BOOK
REVIEW AND COMMENTARY
Fasil
Yitbarek, The Texture of Dreams, Chicago IL: Nyala
Publishing Chicago, 2005. [pp310] [US $19.95]
By
Tecola W. Hagos
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I.
Introduction
It is rare that
people are fortunate enough to witness the emergence of a great
writer, painter, or musician. I consider myself very privileged to
have read the very first book of a young Ethiopian author living in
the United States, in whose future I see monumental achievements
given time and a benign life. Fasil Yitbarek has presented us with a
great gift this year�his first bona fide novel titled The
Texture of Dreams [Nayal Publishing, 2005]. It has been some
time since I read an exiting first novel by anybody from the time I
read a thoroughly enjoyable work, The Bean Trees
[HaperCollins, 1988], by Barbara Kingsolver some years ago, an
unknown female author then. But then, Kingsolver had ample
warming-up period, writing countless articles and summaries for
mainstream publications before she ventured out with a highly
readable first novel. By contrast, Fasil Yitbark seems to have
started his hundred-yard dash from a standing position.
I love reading long
and meandering novels even those that are untidy, sprawling, and
hopelessly disorganized�I mean reading really long novels such as
Tolstoy�s War and Peace, Balzac�s The Human
Comedy (Pere Goriot and others), Dumas� The
Count of Monte Cristo, Stendhal�s The Red and the
Black, Dreiser�s An American Tragedy,
Fitzgerald�s The Great Gatsby, et cetera with
complex characters, all focused on human aspirations, achievements,
and failures, and all superbly written masterpieces. There are
several great novels written in Amharic too, such as Araya,
Fiker Eskemeq�ber et cetera, which I have in mind while
writing this review. There is a common theme in almost all the books
mentioned above that of �outsiders� struggling to become part of
societies� most desirable associations or trying to be accepted by
the �insiders� with power and social influences.
In a way, The
Texture of Dreams, the book I am reviewing here, has the
same generic (universal) theme that one finds in the many
outstanding books mentioned above, but it is also impregnated with
our own (Ethiopian/immigrant) peculiar contemporary problems. It
shares the romantic (Stendhal) style of earlier era and the realism
(Balzac), and to some extent, the modernist naturalistic (Dreiser)
styles of the Nineteenth Century of such great books cited above.
However, I am not making any analogous conclusion between The
Texture of Dreams and the books mentioned above on questions
or matters dealing with length or organization; Fasil Yitbarek�s
book is quite compact, well organized, and engaging work.
II. Fasil and His New
Book
Writing a book
requires great passion, skill, endurance, and faith. It is not a
task that one can indulge at a whim. Having written several books
and essays, I know first hand that writing is a lonely endeavor like
running a great Marathon. One must have great passion for the
written word in order to sit and write hour after hour, month after
month, and even year after year. One must also have great faith that
there would be a finished product sometime in the future. It is not
a glamorous task, with no one to encourage and applaud from the
sideline or at the finishing point. The fact is that writing of any
kind is a very lonely, time consuming, and demanding task.
Now, let me start
from the beginning, from the title of the book by Fasil [I will use
his first name in conformity to Ethiopian form of addressing
individuals not as a sign of disrespect but as a sign of closeness
and admiration]. Fasil gave his first novel a title with much nuance
and tremendously invocative imagery. The phrase �the texture of
dreams� is near perfect poetic expression for a title of a novel,
which more or less envelops the non-material content as the paper
binding does of the physical tome. Of course, titles are meant to
catch our attention. How else can we get to a book at the briefest
of moments while glancing at bookshelves or sampling books on
display tables? Although I applaud the choice of expression by Fasil
for the title of his book, the design of the book cover does not do
justice to such a marvelous title. The prints are too small for the
title and the color scheme too subdued. Maybe a far superior sense
of aesthetics could be the case compared to my more passionate sense
of design and color.
