Years back I picked up Manthia Diawara’s We won’t budge: An African exile in the world because it looked like the sort of book that interests me. The blurb, and read me. Flipped through the contets and I said, buy. I did. Read the book and obviously didn't forget it. Liked the story and narrative style quite a bit.
At the end of the book Diawara intersperses his memories of starting a new job as pantry man at a restaurant with remembered feelings about gor-jigen, jege and jaa. This is a moment full of contradiction, but illumination too.
Gor-jigen, jege and jaa were local terms used in the Bamako of the author's young days for man-woman, cowardice in males, homosexuality. Back then a job in the pantry was associated with femininity, gays, or one might say, deficient manliness. I suspect there might be some of that associated with men preparing vichyssoise or salad in restaurant still. There are of course other kinds of jobs and other activities in different places with similar associations.
In Cape Town they have other words with like associations, like moffie. In Johannesburg townships they have is’tabane. In other cities they will have other words. What all these names and labels have in common is that they underline the importance of sexuality to masculinity.
A fascinating narrative about what it means to be young in Mali, arriving in France in 1972, and ending up in the US, We won’t budge, which was published in 2003 and has sold thousands of copies, is not really about masculinity. Then again, it is. Very much so.
So what is it about? It is about an Amadou Diallo getting killed in America, young people wanting to get out of African countries to Europe and the US; about exile, home, identity and alienation; about music, Africa’s failures, racism, migration and writing; about kin and family ties, getting caught up between tradition and modernity, globalization, cultural assimilation, and cosmopolitanism. Is that all? No, actually. The book is about many things. It is after all a story “about how one African sees the world”. And this African sees and reflects on quite a number of things of the world he travels. It would be better if you read it for yourself.
One question that has bugged me for a while is why does a memoirist who spins such a good yarn fail to underline that this tale is about African men as a gender, about their powerlessness and power, their hardships, evasions, triumphs, fights, and freedoms? Because the question of African males as men, imbricated with the question of African men as Africans, is one that has tended to get barely a look.
Men's gender power games, troubles and pains is one gaping hole in many stories of the failures on the continent or inequalities within countries. To be sure, looking into this man-hole changed only around two decades ago; but not by men here. (Interestingly it has been mostly African women who have investigate manhood). And, where change about how to think of the economic, political and cultural problems created and expereinced by men has come to these parts, it's been very slow.
Men's gender power games, troubles and pains is one gaping hole in many stories of the failures on the continent or inequalities within countries. To be sure, looking into this man-hole changed only around two decades ago; but not by men here. (Interestingly it has been mostly African women who have investigate manhood). And, where change about how to think of the economic, political and cultural problems created and expereinced by men has come to these parts, it's been very slow.
Even then, the consequences for societies arising out of men’s gender practices still get short shrift, left, it seems, to sexually, frustrated women, lesbians, wacky feminists, sellouts, brainwashed men, gays, and queers in general.
Why is it so hard to recognise that masculinity is a key axis of social divisions between not only men and women but also intra-male group struggles? The thing is, how a man imagines himself is the flipside of how he views women. How a man loves a woman can’t but be about the cultural construction of manhood. The way one “holds” his body, “pictures” women, views other men, drives, gives his name to his offspring, names his penis, names women’s genitalia, drinks, prays, sings, shakes hands, kisses and braais – these being only some of many signs – are instructive because they are markers used to “separate man from boy”, not only boys from girls.
The moral of the story? How you hold your body around the braai is what ties you as one sort to your men-tribe. That can’t be too difficult to comprehend.
It is, though, one moral of this story. The main theme is that doing stuff in order to affirm masculinity can be everywhere but usually remains unspoken.
It is, though, one moral of this story. The main theme is that doing stuff in order to affirm masculinity can be everywhere but usually remains unspoken.
I have my eye trained on a map of Africa, but I have the world in my head. If you look and listen closely, men’s innocent activities, including writing about their activities, are the marrow of social power. What one needs to do is simply point them out, to speak about them. That is where to start.
To be sure, in themselves, as activities that make you sweat or test you’re your limits, rock climbing or playing footsie are ok, actually. Yet there is no getting around the fact that time-use highly favours powerful men – and the rest of the male group gets the patriarchal dividend. Unless a man has a few slaves at home to cook for him, intellectually stimulate his pre-teen son, bathe his infant daughter, and wait for him with nothing but do-me-bad-stilettos on the kitchen counter, me-time for men is time to cash in some hegemonic masculinity shares. Unless, that is, the use of time has been democratically negotiated, paid for or agreed to let none say there is no sweetness to be king of one's shack.
Doing stuff that on the surface appears to have nothing to do with men’s power over women and other men while it is precisely about patriarchal masculinity is of course how tradition works. At its most effective, tradition never announces itself by name. It happens while we appear to be doing, or not doing, other things – like not washing dishes, like watching rugby, like sitting in a strip club, like sitting on company boards with other men.
A publisher’s blurb and customer reviews of We won’t budge can be found on Amazon: http://www.amazon.ca/We-Wont-Budge-African-Exile/dp/0465017096
A 2006 review of We won’t budge published in The Independent newspaper in the United Kingdom appears here: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/we-wont-budge-by-manthia-diawara-469225.html
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