Illicit desires

Crime fiction is not my favourite genre. Just ask my friend Gas Wylde, whose novel based on the Wanda Beach murders I have been struggling to finish – just because I’m afraid it will get too grisly. I confess, I never really graduated from Agatha Christie.

I’m not averse to broadening my literary horizons though, which is why last year I joined a book club that some friends had started. I thought it was time I got out of my literary confort zone (fantasy & non-fiction, and yes, I know those words sound odd together). We have read & discussed some great books, and the latest was – wait for it – crime fiction: African-Aussie Malla Nunn’s A Beautiful Place to Die , set in South Africa in the fifties, not long after apartheid was made law.

Last week I was lucky enough to hear Malla Nunn talk about her books at the Sydney Writers Festival. She opened by talking about growing up ‘mixed race’ in South Africa. For years, she said, she lacked the courage to write, feeling she couldn’t write about white people because she wasn’t white, nor about black people because she wasn’t black. She was stuck in between, a kind of no man’s land. Luckily for Australian fiction, she overcame this mental block after returning to Swaziland to film a documetary about her mother. The trip enabled her to reconnect with the land she left as an 11 year old, and to remember that she had a ‘terrific’ family background and history.

This history included many family stories of life in the early years of apartheid, of a time when people suddenly had to contend with being classified as white, black or mixed race - sometimes in contradiction to how they had defined themselves; when the racial inequalites became entrenched by law; when love across racial boundaries became not merely illicit but illegal. I still find this hard to comprehend.

Mixed race or ‘coloured’ people occupied an uneasy space in this madly segregated culture. Nunn spoke of how they made everyone ‘uncomfortable’, because they were a reminder, indeed, proof, that people had sex, that desire existed in spite of the law. A Beautiful Place to Die is as much an exploration of these ‘illicit desires’ as the back-cover blurb would have it, as it is a story about crime. More than that, it exposes how the madness of apartheid distorted and tainted relationships; how even friendship or casual contact became fraught with tension, hypocrisy, fear and deceit. But also – on the plus side – how ‘people will be people’ and reach out for each other, no matter they are hedged about with prohibitions and judgement; how we strive to overcome the artificial barrier that racism places in the way of being close to other humans.

I found Nunn’s image of the kaffir paths a wonderful metaphor for these complexities. The paths weave through the book as they weave between the black, white and coloured worlds. Frequented in the night by white men who cannot be seen to be using them, they are a twighlight world of their own that holds surprises, secrets and danger. Nunn’s detective Emmanuel Cooper walks the kaffir paths to interview suspects and follow leads in his investigation of a white policeman’s murder. He claims the right of a policeman to go where he wants, but is always aware that any mistake could cost him dearly.

I guess crime fiction is usually the story of killers who are desperate to cover up their secret whatever the cost. In this book, however, just about everyone stands to lose if Cooper exposes the truth about the murder, because the truth is at odds with the entire social structure of fifties South Africa. With the exception of Black Constable Shabalala, no-one really wants him to find out what happened and why. They could lose face and social standing, lose their families, their freedom, their safety, their illusions, their power. Cooper himself comes very close to losing his life. Such is racism.

Nunn said she sometimes tries to imagine how a bunch of white men, sitting together in a room somewhere, could have seriously come up with the idea that they could create a white segregated society in the middle of a country full of black people – and that it would work! We laughed with her – it truly seems bizarre. But it happened. A Beautiful Place to Die skilfully portrays that savage absurdity.

Perhaps you can see why I liked this book – it touches on issues that are close to my heart. I’m glad Malla Nunn found her voice. I’m only sorry I couldn’t figure out, at her talk, how to frame the question I wanted to ask – or perhaps I was too shy. I wanted to ask her how being mixed had influenced her writing – or what kind of difference it made to her perspective – damn, still can’t get the words right! She had partly answered it in her talk, but I wanted more. Perhaps the book itself gives the answer.

A friend of mine reckons our mixed kids grow up with a foot in two worlds & that gives them a great ability to see more than one side of a story or an argument, and to negotiate between the two. I think Nunn is able to do that. Her writing has a wonderful clarity of perspective on the diverse characters and their interests, values and motivations. She writes from a position that encompasses possibilities, rather than a single perspective that ‘others’ those who are different to her, the author. I hope our kids do grow up to discover, as Nunn seems to have done, that the ‘in-between’ world of ‘mixed race’ is a place of strength; not in-between at all, but all-embracing.

Passing on food traditions

Observe the concentration: rolling out the pastry for a 'treat for daddy' - circa 1964. Note the slow combustion stove in the left-hand corner.

My book club is currently reading Brick Lane, which is about Bangladeshi migrants in London. It prompted one of my anglo-Aussie friends (AAs) to comment that she enjoyed reading about the how the food traditions in that culture, and felt that these traditions were lacking in ours. I suspect a lot of AAs feel like that – it’s part of our belief that compared with everyone else we Anglo-celts don’t really have a culture.

