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African Diaspora Challenge Read: Helen Oyeyemi, The Opposite House

Well, I have finished my first read of 2010 for the African Diaspora reading challenge.  I read Helen Oyeyemi’s The Opposite House. I have to admit I didn’t love this book. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either.  I felt like I never got into the interior lives of the characters in this book. To paraphrase Karen,  I felt like I was just watching the characters which is not my preferred way of reading a book.  The Opposite House is mostly about Maja, an African Cuban woman working to reconcile (integrate?) her African and Cuban heritage while living in London.  For me she raises the question of can you be nostalgic for something –some place — you have never really experienced? [yes]

As an American I thoroughly enjoy how Oyeyemi plays with identity in this book (heck recently in the US people were actually debating about the use and meaning of the phrase, “Negro dialect” ). Maja is African/Cuban, her partner Aaron is a white  man who was born and raised in Ghana and became totally immersed in Ghanaian culture and language.  So Aaron has confidence in his African roots, Maja does not. Oyeyemi also talks about the Yoruba deities in Cuba and the way they survived in a Catholic country through dissemblance and disguise.  The narrative about the Saints (Yemaya, Oschun) appears to parallel that of Maja and her family. In both situations Oyeyemi explores constructions of self and identity, the connections of self and biography to place, and the question of what happens to the self when you are disconnected from constructions of home.

Though I felt that I could never fully immerse myself in this book what kept me turning the pages was Oyeyemi’s sense of humor and the beauty of  how she uses language.

Note: Just in case I need to say it — I receive nothing for what I write about the books on my blog.  I love books and reading so I write about them.  Peace, Urbanwildflower.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Book Reviews, Books. The entry is tagged under African Diaspora Reading Challenge, Books-fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.