The book seems to
have an element of autobiography, as is the case with all good
novelists� first narrative works. It is both technically wise and
cognitively plausible to base a story line and keep it moving
chapter after chapter, page after page having oneself as a companion
running along the entire course. Fasil has structured and developed
his narrative in highly engaging manner. Usually most current
authors indulge in using several threads of story lines where the
characters in confusing manner are weaved in and out of such
narrative threads. Fasil used far simpler and easier to follow
narrative structure compared to other contemporary writers. I do not
think it has to do with lack of sophistication or experience, but a
different approach of story telling, Fasil�s being in the great
tradition of native oral storytellers where clarity in a single
thread is of paramount importance to hold the listeners attention.
III. Fasil as
Craftsman
I suppose that Fasil
developed his main theme from a composite of uprooted individuals�
personal experiences in a strange and often hostile place of new
residence or place of refuge. The main theme of the book is simple
and almost innocent. There are no ghosts or mummies popping out from
crypts and potholes. Reading the book gives you a sensation of a
pleasant morning walk around a country side full of sunshine, even
though the story unfolds in urban areas such as Queens, Manhattan et
cetera. No one can ever get more urban than that. The characters in
Fasil�s narration are quite familiar to most of us uprooted human
beings. The story line starts with a young boy from a poor family in
a provincial town in Ethiopia and culminates in a far off dream
country. The boy first has to go through a local high school and
then graduate from Addis Ababa University. After graduation and a
couple of years stint in some government job, he finally finds his
way to the United States and lives happily ever after. There you
have it, the whole three hundred pages of it. But, to reduce such a
richly textured novel into such skeletal thematic rendition will be
a gross injustice.
The Texture of Dreams
is a book worth reading not only for its moral and ethical content
but also for the richness of its language, for its humor, and for
its address of the human condition in the struggle of a young man in
a strange and often hostile society. Fasil has the insight of a much
older person in seeing humor in some of our pathetic effort to be
respectable or dignified in a rude modern world. Nevertheless, Fasil�s
humor is not the type of humor that sneers and hiss at us, but the
one that lightens our existential burden. Even his occasional
cynicism has a tinge of human compassion. No question the book is
well written even if there are few clich� phrases and some overused
expressions. Despite such very few disconcerting flaws, one cannot
help but see a great writer in the making. No question that Fasil
has the gift of a great storyteller, and it is only a matter of time
his skill will be fully realized.
Yosef Temesgen is the
main narrator and character of the book. Fasil did develop quite
well Yosef Temsgen�s character even though he completely failed to
place him in a real place in Dessie or later in Addis Ababa. The
story is supposed to start in Dessie, in a town I was born and grew
up. Fasil did not give us a sense of Dessie as a place through
description of landmarks and familiar popular spots. Dessie is a lot
more than just �dusty roads� and a couple of churches. It is a
wonderfully complex provincial town with a rich history and home of
some of the most fascinating historical figures in Ethiopian history
such as King Michael, Lij Eyassu, Woizero Mentwab, Ras Wolei,
Dejazmach Aboye et cetera from its past. I very much wish that Fasil
had spent some of his invocative statements to that aspect of the
town that would have helped us understand the pride and aspiration
of his main character Yosef Temesgen. What Fasil did was create a
space, but failed to fill it up in order to make it �a place�
where people live, grow, love, or die. The same could be said also
about Fasil�s cursory Addis Ababa.
The
official line of the �American Dream� dictates that hard work
and rational action would lead anyone to succeed greatly in the
United States. Of course, that is one of the greatest lies told
people in the hope of giving them the right motive to work rather
than get busy killing each other in their newly adopted home. The
truth of the matter is that people, immigrant or not, who succeeded
here in the United States would have succeeded elsewhere any ways.
The �American Dream� is just one of those harmless lies that
keep up the spirit of expectation for new immigrants coming to the
United States. It would have been heartless for anyone to tell such
starry-eyed new comers, some of whom barely surviving by their skins
from the torture chambers and prison camps back in their native
nations under brutal leaders, how tough and dehumanizing life in the
United States can be.
IV.