Well, I certainly don’t feel that way about food. OK, I do feel a little envious when I see – for example – big extended Italian families cooking together on Italian Food Safari, but I definitely have food traditions that I learned from my mother, and I am actively engaged in passing them on.

These traditions are more to do with baking cakes & biscuits than with meals. I grew up on fairly predictable & plain fare: cold meat & salad for lunch, grilled chops & three veg most nights. This was dictated by time, cost & availability – we were lucky enough to grow our own meat and much of our own veg – as well as inherited English food culture. I admit, it wasn’t hugely interesting, though I was lucky to have a mother who was an excellent cook & didn’t cook the veggies to death. Perhaps that’s why it was over creaming butter & sugar, and learning the tricks for a nice light scone, that we bonded.

My Mum baked cakes, biscuits & slices several times a week to provide morning tea for the various people who visited the experimental farm we lived on, and afternoon tea for her sweet-toothed children. For many years, she did this in a slow combustion wood stove.

My Mum died last August, and it was food that inspired the eulogy I gave at her funeral. This was because I suddenly realised, as I ate a cafe meal of roasted beetroot & pumpkin salad garnished with walnuts, a day or two before the funeral, that I have Mum to thank for my love of fresh fruit & veggies, and for my appreciation of the ‘fresh, seasonal produce’ – that is now a bit of a celebrity chef cliché. My Mum – daughter of a greengrocer and wife of a farmer/green-thumbed gardener – knew all about that decades before celebrity chefs came along.

Just as one example – she instilled in me a love of that strange vegetable beetroot, because she stewed & pickled her own. With that as a benchmark, I can only tolerate canned beetroot when it’s heavily disguised on a hamburger.

So my eulogy became a series of thank-yous to Mum for what I had learned from her, or what I was grateful to her for, culinary and otherwise.

My earliest cooking memory is of making an apple pie as a ‘treat’ for Dad. It had green pastry and I seem to recall that the filling was not very traditional, but Mum had a wonderful tolerance for my culinary experiments. So did Dad, as I’m told he actually ate it. I feel sad when I hear of families were the mother rules the kitchen and won’t let the kids in to learn about food with her. I have countless happy memories of planning, cooking and talking about food with Mum. And of eating it all of course, especially when we had collaborated on Christmas day or other extended family feasts.

I have moved on and honed my skills since then, and one of the activities I particularly enjoy doing with the children in my life is baking. Most recently, some cranberry cupcakes yesterday morning with three of AM’s siblings – Abrantie, G Ketewa & Treasure. It was so much fun & the results were good too.

On other occasions we have cooked ginger biscuits (Mum’s recipe), Anzac biscuits & tried various other classic biscuits from – what else? – the Women’s Weekly Collection of Biscuits and Slices. (Well, I can tell you what else: the Country Women’s Association Cookbook, except that my 1974 edition doesn’t have any pictures to inspire; or my Mum’s own black, food-stained folder full of her collected recipes).

Looks like Abrantie is getting serious about cooking. When I spoke to him on the phone this morning and asked about his plans for the day, they included making ginger biscuits. On another call, his mum, Obaapa, consulted me about buying a mixer as she’djust seen one on special. It could be a good investment; perhaps he’ll end up as a celebrity chef.

But at the very least, Abrantie will grow up with not only his Ghanaian, but also my food traditions. As will my son AM, who at 17 is not hugely interested in cooking, but can still produce (with a little guidance) a mean cheesecake and a succulent rack of lamb. (He tells me – dear little sexist piglet – that he plans to rely on Treasure for his Ghanaian meals when his Dad & Obaapa are no longer able to provide them). Well, given our attempts at cooking Ghanaian food, he may have to.

So yes, I can confidently say that I am a link in the chain of my cultural culinary traditions. Cupcakes rule, ok!

Two’s a crowd

At least, when you’re talking about people of colour in a lot of popular TV series, it is.

This is what I have noticed over the past couple of years while bonding with AM on the couch watching many, many TV series on DVD. There will often be just one major Black or Asian character in the core group of characters, but rarely more than that.

Spooks, That 70′s Show, Big Bang Theory, Hustle, Torchwood, Angel, NCIS, Burn Notice, Sanctuary, Jericho - the list goes on.

In Spooks, which spanned nine seasons & quite a few cast changes, it was particularly obvious. There was only ever one non-white character in the MI5 team. It was kind of bizarre, as though the director was thinking “Oops, better replace the token Black!”, each time one left the series. But it also looked like the director was also trying to phase them out – as each one died a horrible death, he’d be replaced by one that was slightly less central to the action. The Black/Asian characters became more and more peripheral to the plot as the series went on. There was more equal opportunity for the bad guys, who came in a vast variety of skin tones. No surprises there I guess.

