Read African Writers: The Purple Violet of Oshaantu, by Neshani Andreas

In The Purple Violet of Oshaantu, Neshani Andreas of Namibia gives a fictional and evocative portrayal of women heading households as their husbands migrate to work for months at a time. The main character, Mee Ali, is a happily married mother who does her best to look out for her neighbor and friend, a younger mother named Kauna. But it’s not easy: Kauna’s husband cheats on her and physically abuses her. Early in the novel, he returns from a night with his mistress and dies suddenly. As the husband’s relatives gather to decide what will become of Kauna, her children, and their property, Mee Ali tells a series of anecdotes from the past — when Kauna sought advice from her mother after being abused, when an elder in the village boldly reprimanded Kauna’s husband, when Mee Ali accidentally uncovered a secret about Kauna’s husband’s work, and more. The andecdotes slow the momentum of the book, but the portrait of life for women in a society that is simultaneously patriarchal and managed day-to-day by women is multifaceted and insightful. Kauna’s refusal to show remorse for the late husband who abused her is bold and risky. Over the course of the narrative, we encounter a fifteen-year-old girl impregnated by her teacher (“Her own teacher!”), the social hierarchy that the church reveals (“church attire contrasts the haves and the have-nots”), dangerously overcrowded minibuses (“our people don’t care about us… All they care about is making money. A sixteen-seat minibus had twenty-eight people on board”), and disrespected teachers (“To think our own government could do this to me!”) and nurses (“I thought all nurses were witches and b****es until I met Sustera”).

Here are a couple more tidbits that struck me:

This is book #41 in my effort to read a book by an author from every African country in 2019.