Volume 52, Number 2 · February 10, 2005
Voices in the Dark
By Hilary Mantel
Women Writing Africa: The Southern Region
edited by M.J. Daymond, Dorothy Driver, Sheila Meintjes, Leloba Molema, Chiedza Musengezi, Margie Orford, and Nobantu Rasebotsa
Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 554 pp., $75.00; $29.95 (paper)
In May 1863, Eliza M. visited Cape Town, traveling by steamship from the South African port of East London. She was a young girl, Xhosa-speaking, mission-educated, and her first glimpse of city life came as Cape Town was celebrating a royal wedding in faraway England. The ocean had disconcerted her: 'It was unpleasant when nothing appeared....' But as soon as she was on dry land, and the ground stopped heaving, she began to process and analyze for posterity a barrage of new impressions, with a sharp eye and a levelheaded precision that jaded modern travelers would envy. Table Mountain, she reported, is not like a table; all the same, that is its correct name. There were ox wagons, like at home: surprising, that. Everything was so cheap: three pairs of stockings for a shilling. The streets at night were lit up. There were strange trees and flowers, strange food: bananas, crawfish 'frightful in appearance,' and chestnuts; of this item, she adds, on a practical note, 'it is sweet and edible like the potato, you can boil it or roast it.' She saw canaries, and Newfoundland dogs, which she had heard about but never imagined she would meet in real life.
Review, 3322 words
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