I just find it astonishing  – and depressing – that in the 21st century, tokenism still reigns supreme on television. What it says to me is that studio bosses are allowing racism to rule, whether deliberately or not. Either they don’t want non-whites on their shows because of their own racism, or they are afraid of what it will do to the ratings. Apparently the Australian soap Neighbours drew flack from viewers recently for introducing an Indian family into the regular cast. Channel 10 had to remove “angry” comments from their website when this was announced. Makes me embarassed to be Australian. But at least Channel 10 was moving with the times and recognising that not all Australian neighbours are white.

Maybe it is just a matter of time. The Slap, which recently aired to much acclaim, had a multicultural cast that resembled a bit more closely the neighbourhoods and networks in which people increasingly live, in multicultural Australia. (It even had an intercultural marriage and mixed kids!) Perhaps this is because it was based on a novel by a Greek Australian author, Christos Tsiolkas, who didn’t have the anglo blinkers obscuring his view. So let’s hope that as our multicultural society produces more actors, artists and authors from diverse backgrounds, things will change.

I’m not saying it will be easy. It’s not just tokenism that’s the problem, there’s also the phenomena of race-bending, a term I recently discovered thanks to a bunch of fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender “who were appalled by the casting discrimination that occurred during the production of the The Last Airbender film adaptation.” I haven’t seen this film but apparently characters which in the comic series were ‘dark-skinned’, metamorphosed into white people for the film. As a constructive outlet for their anger and disgust, the fans set up an organisation dedicated to campaigning against this kind of misrepresentation.

It’s an important issue to campaign on. With so few parts for non-white people to start with, to deliberately recast Black or Asian characters as white is outrageous. For example, Racebending campaigned for Asian Americans to be cast in a film based on the Japanese science fiction novel All You Need is Kill. However Tom Cruise was cast in the lead. An opportunity missed.

Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, Hollywood seems to feel the need to remake everything in its own image (e.g. Life on Mars, Being Human). Do they really think Americans are so self-centred they won’t watch anything that’s not white-Americanised? I suppose with the billions invested in the industry it’s too big a risk to take. Which neatly shows that the long-standing linkage between racism and economics is still strong.

It was greed and financial gain that set Europeans colonising the rest of the world and enslaving Africans hundreds of years ago. The same motivations are still at play in the entertainment industry, which now commands such a powerful influence in shaping our perceptions and values. It’s crucial to challenge this racist and industrial attitude to the cinematic arts, and insist on film and television that’s more truly representative of the wonderful diversity of humanity.

Music for crying

I usually listen to music in the car. So when my brother, (The World’s Best Uncle) died last year, it was in the car that I chose the music that was played at his funeral.

I did a lot of crying in the car too. It was the one of the few places where I could be absolutely uninhibited about how bad I felt about losing him. The route from my home to the hospital while he was dying, and later to his home, when I was packing up his things, was saturated with my tears. Lucky I knew it like the back of my hand. I drove very safely, even when wailing.

As with books, The World’s Best Uncle – TWBU – and I bonded over music. When we had money, we’d buy each other concert tickets for our birthdays, and go together to listen to the likes of Toumani Diabate, Tinariwen, and Salif Keita.

I’m not sure if I introduced him to African music or he just discovered it himself as a natural progression from the Blues, which was, without doubt, his favourite music genre. I know that he introduced me to Billie Holiday while I was still in my teens, although I never shared his excitement about the Blues in general.

Anyway, deciding on music for his funeral wasn’t that hard – I had plenty to choose from – and plenty of driving time in which to do it.

It was obvious that Blues music should play a big part, and as he had more CDs for Lightnin’ Hopkins than for any other artist, I started out by listening to them. I realised pretty quickly that I’d have to listen to a lot of his CDs before I found something that was suitable for your standard funeral three-piece:  “Entrance into chapel”, “Reflection” or “Farewell”. I didn’t know enough about Hopkins to be able to head straight for the ‘perfect’ song, but I thought a compilation CD would be perfect as background music for viewing the body. It was.

Moving on from Lightnin’ Hopkins, I listened to lots and lots of tracks from different albums – most of it Blues but also several African musicians. Usually I could tell from the first few bars whether or not it was what I wanted. And although at first the process felt a bit overwhelming, it actually didn’t take very long for me to find my short-list. I ran the options past AM and DadaK, and here is what we agreed upon:

For the entrance into the chapel

The funeral director said it should be something that would really bring TWBU into people’s minds. This is a style he loved. And the words – well, they’re for a lover not a brother, but they say what I feel.

For reflection

While this played we laid rusty orange and yellow freesias on the coffin. I know he loved this album. When I listen to it I can see him strolling towards me from a distance, his army surplus bag slung over his shoulder, stubbing out a cigarette before he gets up close. It’s laconic, complex, spacious, easy-going, like he was.

