beer and the bottles of Primus rum were emptied as is only proper.
Everyone went to get their baskets and waited for the trucks at the edge of the road. The trucks did not come. Maybe our hill was on the Ruzagayura famine's map but not on bwana Rikamansi's map. Others said in hushed tones that maybe it was Hitler who had won the war..."

 

[Ben Jackson]

Let's look at Scholastique Mukasonga.

A lot has been said about her in this thread, but I want to add my contribution.

First of all, I don't really think Mukasonga's works can be grouped under the "witness literature" umbrella, with the opaque lyricism of Celan and Sachs, Herta Muller with her surreallistic descriptions, and Alexievich with her polyphonism. Yes, some of her works like Cockroaches, Barefoot Woman and Our Lady of the Nile can be grouped as "literature of witness," but Kibogo isn't. Kibogo is more of a historical novel blended with traditional/mythic vision. It's like saying Achebe's Things Fall Apart is a literature of witness, which isn't.

Aside from that, her work is very clear and straight-forward, and emotional in the sense that the trader sympathises and feels the hellscapes individuals encounter, individuals trapped in a devastating society triggered by the Rwadan civil war between the Tutsi, the better part of society preferred by the white government, and Hutsi, the more numerous tribe. One is reminded of Kafka in description of individuals living in hellsh society. Just like Tiga said, there's not anything extraordinary in her works (and for me she is far from the finest in the "witness literature" category, that honor, based on the young experience I have had on reading, will be either Weisel, Kertesz or Celan) and she lacks originality in perception. As for her works in total, I can't say it's in the level of Nobel, just good but not extraordinary.

 

[alik-vit]

Let's look at Scholastique Mukasonga.

A lot has been said about her in this thread, but I want to add my contribution.

First of all, I don't really think Mukasonga's works can be grouped under the "witness literature" umbrella, with the opaque lyricism of Celan and Sachs, Herta Muller with her surreallistic descriptions, and Alexievich with her polyphonism. Yes, some of her works like Cockroaches, Barefoot Woman and Our Lady of the Nile can be grouped as "literature of witness," but Kibogo isn't. Kibogo is more of a historical novel blended with traditional/mythic vision. It's like saying Achebe's Things Fall Apart is a literature of witness, which isn't.

Aside from that, her work is very clear and straight-forward, and emotional in the sense that the trader sympathises and feels the hellscapes individuals encounter, individuals trapped in a devastating society triggered by the Rwadan civil war between the Tutsi, the better part of society preferred by the white government, and Hutsi, the more numerous tribe. One is reminded of Kafka in description of individuals living in hellsh society. Just like Tiga said, there's not anything extraordinary in her works (and for me she is far from the finest in the "witness literature" category, that honor, based on the young experience I have had on reading, will be either Weisel, Kertesz or Celan) and she lacks originality in perception. As for her works in total, I can't say it's in the level of Nobel, just good but not extraordinary.

Did you read four her books?