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A Girl Called Problem by Katie Quirk

Nov20

51zSfrFm2DL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_I have a thing about books set in other countries, especially African countries. Africa fascinates me for some reason. A Girl Called Problem is set in Tanzania in the early 1970’s when President Julius Nyerere encouraged Tanzanians to participate in his program of ujamaa, a socialist strategy emphasizing family and collective farming, to improve the economy and the living conditions of Tanzania’s poor and rural tribal peoples.

Wikipedia is not complimentary about the implementation and results of ujamaa:

“Collectivization was accelerated in 1971. Because the population resisted collectivisation, Nyerere used his police and military forces to forcibly transfer much of the population into collective farms. Houses were set on fire or demolished, sometimes with the family’s pre-Ujamaa property inside. The regime denied food to those who resisted. A substantial amount of the country’s wealth in the form of built structures and improved land (fields, fruit trees, fences) was destroyed or forcibly abandoned. Livestock was stolen, lost, fell ill, or died.
In 1975, the Tanzanian government issued the “ujamaa program” to send the Sonjo in northern Tanzania from compact sites with less water to flatter lands with more fertility and water; new villages were created to reap crops and raise livestock easier.”

In A Girl Called Problem the picture of ujamaa is much rosier. In the book the people of the fictional village Litongo move to a new place to participate in President Nyerere’s utopian project. Thirteen year old Shida (whose name means “problem”) believes that she and her mother have been cursed because her father died when Shida was born, but she knows that in the new village she will have a chance to go to school and to learn from the district nurse the thing she wants most to learn, how to be a healer.

Shida’s grandfather, Babu the village elder, tells the people that they should move to the new village, Nija Panda, for the sake of all Tanzania, and most of them do, although some are reluctant and fearful of the ancestors’ curse. This book is largely about reconciling the old ways with the new, what to keep and what to throw out. and about the sources of fear and strategies for confronting that fear. Shida listens to her elders, especially her mother and Babu, but she also respects and wants to learn from her schoolteacher and from the village nurse.

The book tells a good story about a girl coming of age in a time of change and stress, but two things bothered me about the context and setting. First of all, the author strategically ends her story before the failure of the ujamaa villages, a failure which was stark and catastrophic: “Tanzania, which had been the largest exporter of food in Africa, and also had always been able to feed its people, became the largest importer of food in Africa. Many sectors of the economy collapsed. There was a virtual breakdown in transportation. . . . Nyerere left Tanzania as one of the poorest, least developed, and most foreign aid-dependent countries in the world.”

In addition to glossing over the political situation, the author indicates that Shida’s mother is suffering from what appears to be mental illness, and again, as in two other middle grade fiction books that I read within the last month, the mother makes a quick and sudden recovery as a result of no intervention or therapy or anything. She simply decides not to be depressed anymore? If it were that easy, then no one would ever suffer from what we call clinical depression. Maybe Shida’s mom was just being a stubborn, self-centered old lady when she spent two weeks in the darkness, lying on her cot and refusing to move to Nija Panda. However, whatever the issue, sin or mental illness or both, she certainly makes a brilliant turnaround when the story comes to its climax and Mother Shida (women are called by the name of their oldest child) is needed to tie the loose ends together and make the story turn out well.

I enjoyed reading A Girl Called Problem myself, but I wouldn’t recommend it for impressionable middle grade readers who might get the wrong idea about the glorious efficacy of socialism and about the cure and treatment for mental illness and fear and selfishness. Julius Nyerere, who retired from government in 1985 and died in 1999, is still quite popular and even idolized in Tanzania, by the way, and in 2005 a Catholic diocese in Tanzania recommended the beatification of Nyerere, who was said to be a devout Catholic.

Golden Boy by Tara Sullivan

Sep17

“Burning in the daylight and hunted in the shadows, having albinism is often a death sentence in East Africa. In Tanzania, one out of every 1,400 people has albinism, a genetic condition characterized by a lack of pigment in the body. That compares to a global average of one in 20,000 people.” Huffington Post, June 15, 2013.

“In fact, the number of albino murders are decreasing in Tanzania because of all the publicity and the government’s stern warnings that they must stop. But African albinos still grow up in a world of prejudice and misunderstanding.” NPR, All Things Considered, November 30, 2012

“People with albinism in East Africa face profound social stigma and isolation, due to the negative myths that surround the condition. In addition, most children with albinism have early signs of skin cancer by their teen years, and only 2% of people with albinism live to reach their 40th birthday.” Asante Miraimu website.

Golden Boy, Ms. Sullivan’s debut novel, is the kind of book that impels the reader (at least this reader) to go to the internet and start looking up facts about the problem that is portrayed, in this case the persecution of individuals with albinism. But even without all the fact-finding follow-up, Golden Boy is a good story that highlights the difficulties and sheer pain of growing up and living in a place where you are humiliated and ridiculed and maybe even physically assaulted (or killed) as a result of physical differences. Even those of us who have never been persecuted or made to fear for our lives can identify to some extent with Habo, the albino protagonist of this novel, and his search for significance, his desire to see himself as more than just a zero-zero, the Tanzanian term for albinos.

Who hasn’t been made to feel like a zero at sometime by someone? But for for Habo, life is much more dangerous than it is for most people with low self-esteem, and the stakes are much higher than they are in the typical neighborhood bullying incident. People actually do kill albinos in the place where Habo’s family comes to live. And Habo must run away and hide himself, unable to trust anyone. Even the blind sculptor he meets, who doesn’t know about his secret, may become a threat if and when he finds out that Habo is an albino.

Yes, this story has a moral, but it is far from moralistic. Habo feels and acts like a real person, even as he becomes a fictional symbol for all of the children who suffer from the twin afflictions of abuse and physical impairment as a result of their albinism.

Other reviews of Golden Boy:
My Head Is Full of Books: “Golden Boy has just catapulted itself onto my list of top YA books of the year. The topic, living in Africa with albinism, is certainly a unique one. Yes, it is a story about prejudice and the effects of poor education, but it is also a story of acceptance and of bravery.”
Megan Cox Gurdon in WSJ: “This harrowing but ultimately redemptive story benefits from Ms. Sullivan’s deft use of simile: She writes that panic crawls up Habo’s throat ‘like a hairy spider.'”
Abby the Librarian: “an accessible novel with a compelling plot that will interest kids and may inspire them to learn more about the plight of albinos in Tanzania and what they can do to help.”