It seems appropriate that the album this track is from, Talking Timbuktu, was released in 1994, the year of the birth of AM, my ‘fusion’ baby. For me the fusion music of Ali Farka Toure and Ry Cooder symbolises TWBU’s enthusiastic embrace of the African culture, history and family that came into his life from the time I met DadaK. I can’t do justice to the depth of his love for and commitment to my extended bicultural family.

He developed his own relationships with them in addition to the times we shared together. He was the World’s Best Uncle not only to my son, but to DadaK’s other children, from the first time he met each of them until the night before he died, when they visited for the last time.  Even then, stuck full of tubes, he was loving, gentle, upbeat, and explaining the medical apparatus to them (typically nurturing their scientific potential!)

For the farewell

The last concert we went to together was Hugh Masekela at the Sydney Opera House in late 2009. The World’s Best Uncle, my precious brother, had just received his cancer diagnosis.  I knew how much he liked Masekela and was determined that we would go to that concert – in case it was the last one we went to together. It was. He loved it. I remember his excitement when he realised Masekela was starting his favourite piece: Coal Train (Stimela), with its percussive build and uncompromising vocals. I remember his enthusiasm before, during and after the concert as he talked to me about Masekela’s music.

Stimela is too long for a funeral. And it doesn’t really have the upbeat, joyous tone that is recommended for the third and final piece of music that plays as people leave the chapel. I haven’t linked to it because I couldn’t find a video link that did it justice. Instead, we chose Uptownship (above). DadaK liked how it starts with drums – identifying it very clearly as African music – and I love the sweet soaring of the trumpet – or is it flugelhorn? TWBU could have told me; he would have looked it up if he didn’t know.

It’s slow to start but Uptownship reaches the powerful, passionate and joyous heights that you need, as you are walking out the door of a funeral, to remind you that you will never lose the love you have for the person you’ve lost.

I’m not sure everyone heard it; the volume was low and the chapel emptied quickly. But AM’s brother Abrantie and I listened until the end, and then walked the coffin out to the hearse. It was a fitting farewell.

Books for healing

Paul Kidby's interpretation of Death from Terry Pratchett's Discworld. http://www.paulkidby.com/

On Sunday I redistributed some more of my brother Mark’s books. I’d taken what I wanted, his beneficiaries (i.e. long time friday night drinks mates) took a car-load of the ones they wanted, and on Sunday a couple of my friends went through what was left and went home happy with assorted histories, whodunnits and the complete works of Shakespeare in one volume.

There’s still several boxes left. This may take a while.

Among those I’d reserved for myself were his collection of the complete works of Terry Pratchett, and the almost complete works of Dianna Wynne Jones and Neil Gaiman. I felt very selfish keeping them back but to my relief it seemed that his mates weren’t into Fantasy anyway.

Mark and I shared a love of the fantasy genre -  if not for him, perhaps Iwould never have discovered it. When I was around 9, he introduced me to The Hobbit and the Narnia books. When I was around 16, it was the Gormenghast trilogy, and so on. He noticed the Harry Potter books before they became cult fiction. I introduced him to Dianna Wynne Jones after I discovered her in a remainders shop.

People dismiss fantasy as escapist rubbish, and plenty of it is; but fantasy can be as refreshing, insightful and moving as any ‘serious’ fiction. And it was mostly fantasy to which I turned after Mark died last November.

By coincidence, this weeks edition of the New Scientist magazine has an article on why human beings are captivated by stories, and how they affect us neurologically and emotionally. Apparently a good yarn can stimulate the release of feel-good hormone oxytocin, and we also use storytelling to “reconcile our conscious and subconscious thoughts”. Perhaps that’s why books have been such an important part of my grieving and recovery process. I get to escape, I get to feel better, and I get to grieve for and reflect on Mark’s death without having to focus too much on what happened – for a change. Whatever the reason, reading has been important to me during this time, and my choice of books has been significant.

The first novel I read after Mark’s death wasn’t actually fantasy, but I had to read it in order to purge myself of the weirdness of my funeral-shopping experience. False sympathy anyone? I think our dearly departed  would quite have enjoyed the humour of meeting a real-live  funeral director who could have stepped straight out of the pages of Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but decided crying was more in character for the recently bereaved. Mr Funeral Director proffered tissues with exquisite and excrutiating tact. Eeek! Where’s my black veil?

I had to re-read The Loved One just to see if in this case life really did imitate art. It did. But the book was also nastier then I remembered, and more bleak, so I don’t know that it did me much good.