Fasil as Innovator and Social Critique
I suggest that people
read this novel by Fasil carefully. There are remnants of layers of
American racist culture still at work that need be exposed and
evaluated for what they are. Our teachers and parents to a limited
extent during our schooling, even in high schools and at the
University levels, until the 1970s failed us by not exposing the
truth to us about the racism and the dehumanizing Jim Crow society
of the United States. Whether it was at school or at home, no one
told us the brutal history of slavery in the United States, or how
folks of African decent were lynched, dehumanized, and discriminated
against during the period we were growing up in blissful ignorance
in the 1950s and 1960s. We knew nothing growing up in Ethiopia how
brutally and savagely the United States government dealt with native
people (Indians) in its history. The irony of it all was that we
cheered innocently on the side of the cowboys in their fights
against native people (Indians) while watching cowboy movies in
movie houses left behind by the Italians in their five years
occupation of Ethiopia. Our ignorance of the human degradation in
the United States was unbelievably complete and shameful. Even the
arrival of Peace Corps volunteers, who were mostly idealistic young
men and women, in the early 1960s in Ethiopia did not educate us
much about the United States social, cultural, and political
background. I am not beating upon the United States, for it has made
tremendous strides since then toward its ideal state, but sadly, in
the process it has created new social and political problems in the
rest of the world as well.
In fact, our
Ethiopian social structure was very polarized and the people very
jaded due to Haile Selassie�s obsession to modernize Ethiopia, and
the nation as a whole was in some form of mass hypnosis. We were
oblivious of the deep harm being inflicted upon us by the types of
cosmetic changes that took place (and still taking place) profoundly
affecting our pride and ethical standards. The hyphenation of the
population was extremely disconcerting such that in one of the
schools in Dessie (I believe, Negus Michael) there was a certain
teacher who used to wear full cowboy gear with boots and toy guns on
his hips to school and around town. And, gleeful school kids
followed him around with great admiration. I was in middle school
when we started to know of the outside world, and we started trying
to imitate that utterly despicable teacher and the cowboy movie
stars we watched on screen, with our homemade straw hats and winter
rubber boots. If we had been instructed properly, it would have
saved us a lot of pain from dreaming of the United States as our
ultimate destination later in our lives. Such timely knowledge of
the reality abroad, whether it is in the United States or Europe,
during our formative years would have helped us build our character
not to have any illusions about the outside world. The only bad
people we were taught about were the Italians who attempted twice to
subjugate us.
No doubt, a young
artist has much to learn, but learning has two stages of short-term
intense experience/learning and also that of a life long process. I
am conflicted often deciding whether a life lived longer would open
greater possibilities or dulls ones sensitivity and clogs ones
receptacles. There is much to be said for �fresh life� like a
newly minted shinny penny not yet tarnished or worn out by
existential drudgery. I am not extolling inexperience or stupidity,
but simply pointing out the fact that with a certain degree of
intelligence and eagerness to learn even a very young person is
capable of producing works of art of great depth and richness. Thus,
I believe that every young artist must not think of his work as a
work in progress even as he toils along finding his way, but as a
life being lived to its maximum.
Fasil has brought to
life, to varying degrees of vitality, some memorable characters
other than the main character Yosef Temesgen, whom we feel we have
met at some point in our lives while living as strangers in new
places. Would it have mattered that the incidents and events in the
book mainly took place over ten thousand miles from our homeland? I
think not. The Ethiopian friends of Yosef are shadows in the
narration; I wish Fasil had given them more substance. For example,
I am left wondering what exactly was Yosef�s relationship to the
two Ethiopian young women who came to receive him at the Kennedy
Airport. I was expecting some thing more intimate to develop between
Yosef and one of the young women. It did not. It would have been
interesting for Fasil to explore why such normal affinity in between
new immigrants did not develop in the case of the Ethiopian
immigrants in his novel. By contrast, the case with other immigrant
groups, except maybe the Chinese and other East Asian new arrivals,
may give us some light to this interesting phenomenon that Fasil
chose not to explore.
Thank God that we are
spared from overt sexual scenes being described to us by Fasil. It
is gratifying to see that Fasil has still maintained his Ethiopian
modesty when it comes to talking or writing about sexual
relationships. I was relieved that his narration of intimacy is
quite brief and left more to the imagination of the reader than
being splashed on print paper. Maybe after a few more novels, I
might expect him to be more adventurous in his writing involving sex
and relationships. The story in his first novel is so engrossing
that such items were not necessary in order to shore up his novel. I
neither miss nor sought for such explicit narrative dealing with sex
in this particular novel.
One other exquisitely
developed character is the elderly landlady, Mrs. Beverly Hanson.
