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Changes: A Love Story, by Ama Ata Aidoo
Aug. 2nd, 2006 12:20 amWhen reading literature from a sufficiently extremely different culture than my own, I sometimes find myself thinking that the cultural gap is both the best and the worst thing about virtually every book I read from such a culture. It's the best thing because it means that the books can open my eyes to worlds and ways of seeing things that I hadn't previously imagined, and that aren't just the product of a lone science fiction writer's imagination, either. But it's the worst thing because the people and the plot structures can be harder to understand, because they're all created in response to a cultural background that I don't fully understand.
The literature for which I find the cultural gap to be so vast that it often supersedes all else that I like or dislike about the books is usually literature from Africa - specifically, East or West or Central Africa, not far enough north to be strongly influenced by the Middle East, and not far enough south to be . . . well, to be South Africa. The countries, in other words, whose names I have in many cases never heard spoken since back when my sixth-grade teacher made me label their names on a blank map for a monthly geography quiz. Ghana, for example. When is the last time you had a conversation that involved any mention of Ghana? Well, I just finished reading a novel by a Ghanaian writer, Ama Ata Aidoo.
I think this novel, titled Changes: A Love Story, should be of considerable interest to many of my readers. Particularly to readers with any interest in polyamory, long-distance relationships, feminism, or West Africa. I cannot claim that the book is a suspenseful thriller that you won't be able to put down, because it's not. To be honest, I would not rank it any higher than average on a scale of sheer entertainingness (though I suspect that's somewhat related to how much got lost in cultural translation for me). But on a ranking of books that make you think about things, this book would do rather well. It's an educational kind of book. Sort of a novel-as-philosophical treatise, but novelistic enough to be a lot more entertaining than your average philosophical treatise - particularly if you're interested in in any of those four topics I just named.
( Why you should read this book, or at least read my description of this book, if you're interested in polyamory, long-distance relationships, feminism, or West Africa. )
The literature for which I find the cultural gap to be so vast that it often supersedes all else that I like or dislike about the books is usually literature from Africa - specifically, East or West or Central Africa, not far enough north to be strongly influenced by the Middle East, and not far enough south to be . . . well, to be South Africa. The countries, in other words, whose names I have in many cases never heard spoken since back when my sixth-grade teacher made me label their names on a blank map for a monthly geography quiz. Ghana, for example. When is the last time you had a conversation that involved any mention of Ghana? Well, I just finished reading a novel by a Ghanaian writer, Ama Ata Aidoo.
I think this novel, titled Changes: A Love Story, should be of considerable interest to many of my readers. Particularly to readers with any interest in polyamory, long-distance relationships, feminism, or West Africa. I cannot claim that the book is a suspenseful thriller that you won't be able to put down, because it's not. To be honest, I would not rank it any higher than average on a scale of sheer entertainingness (though I suspect that's somewhat related to how much got lost in cultural translation for me). But on a ranking of books that make you think about things, this book would do rather well. It's an educational kind of book. Sort of a novel-as-philosophical treatise, but novelistic enough to be a lot more entertaining than your average philosophical treatise - particularly if you're interested in in any of those four topics I just named.
( Why you should read this book, or at least read my description of this book, if you're interested in polyamory, long-distance relationships, feminism, or West Africa. )