[Spoiler alert]

The other books I felt a compulsion to read in those first few weeks were the Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix, which are all about necromancy. Ok, I know that seems morbid, but I wanted to re-read Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen on the basis of just one scene, right at the end of the trilogy, that had stuck in my mind. A powerful necromancer is lured to the final gateway of death and at last has to face the fate he has fought so hard to avoid. And it is transcendent:

… “a night sky so thick with stars that they overlapped and merged to form one vast and uinmaginably luminous cloud … casting a light as bright but softer than the living world’s sun. … [Hedge] saw the stars as he fell, and they called to him, overcoming the weight of the spells and power that had kept him in the living world for more than a hundred years.”

In the end, Hedge cannot resist the call of death – and it is not what he had always feared.

The first time I read these pages – several years ago – I was in tears because of their beauty and hopefulness. Reading them again now, with a loss so fresh, they help me to accept death as a natural end to life. Even though I don’t believe in an afterlife, the image of stars calling still helps me think of death as a last great adventure. I like to imagine that just possibly, death could hold just such a beautiful surprise. And for me this image also symbolises the reality that after death our atoms are merged again with the universe. I find great comfort in that idea, and I suspect that as a scientifically-minded person, Mark may have liked it too.

Another death I am sure he would have been pleased – but very surprised – to meet, is the Death of the Discworld, (pictured above) known and loved by millions of Terry Pratchett fans around the world:

“Death leaned over the saddle and looked down at the kingdoms of  the world.

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY”

- from Mort

Death likes curry and cats, is a great short-order chef and always speaks LIKE THIS. He’s a tad vulnerable and misunderstood. I guess it’s the bones that upset people.

My acquaintance with him has been extensive lately because my son AM has embarked on reading all Mark’s Terry Pratchett books – in order of publication, just as Mark had arranged them in the box under his bed. I’m doing the same, only after him, because AM doesn’t like me reading ahead. In fact he has threatened dire punishments if I do. I had read quite a few of them already, out of order, but starting again from the beginning feels like a form of tribute. Plus of course it’s lots of fun.

“‘I meant’, said Ipslore bitterly, ‘what is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?’

Death thought about it.

CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE.”

- from Sourcery

AM started reading the books just before Mark died, which pleases me because I think they were among Mark’s favourites and he’d been hoping AM would get into them. When AM was around 11 I read him some of the books that were more directly for children, like the Wee Free Men and The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. AM enjoyed them, but wasn’t interested in the rest.  Now he’s older he can better appreciate the rest of them – the humour, the philosphy and the science. When we’re driving somewhere he reads me the bits he finds especially funny – this made our last long drive up to Port Macquarie much more fun than usual, and kind of kept Mark with us, as he often was on those journeys.

I think Discworld Death would have got on well with Mark. They shared a liking for curry and cats. Well, you never know, perhaps they have met. In the multiverse, they say, everything happens eventually.

I don’t recall death ever making much of an appearance in Dianna Wynne Jones’s children’s books, but then, her books are an absolute, wonderful escape from all that is tough in life. They are like comfort food for the soul, only far more nourishing. Set in alternate universes where magic is real, they are quirky, warm, original and elegant.

A friend of mine borrowed all of my DWJ’s and several of Mark’s a couple of years ago and reading them over and over helped her to cope with her daughter’s death. Except after a while Mark began to get a bit toey about getting them back. I’m glad she returned them before he died. He immediately re-read several of them. I think reading  was a big help to him in those last months, to get away from the pain and discomfort of stomach cancer.

Since Mark’s death I feel pledged to carry on his somewhat obssessive quest to buy every single one of DWJ’s books. This is not as easy as it sounds because even though her stories are gorgeous, they are either:

a. so unpopular with Australian readers that bookstores rarely stock them; or

b. so popular that they are snapped up as soon as they hit the shelves.

I suspect it’s the former. We have mostly found them in remainder stores, second-hand bookstores, or heavily discounted. I had plans, last year, to buy a few of our missing titles from Amazon as a Christmas present for Mark. I didn’t get to do that. Oh well, perhaps it would have spoiled Mark’s pleasure in tracking them down. Anyway, if I want to read them now, it’s up to me to find them, and I think I’ll do it the way he did. Since he died, I have found three, almost without trying – although the last one was not in the discount bin and I was feeling a bit poor so foolishly I didn’t buy it.

It felt like an omen, though, that the first one I found, Spellcoats, was all about making magic through weaving. Mark was a weaver. For a few years he was the token male member of Sutherland Spinners and Weavers Association (until some other men joined). He learned spinning and weaving as a young man and then dropped it for 10 or 15 years, rediscovering it again after he was retrenched. I have a lovely collection of his scarves & his spun yarn,  waiting to be redistributed as his books were.

The President of SSWA issues an annual challenge to members and in 2009-2010, the challenge was “Spinning the Blues”. I’ll blog about Mark’s entry in the challenge another time – for now I’ll just say he had a whole story about it that eventually expanded to about 15 minutes in the telling. So I think he would have loved Spellcoats, in which powerful magic is woven into coats in the form of stories that record events and create possible futures. It feels very unfair that we didn’t find the book before he died. Damn and blast. !%@$!^&$!@^!