She is introduced to us quite early in the story in Chapter 8 and
remains with us all the way to the end of the book, over thirty
Chapters later. Along the way she gave us memorable times both happy
and sad. Fasil, as a moralist and social commentator, is doing his
social critique through the relationship of his main characters
Yosef, the �alien,� and Mrs. Hanson, the quintessential American
elderly woman. In a way, through Yosef we too are having an intimate
dialogue with America itself. Not only that but also we are meeting
(seizing-up) ourselves for the first time in the person of Yosef as
immigrants, a new experience most of us in the Diaspora.
V. Fasil as Weaver of
Hope and Builder of Bridges - Conclusion
The main character
Yosef Temesgen is the type of person I would have liked to know and
befriend, for he has so many admirable qualities including a healthy
self-love. I applauded when Yosef decided to teach and not be part
of the teachers� strike going right through the picket lines of
the demonstrators at the school he was teaching. I would have joined
the strikers not because I wholeheartedly supported them, but
because I would have been intimidated and would have wanted to �confirm.�
Peer pressure would have been also another factor that would have
forced me to join the strikers, as I have done many times over
demonstrating against Haile Selassie�s Government in my student
days. I still have problem distinguishing between legitimate
self-love and unacceptable narcissism and greed. Fasil in the
character of Yosef resolved that issue for us very wisely�a
resolution that is far beyond Fasil�s numerical age.
I am bringing up this
issue of a healthy self-love here because it is a very important key
to understanding why Ethiopians remained under stagnant political
and economic oppressive systems for hundreds of years. I believe
that Ethiopians in general and more so highlanders have very much
underdeveloped or corrupted sense of self-love. It might have to do
with the relentless discipline from both the religious fathers as
well as from biological fathers of every child in every family
required of a society constantly under siege of possibility of
attack from the surrounding marauders and Arab and European
colonialists. Probably Professor Donald Levine, whom I admire and
respect greatly and even more so especially after reading about his
recent Chicago interview, would disagree with me on this point
because his thesis in his famous book Wax and Gold
speaks of well-developed sense of individuality at least in the
Amhara people of Menz where he conducted most of his research. I
think he had misread the �individuality� he observed and admired
in his research, and as result has given it an exaggerated
importance in Ethiopian culture. Ethiopians have gone through an
extended traumatic social condition since the Sixteenth Century and
as a result our individuality and our connection to society is a
confused one. I am not beating on us, but rather hoping to help us
understand the forces that shaped our sense of morality and communal
responsibilities, with the hope of helping us solve our political,
social, and economic problems.
Levine or others seem
to be writing without making a distinction between the two aspects
of �individualism� as described herein. It seems to me that �individualism�
has two distinct phases: on one side, we have the narcissistic
destructive type limited in scope literally by the skin of the
individual, and on the other hand, we have the healthy �individual
self-love� that is the foundation for the formation of all healthy
nuclear families. The later aspect of individualism extends the
privileges and rights craved by an individual to the immediate
family members of such a person. For example, a father with such
healthy self-love will not impose tyrannical rule on his wife or
their children, and the other members of such a nuclear family are
also considerate of each other�s needs and interests and thereby
have respectful and devoted relationship with each other. They all
push to maximize the success of each member of the family and not
just feed into the hierarchy.
I believe that
writers (historians, sociologists, jurists et cetera) who speak of
communal and extended family relationships as positive aspect of
social organization in Africa and elsewhere have misread or confused
such relationships with the highly evolved communitarians.
Conformity to the norms and demands of a group or to the hierarchy
is not communalism in its positive sense, but a perverted and
deformed individualism. It is not at the higher end of moral
development, but at its most primitive base. If we use as our
measurement of moral growth Kohlberg�s three level (and divided up
into six stages or phases) of moral development, the type of moral
development of the individual in a tribal or extended family system
is to be found at the first level (stage one and two) of fearfulness
and underdeveloped sense of right and wrong or justice. A true
communitarian personality would have a well-developed sense of
justice, fairness, and courage to defy the norms and expectations of
a group if such norms and demands violate that individual�s highly
evolved morality of sense of justice and fairness. At such elevated
state, the interest of the community as a whole is best served in a
far more profound manner. Such individual would measure in level two
(stage four) or level three (stage five) on Kohlberg�s scale of
moral development. Conformity is a deformed and excessive
individualism.
