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Going Home: Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing's Travel Memoir of Southern Rhodesia, Identity, and Colonial Legacy
"Africa belongs to the Africans; the sooner they take it back the better. But a country also belongs to those who feel at home in it. Perhaps it may be that love of Africa the country will be strong enough to link people who hate each other now. Perhaps..."
Going Home is Doris Lessing's account of her first journey back to Africa, the land in which she grew up and in which so much of her emotion and her concern are still invested. Returning to Southern Rhodesia in 1956, she found that her love of Africa had remained as strong as her hatred of the idea of "white supremacy" espoused by its ruling class. Going Home evokes brilliantly the experience of the people, black and white, who have shaped and will shape a beloved country.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
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257 people want to read
About the author
Doris Lessing
475 books3,186 followersDoris Lessing was born into a colonial family. both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer), Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.
In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and later had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.
During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.
In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.
In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.
She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
(Extracted from the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin, HarperPerennial, 1995. Full text available on www.dorislessing.org).
In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and later had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.
During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.
In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.
In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.
She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
(Extracted from the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin, HarperPerennial, 1995. Full text available on www.dorislessing.org).
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
September 4, 2023
Fascinating to read about Lessings trip in 1956 to what is now Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. The apartheid and the doomed attempt to create a Federation of those countries through the weird policy of partnership. Of course, it was partnership between in name only.
Lessing using actual articles in Rhodesia and interviews with people is fascinating and the oppression to the Africans staggering. Although a few stood up like Simon Lukas deported to England. His life was fascinating he lived till he was 95 and returned to Zambia. His life was extraordinary and restores one’s faith in humanity.
Lessing in a epilogue 11 years later and in 1982 recognizes her naivety about Communism. Well worth a read to understand the history and oppression in those Central African countries.
Lessing using actual articles in Rhodesia and interviews with people is fascinating and the oppression to the Africans staggering. Although a few stood up like Simon Lukas deported to England. His life was fascinating he lived till he was 95 and returned to Zambia. His life was extraordinary and restores one’s faith in humanity.
Lessing in a epilogue 11 years later and in 1982 recognizes her naivety about Communism. Well worth a read to understand the history and oppression in those Central African countries.
September 19, 2008
It is fifty years since Doris Lessing published Going Home, an account of her return to Rhodesia, the country where she grew up. By then in her thirties, she had already achieved the status of restricted person because of her political allegiances and her declared opposition to illiberal white rule. These days Zimbabwe makes the news because of internal strife and oppression. It is worth remembering, however, that fifty years ago the very structures of Southern Rhodesian society were built upon oppression, an oppression based purely on race.
Fifty years on Doris Lessing’s Going Home an historical record of this noxious system, a record that is more effective, indeed more powerful because of its reflective and observational, rather than analytical style. Doris Lessing, a one-time card-carrying Communist, laid a large slice of the blame for the perpetuation of discrimination firmly at the door of the white working class. Though not all white workers were rich – indeed she records that many were abjectly poor – what they had and sought to preserve was an elevated status relative to the black population. She describes white artisans as white first and artisans second. Though trade unions actively sought equal pay for equal work, they never campaigned for any kind of parity for black workers. On the contrary, they demanded the maintenance of racially differentiated pay rates. How’s that for the spirit of socialist internationalism and brotherhood! (I accept there is a misplaced word there…). In fact Doris Lessing records that it was the relatively liberal capitalist enterprises that demanded more black labour, their motive of course arising from cost savings, not philanthropy. So trade unions spent much of their time making sure that companies hired their quota of higher paid, white labour.
Even in the 1950s, she remarks on the likelihood that many Africans were already better educated than their white counterparts. White youth shunned education as unnecessary, while Africans saw it as a possible salvation. She notes that the people who treated the African population the worst were recent immigrants from Europe, particularly those from Britain, who tended to be less educated themselves and drawn from the ranks of the politically reactionary. Such people, apparently, were equally critical of immigrants from southern Europe, and expected Spaniards and Greeks to work for African wages, not the white wages that they themselves demanded.
The situation in Rhodesia, clearly, had to change. Not only was such crass discrimination unsustainable, it was also comic, as are all racially posited class systems. While the South Africans over the border created honorary whites of the Japanese they increasingly had to do business with, the Rhodesians went through their own equally idiotic contortions. An example of such nonsense is quoted by Doris Lessing when she remarks that there was a privileged group of Africans who were granted the right not to carry passes with them at all times, as long as they carried a pass to record their exemption.
But it is also worth remembering that Doris Lessing, herself, was a banned person, unable to travel to certain places and very much under the watchful eyes of the authorities. In Going Home she observes a society that had to collapse under the weight of its unsustainable contradictions. The fact that this took more than twenty years after the book was written was nothing less than a crime, and probably contributed to the subsequent and equally lamentable reaction.