So in my reading voyage these past few months, Evelyn Waugh has enabled me to shudder, Garth Nix to cry, to accept and hope, Terry Pratchett to laugh and to remember, and Dianne Wynne Jones to both escape and to rage. Pretty much the full gamut of grief. What wonderful gifts.

Circus is in town!

Really hoping I can get to Cirque Mother Africa this weekend. African music & costumes, performers from all over Africa – not to be missed I reckon!  I’m just negotiating with DadaK about taking the kids …

When AM was small, and before the family increased, The World’s Best Uncle & I used to take him to the cicus when we could – Circus Oz, Cirque de Soleil. But it just got too expensive and we couldn’t keep it up. Mother Africa is pricey too, but hey, when are they likely to return to the antipodes? Could be years. So I’m off to TickeTek tonight.

Traditions

AM learning my cultural culinary traditions with grandma. Now a teenager, he avoids cooking unless the outcome is cheesecake.

Hey, all the other Anglo-Celts out there! What do you like about y/our culture? Don’t tell me you like how you can get sushi for lunch and kebabs for dinner. They way I see it, that’s our society, not our culture.

A few years ago I was at a conference where exactly that question was asked “what do you like about your culture”, and because it was a conference about multiculturalism, Anglo-Celtic Australians (who were, unusually, ina minority) were encouraged to speak out. I was disappointed with the response because people answered along the lines of sushi/kebabs as above.

I guess we were all put on the spot.  And the wonderful diversity of Sydney is certainly something to celebrate and enjoy, so in that sense the comments were fine.  But why is it so hard for us to think of things we like that belong to our own culture?

It’s not unusual to hear people – both anglo-celts & others – lamenting our lack of culture. DadaK has said that to me – although I guess compared to Ashanti culture, the A/Cs really do appear to pale into insignificance.

Is this perception of ‘no culture’ because our culture is increasingly like that of the US? Because people have rejected the stereotypical bush culture of Croc Dundee and the Man from Snowy River, but found nothing to replace it with? Because we don’t have lovely colourful festivals?

But I think it is also a symptom of how the dominant culture, while it really runs everyone’s lives, appears invisible. It’s the ‘norm’, and boring in comparison to other people’s. We have to think up things like Mardi Gras and the Biennale to add a bit of life to it. (Not that there’s anything worng with those events!)

There’s another problem – liking your own culture might feel like it’s steering dangerously close to a reactionary nationalism – parochialism and racism. But does it really make sense to throw the baby out with the bath water. Can we genuinely appreciate people from other cultures if we are busy ignoring or rejecting our own? It could appear kind of shallow and grasping – our culture’s no good, let’s have yours.

As a single parent raising a child of mixed heritage I’ve been very aware of this issue. I’ve felt a bit like I’ve had to over-compensate on the African side because he’s flooded with A/C culture every day. But I like to think I’ve also celebrated my own cultural roots.

So here’s a short list of things I like or even love about my Anglo-Celtic Australian culture:

Food

• The Victoria sponge – light -as-a-feather sponge cake layered with good strawberry jam and real whipped cream, the top dusted with icing sugar.
• Butter
• Hard bitey yellow cheddar cheese
• Sunday roast
• Lemon cordial
• The BBQ – like my Dad used to do it, on a recycled plough disc, charred steaks that are pink in the middle

Music

• Irish and Scottish fiddle – how about  Shooglenifty – celtic rock?)
• Bagpipes
• Ok, I’m struggling to think of contemporary Oz music that I like, I admit it. Well, there’s the Qantas song …

Fun

• The dry, dry humour
• Our love affair with the beach
• How my cousin used to call me Fred
• Board games, especially on rainy afternoons

Wisdom

• I love proverbs and probably use them more than is healthy – don’t put off today what you can do tomorrow – don’t cut off your nose to spite your face – babies and bathwater, as above, etc. etc.  Actually I mostly try not to spit them out  but I think them all the time.
• The story of Tam Lin – stolen by fairies and rescued by his true love, who wouldn’t let go of him even when the fairy Queen turned him into a series of fearsome monsters. Tenacity and faithfulness bring rewards.
• Our incredible curiosity. Ok, that’s had some appalling side-effects over the centuries, like colonialism and nuclear bombs, but people of my ancestry have also made wonderful contributions to the body of human knowledge. I guess – end with another proverb  – that’s a double-edged sword.

White humour and people of colour

TV has become an important aspect of mother-son bonding during AM’s teenage years. We snuggle on the couch together and watch all sorts of stuff that I’d really rather not know about. Mostly it’s BBC SciFi like Dr Who, (which I do like) or assorted American crime shows (which I often don’t). Very occasionally (owing to AM”s bad case of cultural cringe), we’ll watch something Australian – usually local comedy.