It is in this sense
that I appreciate Fasil�s treatment of the dilemma that Yosef was
faced with as teacher and as new immigrant. Fasil through Yosef
resolved the dilemma effectively by choosing the path of a healthy
self-love and by not conforming to the demands of others with no
less selfish acts of irrationality and deformation. In that single
narrative by Fasil of Yosef breaking through the strike-line,
walking in to his class to teach, and facing his immigrant students,
most of whom were from the old Soviet Union, we participate in the
intensity of the drama and that of our own existential trial. For
ones, I am happy to know of an individual, even if a character in a
work of fiction, acting responsibly and courageously against mob
psychology and jingoistic social concern.
Fasil as a new young
immigrant has to asses properly his role in the United States, and
to a lesser extent justify his presence at such a safe place when
most of our countrymen (women) are at sever and immediate danger of
disintegration into a cauldron of civil war. He approached that
issue to some extent in the development of Yosef�s character in as
far as Yosef is settling down in the United States growing his roots
into its social fabric. With that settling down in the United States
in mind, I would have liked to read some suggestion of some nascent
involvement of Yosef in the acquisition of real wealth in the United
States. Yosef is still at the stage of �a jaded new American
consumer� when we left him at the end of the book. We all must
understand that wealth is the source of political power in the
United States or else where in most of the world, and the source of
that wealth is real estate. Caucasian Americans have been
effectively controlling the acquisition of property since the
colonial period to date. They use now a self-serving
credit-worthiness scheme of lending almost one hundred percent
exclusively to their own kind, and bar most non-Caucasians,
especially people of African decent, from participating in the
fiction of the �American Dream� of acquisition of property. Of
course, there are a couple of minority groups in the American
society, with distinct advantages of affinity with the majority, who
have breached such artificial barriers. However, such groups cannot
be used as models for effective change to level the field for
everyone.
There are certain
things that need be said here and now. Despite all that heart
wrenching injustice and cruelty in its history, the United States is
still the one place on Earth that is constantly adjusting, and
reexamining its social, political and economic as well as its
jurisprudence all the time. The United States (not Africa, Europe,
Asia, or Latin America) one can claim with justification is the one
place on Earth where Black people have gained some respectability
that can be measured and appreciated worldwide. I am also aware of
the atrocities committed by Europeans and others on their own people
in the past, maybe even worse than that in Africa, but they have
much to show now in their political and economic development. Africa
in general is the worst place for black Africans. Africa has
degraded, persecuted, and dehumanized most of its own indigenous
African population, with nothing to show for all that suffering. And
this human tragedy includes Ethiopia. We do not have to strain
ourselves looking for evidence to justify my statement, for the
history of the Continent of the last sixty years is evidence enough.
I am very much aware of the fact of the �Caucasian hand� working
behind the many brutal African leaders who had committed atrocities
and looted billions of dollars or equivalent in Africa. However,
that is not a good excuse, and it is precisely my point that
illustrates our failure as people and civilization so far.
In conclusion, I must
emphasize the fact that Fasil is a bridge builder of understanding
and appreciation between two distinct cultures. In the process of
developing the intricate interaction between the two main
characters, Yosef and Mrs. Hanson, Fasil has successfully humanized
America, the frightful Gargantuan figure that devours its own
children/people and grow ever fatter and more powerful. In addition,
Fasil properly trimmed down the United States to its human size
exposing its vulnerability and weaknesses, warts and all. In the
activities of Yosef, we too are making our peace with our immigrant
status and overcoming our feeling of being in transition and
changing our touristy attitude toward the United States to that of
settlers. By the end of the Book, even Queens is not a frightening
location. Just like America itself, America�s forbidding part has
become a place and a home too�a transformation that took place in
the magical hands of a promising writer. This is a book worth
rereading. Bravo! Fasil, for a job well done.
Tecola W. Hagos
August 23, 2005
______________________
You can order the book from https://www.amazon.com,
https://www.nyalapublishing.com,
or from Nyala Publishing at 1250 W. Addison, Chicago, IL 60613-3840,
Tel: 773-883-9818
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