He seemed to act out of selfishness and spite even though his mission was to make his people realize that the Masarwa, long regarded as being at the bottom of the human totem pole, were people like everyone else. Throughout the read, I often wondered why the novel was titled after him and not Margaret Cadmore, the Masarwa, whose story it seemed was the one being told, from her birth, to her adoption and upbringing, to her trying to integrate into a Batswana village, and to her marriage. Maru, the man, is next in line to be chief of the small Batswana village, Dilepe where old practices die hard and prejudices linger. Maru, the novel, begins with the end and then spends the rest of the time reflecting upon the past. In either case, this is my first novel by Bessie Head, a South African who grew up in Botswana, and is supposed to be one of Africa’s best-known writers. It’s a Heinemann African Writers Series book, which is notable because when I was a young teenager in Ghana (where I first encountered the series) I thought I would one day finish reading all the books in the series. I can see myself discussing this in an advanced level literature class. Who would have thought a tiny book, a novella of sorts, would have so many heavy themes. It left my head reeling with so many questions and so many thoughts. I picked up this thin book for a quick read on a recent trip.
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