SEPARATION: SOMETHING TO WRITE HOME ABOUT

A BOOK REVIEW

Babette Brown’s debut teen Novel, Separation, was a bit of a mystery. I didn’t know what to expect from it. I was a little curious because it promised to be some kind of a historical novel looking at Apartheid South Africa through the eyes of a young privileged white girl. I was also apprehensive because I thought it might possibly turn out to be like the American series of teen romance novels, Sweet Valley High, which my sister’s and I devoured as children. I felt I had suitably outgrown that genre by at least a decade. Despite the fact that the book is set in 1960’s Apartheid South Africa, I expected nothing more than tepid love sick scenes and boredom, which could be a testament to my own teenage life growing up more than a reflection of the book itself. But on turning its pages I was confronted with an emotion that was wholly unexpected. Anger. For that reason it took a long time for me to get through its 334 pages which under normal circumstances would have taken me less than 24 hours to complete.

MAINTAINING THE FICTION

The book is about the politicization of the main character, Jessica, a happy go lucky 15 year old, with a passion for reading and acting, whose childish naivety was annoying and sometimes offensive. Jessica is the only daughter of pro- Apartheid government parents who live in the wealthy leafy mansions of Johannesburg where she is attended to by two house maids and is chauffeured to school and everywhere else by a personal driver; servants who are all black. She lives a happy, sheltered life not very much different from that of the identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield in Sweet Valley, California with the exception that her life is perhaps a tad more opulent in comparison. Life for her however goes on as normal like any other teenagers; obsessing over the latest fashion, boys and music that is until she meets Ben, an outspoken ponytailed know it all who introduces Jessica to a new and dangerous world which disrupts her comfortable life and later pits her against her parents, separating them.

Jessica’s encounter with Ben, a young white boy who is also an anti-apartheid activist forces her to confront her own personal, deep and underlying prejudices against black people, despite having a close relationship with one of her caretakers, Hilda, who took on the mothering role while Jessica’s own mother was out playing bridge at the club or going out to watch the latest play with Dad. Her rude awakening quickly followed when Jessica’s beloved Hilda was fired after it was discovered, during a midnight police raid that she had been sharing a room with her husband who had no pass or permission to be on white premises at night. The police arrested Hilda’s husband and Jessica’s parents fired Hilda on the spot telling her to pack her bags and go, all this while Jessica watched on in secrete.

HELPING THE HELP

It was hard to escape the common trap of viewing the book through a “single story” lens. I realized I felt angry because it was beginning to sound much like the same cookie cutter story line which often dominates the narrative of the black liberation struggle in South Africa, something of an American or Western import. A great example of which is the movie the HELP, a Hollywood film about a young white woman, Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan and her relationship with two black maids, Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson during the civil rights era in Jackson Mississipi. Skeeter is a journalist who decides to write a book from the point of view of the maids referred as the help, exposing the racism they are with as they work for white families.

In Separation, Jessica’s veil of innocence is removed when she discovers her parents’ lies and blatant racism against black people and through the influence of Ben and his parents and Hilda’s replacement Daisy, she begins to dismantle her own single story about black people. It was challenging for me to read Separation without comparing Jessica’s story to my own experience with Apartheid and racism growing up, it was hard to not feel yet again, excluded from the narrative of my own or collective oppression. The novel reminded me of writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichies’ eloquent essay on the “Dangers of a single story” whose consequence she says “robs people of dignity, making the recognition of our equal humanity difficult by showing people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over until they become that thing”. Through movies such as the Help and many other’s I had come to loath the single story of black people who no matter how intelligent, strong, gifted and diverse always needed the assistance or the help of a white kind saviour to make any progress in life. Or the reverse of this which is the single story of all white people, being supremely wealthy, incredibly privileged, very successful and irredeemably racist.

While Jessica’s’ story is typical of many civil rights and liberation movement stories, it does not detract from the fact that it is true that there were many white people who sacrificed their lives, families and comfort to be part of the liberation struggle in South Africa. While the helpless nature of the black domestic workers character in the book is stereotypical, it is true that they were in many ways at the mercy of their employers and or the apartheid government, so they were in fact vulnerable, fearful and uncertain, it is true they they were not always strong, stoic or wise and that they did in fact need all the help they could get. Which brings us to the trouble with stereotypes which Chimamanda explains in her essay that the problem is not that they are untrue, but that the problem with stereotypes is that they are stories which are incomplete.

DISMANTLING THE SINGLE STORY

In Separation Jessica’s own story is complete, she is moved to London where she lives with her grandmother who was also an anti-apartheid activist. Jessica becomes an activist herself and is later re-united with Ben whom she later marries. But the stories of the black characters in the book end abruptly in death or in silence. This made the book more challenging.

The first half the book based in South Africa almost made me stop reading, but my perseverance was rewarded when in London the book opened a keyhole view into the world of activism and the small and big acts ordinary people made towards a cause they believed in, for love.

By the end of the book I realized that I was in fact no different from Jessica, a privileged white girl who naively went through life as if everything was as it should be. She didn’t know that her life was made possible by the sacrifices millions of oppressed black people made each and every day in a socio- economic system that was unfair and often evil. I too, a black, sheltered girl was just as ignorant of my own situation, of my plight while growing up in the dusty township streets of Soweto in the 1980s. I had grown up not knowing that had it not been for the sacrifices of thousands of black people including activists such as those in the book like Jessica’s Gran, Ben and his parents, my hope for a future in which I could be whatever and whoever I chose be would have been reduced to being simply a maid, if I was lucky. I was in my own way priviledged.

It made me feel that perhaps this anger I felt was simply a symptom of years of unexpressed sadness over an invisible and undefinable collective muffling of black womens' voices and stories collectively. An invisible gag order which made it almost impossible to appreciate someone else' story without questioning the validity of my own or asking what about me? It made me realize that I too had become both guilty of and the victim of the single story. It made me think that after all it didn't have to be that way.

The book made me feel, think and reflect on what was gained and what was lost in the liberation struggle in South Africa and in my own personal life from a fresh perspective. It was full of suspense, of sadness, sorrow, love, loss and a bit of South African history at the end. It is a sweet coming of age novel I wish I could have read when I was 15.

“When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is no single story about any place, we gain a bit of Paradise” – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

About the author

Babette Brown was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1931. With her husband and four young children, she left South Africa for London in 1963 where she joined the Anti-Apartheid Movement and later, the African National Congress.

Whilst working as a nursery school teacher and lecturer she founded and co-ordinated the charity, Early Years Trainers Anti-Racist Network and was awarded the Guardian Jerwood Award for her contribution to the charity field.

She is the Co-ordinator of the charity Persona Doll Training and author of Unlearning Discrimination in the Early Years; Combating Discrimination in the Early Years; and Equality in Action: a way forward with Persona Dolls.

Separation is her first novel.

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