Just when I thought I'm freed from the shackles of cooking and picking up after the man of the house,I have to be down with a bad flu-the heat is so stifling that it dries up creative juices.
But before that ,I should be thankful to have a chance to have read Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" when I did post colonial literature in uni compared to my teenage yearswhich was limited to fairy tale romances of Mills and Boons or Valley of the Dolls and James Michener's novels.It opened my world literally and figuratively to reflect on the dichotomy of the powerful vs. the powerless,the oppressor vs. the oppressed. May Achebe rest in peace for he was truly representative of "A Man of the People". Isn't it ironical that when the liberators of the oppressed becomes the new oppressors or even worse? Or that which claim to represent "the People" are defenders of "themselves" ,and "a class above the rest".
Despite all that one upmanship and superiority complex of "us" vs. "them",at heart the "isms" and "ideology" maintain the status quo and what Margaret Atwood "The Handmaid's Tale" depiction of the Orwellian dystopia or my latest reading Pramoedya Ananta Toer;s "Child of All Nations"praxis of the oppressed " show that that which appears different is actually the same. ",How different can "An enemy of the state" be from " A prisoner of the state".Wasn't Pramoedya Ananta Toer a prisoner of the state , Nelson Mandela, Aung San Su Kyi?
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