Congo Solo: Misadventures Two Degrees North

by Emily Hahn, Ken Cuthbertson

A woman who lived life on her own terms, Hahn was an unknown and struggling writer when Congo Solo was published. Here - restored to the form she had intended - is Hahn's unforgettable narrative, a vivid, provocative, and at times disturbing first-hand account of the racism, brutality, sexism, and exploitation that were everyday life realities under Belgium's iron-fisted colonial rule. Until now, the few copies of Congo Solo in circulation were the adulterated version, which the author altered after pressure from her publisher and threats of litigation from the main character's family. This edition makes available a lost treasure of women's travel writing that shocks and impresses, while shedding valuable light on the gender and race politics of the period.

Genres: Africa, Travel, Nonfiction, Memoir

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

Emily "Mickey" Hahn was called "a forgotten American literary treasure" by The New Yorker magazine; she was the author of 52 books and more than 180 articles and stories. Her father was a hardware salesman and her mother a suffragette. She and her siblings were brought up to be independent and to think for themselves and she became the first woman to take a degree in mining engineering from the University of Wisconsin. She went on to study mineralogy at Columbia and anthropology at Oxford, working in between as an oil geologist, a teacher and a guide in New Mexico before she arrived in New York where she took up writing seriously. In 1935 she traveled to China for a short visit and ended up by staying nine years in the Far East. She loved living in Shanghai and met both Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai. She became the lover of Zau Sinmay, an intellectual, whom she particularly liked for his overwhelming curiosity about everything, she felt it rubbed off on her, and together they founded the English-language magazine Candid Comment. During her time in China she learned to smoke opium, persisting for two years until, inevitably, she became addicted; she was then cured by a hypnotist.

In Hong Kong Hahn met Major Charles R. Boxer, a married British intelligence officer; in 1940 she became pregnant and they had a daughter, Carola. Boxer was captured by the Japanese after being wounded in the attack on Hong Kong; Hahn visited him as much as possible in his prisoner-of-war camp, until she and Carola were repatriated to the United States in 1943. On his release they got married and in 1946 they arrived in Dorset where she called herself a "bad housewife". Although Boxer continued to live in England, where he became Professor of Portuguese at London University, Hahn lived mostly in America as a tax exile.

Reviews

[Jazzy Lemon · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enjoyable diary of early 20th century African travels.

[Will Ansbacher · Rating 1 out of 5]

In a word, disappointing.
Written in 1931, it is really a series of diary entries, and would not be out of place as a travel blog these days - a blog that is frustratingly scatty and in desperate need of editing. Although Hahn was a singularly brave traveller for her times, this reads like “Valley Girl in the Heart of Darkness”, and the patronizing colonial tone is impossible to ignore either. I must admit, after about a third of the way through I started to skip the odd day, and by the end I might well have been missing all the good bits. But then the book abruptly ended well before she made it all the way across Africa anyway. Was she as bored as I was perhaps?
This is the original uncensored and previously-unpublished version, but golly jeepers Em, historical accuracy doesn’t make it any more interesting.

[Helen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though I am a fan of Emily Hahn’s writing, Congo Solo is up to the standards of neither her short pieces in the New Yorker, nor her earlier memoir (though of a later period), China To Me, nor, contrary to her biographer’s assertion, Isak Dinesen’s lyrical Out of Africa. The narrative is simply her apparently very lightly edited diary of her trip and sojourn in central Africa in the late 1920s and would have greatly benefited had she used her considerable skills to revise it into a real story that should have, in my opinion, included some discussion of the trip’s impact on her. As it was, the diary dragged on for me, particularly toward the end, and included quite a bit of material that could and should have been condensed or simply edited out. It’s still worth reading for its disturbing picture of colonial Africa and the awful mindsets that prevailed among white people at that time, but I imagine there are other texts that tell that story far more effectively. Parenthetically, I am appalled to see other respectable websites and articles describe Patrick Putnam as a “charismatic,” “maverick,””eccentric,” “Harvard-trained anthropologist.” In reality, as Hahn depicts him, he was an entitled, arrogant, immature, amateur who bullied and abused the native population and others once he found he could get away with it. I would have enjoyed reading an older and more mature Hahn’s reflections on him and on her own attitudes and behaviors at the time of her diary’s events.

[Marilyn Saul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having finished "No Hurry to Get Home", I set out on Congo Solo and am halfway through this plodding book. I've realized the difference between Congo and No Hurry, is that Congo is comprised of unrefined diary entries, whereas No Hurry is comprised of polished articles published in the New Yorker and brought together as a memoir. Congo doesn't have any of the smart, snide asides one finds in No Hurry, and is full of irreconcilable inconsistencies: On the way to Penge, Hahn's luggage (including her typewriter and gun) are lost overboard, yet later in the diary Hahn is fussing about who will carry her typewriter on a trek and at one point methodically loads her gun in order to intimidate a native into doing her bidding.

[Molly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Can’t believe this was written by the same author as "Times and Places." Should have applied the 50 page rule, but soldiered-on hoping it would get better. Instead it just got progressively worse. A jumble of bad writing and editing - a mess. The eye-blinking colonial attitude of the Europeans at the time (1931) was also very tough going. The most interesting part of the story was not even told in the book. The person she had gone to visit in the Congo whom she called Den Walker was actually Pat Putnam, a friend she had made in New York, who had fallen in love with Africa and set up a medical clinic/camp there. He was living with three native “wives”, one by Hahn’s account an 8-year-old half-pygmy. In "Times and Places" essay on this trip, she mentioned a wife in early teens tho - makes me wonder now about her “literary license”. Anyway, when Putnam’s well-connected New England family got wind of the book, they made the publisher change names, locations, and all sorts of other edits as “life would not be worth living” had any of this come out. Story has since been recounted in "King of the World in the Land of the Pygmies." Maybe I’ll read one of these days, because the guy was nothing if not an eccentric.

[Molly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Can’t believe this was written by the same author as "Times and Places." Should have applied the 50 page rule, but soldiered-on hoping it would get better. Instead it just got progressively worse. A jumble of bad writing and editing - a mess. The eye-blinking colonial attitude of the Europeans at the time (1931) was also very tough going. The most interesting part of the story was not even told in the book. The person she had gone to visit in the Congo whom she called Den Walker was actually Pat Putnam, a friend she had made in New York, who had fallen in love with Africa and set up a medical clinic/camp there. He was living with three native “wives”, one by Hahn’s account an 8-year-old half-pygmy. In "Times and Places" essay on this trip, she mentioned a wife in early teens tho - makes me wonder now about her “literary license”. Anyway, when Putnam’s well-connected New England family got wind of the book, they made the publisher change names, locations, and all sorts of other edits as “life would not be worth living” had any of this come out. Story has since been recounted in "King of the World in the Land of the Pygmies." Maybe I’ll read one of these days, because the guy was nothing if not an eccentric

[Michael Pearson · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a traveler myself I didn't look to this book as some kind of literary masterpiece but more as the journal of a kindred spirit throwing themselves into the deep end, getting by and popping out eventually with a swarthy story, a scar or two and revolver beneath the belt. The fact Emily Hahn did this in the 1930's as a salve of boredom makes the story uniquely frank, spontaneous and honest. Her self honesty offers an interesting look into the history and mindset of the time, the casual discrimination, equally casual wonder and her growth of character, the foundation of her skills for the years ahead. I really enjoyed it that it reads like a travel diary, though you have to wonder at what stories and weeks were never put to paper, reserved stories for most trusted friends and family.