One of the shows we watch a bit more often is Good News Week, a comic take on some of the more absurd headlines from around the world, live in front of a studio audience. Two celebrity panels ‘compete’ to guess the news behind the assorted skits, props, and  jumbled headlines provided as clues. It veers between outrageous bad taste, wickedly funny satire and hilarious madness … like when a visting British comedian took to the stage with an unlimted supply of shaving cream ….

Well, I’ve started to notice something else about it. A regular guest on the show is Aussie-Egyptian comedian Akmal, and what I’ve noticed is that he ends up being the butt of all the jokes. Well, he’s a comic, so he can cop that – but so are most of the panellists. Why am I getting the feeling they’re ganging up on him? In the funniest possible way of course.  And he parries it well. Did I mention he’s usually the only person of colour on the show? Including, at a glance, the audience. And why am I getting this strong sense of dej vu? Oh, I know … it’s because I’ve noticed exactly the same dynamic happening around AM and his white friends.

AM also parries it fairly well. He is very funny & will often play for laughs, so perhaps he invites & enjoys these friendly attacks. I don’t think it’s malicious – either from AM’s friends or on GNW.  I’ll concede that it’s maybe just a variation on that brand of Aussie humour where ‘good-natured’ picking on people is considered funny, and if the person being picked on doesn’t go along with it, they’re seen as a very poor sport. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that targets Akmal and AM both happen to be be brown-skinned. Maybe I’m over-reacting and it’s all good clean fun. Maybe I mis-interpreted the fleeting look on Akmal’s face that seemed kind of hurt. It’s completely possible he was just struggling to think up a clever riposte. It’s a high pressure job, live comedy.

But I think this particular dynamic probably is a kind of unaware racism. That the white people feel some kind of relief when around a black person who can laugh with them, and at himself. It’s like an affirmation that we’re okay as white people – ‘Look, we’re all friends, no racism here – Phew! Ok, we just happen to be in a majority so it really feels safe to have a go at this guy …. Oh … he’s black?’

I’m all for humour breaking down cultural barriers, but I suspect that a white person would not be quite as comfortable being the butt of friendly ribbing from a group of black people. It might start to feel a bit serious. And actually, is this kind of humour really good for anyone? Especially the bit where you have to suck it up if something hits a nerve.

Anyway, I’ve decided not to take part. Anytime this happens around AM, I vigorously defend him – in a humourous, friendly way. He hasn’t objected to me doing it.

Pick a colour (almost) any colour ….

I’m lucky that one of my brothers subscribes to the New Scientist and so I get to read this excellent mag on a regular basis, although it’s sometimes a month or two old before I get it. An item that caught my eye recently was about a ‘virtual census’ of US video game characters.

The survey found – surprise, surprise – that white adult males make up 85% of game characters. So where does that leave the vast majority of gamers who are not white adult males? In particular, where does it leave young people who have to choose a character that does not reflect who they are in any way? I realise that in gaming, part of the attraction can be that you get to pretend to be someone other than who you are – but do most people really want to be white adult males? Hmmm ….

AM is a keen gamer – possibly addicted to his two faves, Maple Story and Warcraft. In the latter, colour is not so much of an issue as many of the characters are not even human (although there is still a predominance of pale maleness).  In Maple Story, which was developed in South Korea, there are more options and AM has chosen brown skin for the characters he plays. I think that’s a good sign about his sense of identity.

Not long before I read about the survey, I overheard AM muttering contemptuous comments to a friend, about another game he’s tried which only offered the white skin option. So he wasn’t surprised when I told him about the research, it’s something he’s observed himself. 

I wasn’t surprised either, really. I mean, it’s not like books, TV shows and movies are much more representative of the population, when it comes to ethnicity. Tokenism still reigns. Even one of my favourite TV shows, Torchwood, managed to kill off both of its non-white characters by the end of series 2. (Also, incidentally, reducing number of women to 1). I’ll be pretty disappointed if they haven’t reintroduced some diversity in the latest series, (which I’ve yet to see).

It seems hard for predmoniantly white countries to let go of their mythologies about white adult male superiority. Take the movie Avatar, which reaffirms that old Hollywood myth that people of colour can only successfully throw off  their oppressors if they have a white man gunning for them. Ok, this time he was blue for most of the movie, and yes, he learned to see the world differently, but couldn’t Hollywood just once let the white guy back the indigenous people, instead of lead them? I enjoyed the movie – it was gorgeous and entertaining – but the whiteness of it was what stays with me. Yet none of the reviews I’ve read seem to have noticed, let alone critiqued this. The white male ‘norm’ is indeed deeply embedded in how my culture thinks.

I wonder how long it’s going to take  for us to get over this weirdness.

