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language: Swahili (English tr. Jay Boss Rubin)
country: Tanzania
year: 1971
form: novel
genre(s): literary
dates read: 10.4.26-11.4.26
Tanzanian writer Euphrase Kezilahabi’s Rosa Mistika (tr. Jay Boss Rubin) was first published in Swahili in 1971 and subsequently banned in Tanzania (in schools, specifically, according to Annmarie Drury’s introduction) for its frank portrayal’s of women’s sexuality, domestic violence, and abortion.
Rosa Mistika follows the title character, a girl and then young woman from the island of Ukerewe in Lake Victoria, from her early adolescence — when her abusive, alcoholic father discovers her romance with a neighbor — to her early adulthood, as she navigates her sexuality and the pressures imposed on girls and women. I specify both “girls” and “women” for two reasons. first, part of what the novel draws attention to is a culture of pedophilic exploitation of teenagers by older men and the ways this is enabled by the older men’s social and political authority, which shields them from consequences. while in secondary school, for example, Rosa is unknowingly exploited by a local official who has concealed his age from her but who she believes loves her and plans to marry her, though in fact he has two wives already.
second, Rosa Mistika has elements of a roman à thèse, and its thesis is a perhaps unexpected one: that the sexual exploitation of girls, teen pregnancy/abortion, and the low status of women in general are, at least in part, products of the restrictions imposed on girls in childhood, ostensibly for their “protection”. by denying girls the opportunities to experience the world for themselves (“Ours is a world to go out into, as in see, decide, act”), to explore and make mistakes among their peers and with parental support rather than parental censure, society leaves girls vulnerable to exploitation by men who seem to promise them some measure of freedom and respect. Kezilahabi is committed to something that we might call youth liberation, to changing the social and, perhaps, political structures which make girls into valuable property to be protected and allow them to be, you know, actual kids.
much of the novel is focused on Rosa’s discovery of her sexuality: after several years of dismissing boys altogether, Rosa abruptly decides — basically out of spite — that she wants to go out dancing. this opens two new doors, though the novel ultimately only goes through one of them. after her first night at the club (an atmosphere lovingly described in Kezilahabi’s narration), she wakes up from a dream tormented by, basically, horniness. not entirely understanding what’s happening to her, she goes to her best friend Thereza’s room:
“Can you help me, Thereza?” Rosa said, voice trembling. Thereza had yet to understand what was going on when Rosa leaped toward her and embraced her. They tumbled on top of each other as they fell onto the bed. Rosa started to kiss her but it didn’t sate her desire. Rosa needed that scratch-scratch that was one of a kind. The scratch-scratch of a rough beard and a hairy stomach. A fire blazed in the southern regions of Rosa’s body. But up north, the fire quickly flamed out.
having — at least ostensibly — safely affirmed Rosa’s heterosexuality, the book does not return to this, but I’m fascinated by this moment of queer possibility — first, that it’s present at all; second, that the novel does raise the possibility that sex with another girl could have satisfied Rosa’s desire, if what she wanted had not been “a rough beard and a hairy stomach” (maybe Rosa just needs to find a hairier woman…). anyway, the other door this opens is an expansive interest in boys: Rosa is keeping five different boyfriends, though her favorite is Deogratias, the first man she danced with at the club. but this interest soon begins to spiral out of control, leading her to a suspension, an ill-fated affair with the principal of the teacher’s college she attends, and finally to a betrayal by her fiancé when he discovers — by raping her one night while she’s blackout drunk — that she is not a virgin. in the end, with her parents dead in a tragic incident at a funeral, abandoned by her fiancé, feeling she has no remaining life prospects, Rosa commits suicide.
the novel does not end here, though, or even with a description of her funeral; it ends, rather, with a brief account of a dream Rosa’s youngest sibling, her only brother, had: a vision of Rosa’s “trial” in heaven before god:
MUNGU [i.e., God]: I will ask you again, Rosa. Why have you killed yourself?
ROSA: Ah, Mungu. All this has transpired because of my father.
MUNGU: Zakaria, what do you have to say in your defense?
ZAKARIA: Ah, Mungu. All this has transpired because of her own weakness and wickedness.
MUNGU: Do you have any evidence, Rosa?
ROSA: Yes, Bwana. The whole world.
this, Rosa Mistika affirms, is what is at stake in the story of Rosa’s life: not the story of one woman but the story of the whole world. Rosa makes her own choices — the novel is committed to Rosa’s agency — but she does not make these choices freely but rather in a world that is structured to constrain her from the moment of her birth, in the context of social, economic, and political systems that are constantly reproduced. in a father’s beating of his wife in front of his daughters; in a mother’s admonitions to her daughter before she leaves for school; in an education system that enforces “propriety” at the expense of independent development; in a broader society that is at once obsessed with women’s virginity and not only permissive but actively encouraging of men’s promiscuity. to change the course of Rosa’s life, or of lives like Rosa’s, is not a matter of individual choices: it is a matter of changing the whole world.
better get moving…
moods: dark, horny (in a didactic way), polemic, reflective