Christmas

My first Christmas, surrounded by my brothers.

Well, that’s another Christmas successfully negotiated. Phew.

Christmas is one of the times of year when the differing cultural expectations in our mixed family come to the fore. I have decades of developed society cultural and consumerist baggage – tinsel, Santa, expensive gifts, hollywood films, roast pork and Walker’s shortbread; whereas DadaK & Obaapa have – well – Christ. In Ghana – or so DadaK tells me – there would be a special meal and visiting, but none of all the other stuff we obsess about in Australia. Of course, it’s a long time since he spent Christmas in Ghana, so that may have changed a bit but still, at the core – Christ.

The thing is, I’m not a christian. I was raised that way, went to Sunday school and all, but rejected any faith I ever had many years ago and now consider myself an atheist. Well, maybe an agnostic, I guess it’s possible something’s out there – but I certainly don’t believe it’s an omnipotent patriarchal god with a special interest in my personal circumstances.

I have tried not to let this interfere with celebrating christmas – after all, it has some great traditions and symbolism associated with it that I always felt it was fun to pass on to your kids. Both the pagan-heritage christmas tree and the birth of a baby represent life and hope and promise for the future, and I reckon making a special day for family is a good thing. I love christmas carols and fairy lights, mince pies and plum pudding. I have fond childhood memories of making presents, decorating the house and tree, and having lots of special things to eat and drink on christmas day, with all the family gathered around.

But I am becoming increasingly disenchanted with the whole affair. This is partly because I seem to have failed in passing on to AM my love of the traditions. Decorating? Great idea – you do it Mum. Christmas carols? Get me outta here. Making presents – you gotta be kidding! To be fair, he has at times shown an interest in all of these things but the only things that have really stuck that he likes about Christmas are receiving presents – of course! – and Christmas pudding, which he would eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I wasn’t around to restrain him.

I’m also a bit disaffected because DadaK and Obapaa don’t buy into all the trimmings much either. They like it if I do it – but aren’t that interested in participating. They admire the xmas tree but don’t want to sit around it for a couple of hours sipping fruit punch, nibbling on mince pies and opening presents in a leisurely fashion (which is what I’d really like to do). They prefer to cut to the chase  – i.e. Xmas lunch – and the present opening is just a quick pit-stop en route to the main event. So what’s the point, really, of decorating the halls for five minutes of chaos? Better save my energies for something else.

Finding suitable gifts is another thing that gets to me. Raised in a culture where children had a whole village to play with, and toys were mostly not available unless the kids made them out of bits of wood and tin, DadaK and Obaapa don’t have the ‘play with your kids’ ethic that I grew up with. This means you can’t give their children toys that require any adult involvement or supervision, or transport to a park.  Until recently, small parts were also off limits because there was always someone under the age of three. This year DadaK has placed a ban on electronic games – which I sympathise with but they were always welcomed by the children. Taking them off the shopping list made gift shopping a bit of a headache that was further complicated by my questioning of the whole materialistic concept. Not to mention the madness in the shops, the expensive crappy gifts that line every toy aisle, and the high expectations of the kids that I could spend hundred of dollars on them.  For something I don’t even belive in?! But then I figured out to get Abrantie some guitar lessons from one of AM’s friends, and extra swimming classes for 50 Cedis so he can catch up to his mates, and it all started to look a whole lot easier.  

If I was a practising christian, I know I’d have something to celebrate regardless of the horrible consumerism that’s grown up around Christmas in this society, and I’d be able to prioritise the spirit of the occasion rather than all the excessive trimmings. It wouldn’t be a frenzy of worrying about presents and creating that ’perfect’ christmas day experience that the media promotes. 

Actually, I am getting better at taking the frenzy out of christmas, and at shaking off my childhood nostalgia about it. We have created some new traditions in our family and this year for perhaps the first time in years I was able to just relax about it – at least on the day.

Our Christmas is a BBQ in a local park. DadaK brings bread, plates, and crates of malt drink. I bring salads (that no-one much eats), gourmet sausages, prawns, fruit and apple cider (cos I don’t like malt). A family friend who works in a meat packing factory brings kilos and kilos of marinated meat which she and Obaapa barbecue. We unwrap (low-budget) presents at the park before we eat. The kids all drink litres of malt and play assorted outdoor games. This year AM even roused from his teenage torpor for a couple of hours and played handball with his brothers a chasing with his sister. It was fun.  It’s what we’ve done every Christmas for about 8 years.  

DadaK and family have made a big compromise in not going to church - unless Christmas falls on a Sunday. They have instead prioritsed spending the day with the atheists in their family – AM, me, and my brother – because we are family. That is so gracious and generous and maybe truly is the spirit of Christmas. It fits with what I most value about the day – celebrating family. The least I can do on my side is let go of Christmas anxiety and keep it simple. Cherish the love.