Doris Lessing records seeing a British film towards the end of her travels. She describes it as a “cosy little drama of provincial snobberies and homespun moralities played out in front of African farmers in their big cars”. Fifty years on, Britain is probably cosy and provincial, and the snobberies are still rife. But now it is not Rhodesia where these reactionaries look down on people of other races overpay and under-educated themselves. It is not in Africa where corporations would dearly love to employ cheaper labour, imported if need be. Rhodesia’s white privilege of the 1950s was obviously absurd. But there are some parallels with economic and class relations in the Britain of today and, like all good books, Doris Lessing’s Going Home may even add prescience to its qualities.
Fifty years on Doris Lessing’s Going Home an historical record of this noxious system, a record that is more effective, indeed more powerful because of its reflective and observational, rather than analytical style. Doris Lessing, a one-time card-carrying Communist, laid a large slice of the blame for the perpetuation of discrimination firmly at the door of the white working class. Though not all white workers were rich – indeed she records that many were abjectly poor – what they had and sought to preserve was an elevated status relative to the black population. She describes white artisans as white first and artisans second. Though trade unions actively sought equal pay for equal work, they never campaigned for any kind of parity for black workers. On the contrary, they demanded the maintenance of racially differentiated pay rates. How’s that for the spirit of socialist internationalism and brotherhood! (I accept there is a misplaced word there…). In fact Doris Lessing records that it was the relatively liberal capitalist enterprises that demanded more black labour, their motive of course arising from cost savings, not philanthropy. So trade unions spent much of their time making sure that companies hired their quota of higher paid, white labour.
Even in the 1950s, she remarks on the likelihood that many Africans were already better educated than their white counterparts. White youth shunned education as unnecessary, while Africans saw it as a possible salvation. She notes that the people who treated the African population the worst were recent immigrants from Europe, particularly those from Britain, who tended to be less educated themselves and drawn from the ranks of the politically reactionary. Such people, apparently, were equally critical of immigrants from southern Europe, and expected Spaniards and Greeks to work for African wages, not the white wages that they themselves demanded.
The situation in Rhodesia, clearly, had to change. Not only was such crass discrimination unsustainable, it was also comic, as are all racially posited class systems. While the South Africans over the border created honorary whites of the Japanese they increasingly had to do business with, the Rhodesians went through their own equally idiotic contortions. An example of such nonsense is quoted by Doris Lessing when she remarks that there was a privileged group of Africans who were granted the right not to carry passes with them at all times, as long as they carried a pass to record their exemption.
But it is also worth remembering that Doris Lessing, herself, was a banned person, unable to travel to certain places and very much under the watchful eyes of the authorities. In Going Home she observes a society that had to collapse under the weight of its unsustainable contradictions. The fact that this took more than twenty years after the book was written was nothing less than a crime, and probably contributed to the subsequent and equally lamentable reaction.
Doris Lessing records seeing a British film towards the end of her travels. She describes it as a “cosy little drama of provincial snobberies and homespun moralities played out in front of African farmers in their big cars”. Fifty years on, Britain is probably cosy and provincial, and the snobberies are still rife. But now it is not Rhodesia where these reactionaries look down on people of other races overpay and under-educated themselves. It is not in Africa where corporations would dearly love to employ cheaper labour, imported if need be. Rhodesia’s white privilege of the 1950s was obviously absurd. But there are some parallels with economic and class relations in the Britain of today and, like all good books, Doris Lessing’s Going Home may even add prescience to its qualities.
September 26, 2022
Doris Lessing had been in Britain and came back to Africa, where she grew up.
One of the reasons why I have such respect for Lessing is because she supported the Africans and wished them to obtain the same rights as the Whites, equal pay and the same opportunities for work. Her neighbours believed that the Blacks had a lower intelligence than the Whites, were backward and could not do skilled work. She knew this was untrue, though they did need more education.
She writes much about the colour bar, which was what everyone talked about there.
The drawbacks to the book are that it was first published in 1957, and thus its contents are in a sense history, and do not reflect the situation now in the parts of Africa she wrote about.
Also she seemed to assume that the readers knew as much about Africa as she did, whereas I read the book only because it was by her and not because I was particularly interested in Africa or knew anything about it.
Thus I knew nothing of “Partnership” or “”Federation”” which she often refers to. I could have done with an index that explained things.
She lives in Southern Rhodesia but goes on a trip to Northern Rhodesia, and talks to various people about their views. She listens to a friend talk to an African in “”kitchen kaffir”.
She talks to her friend about the colour bar but he tells her she is not in touch with their problems because she has been out of the country for six years.
She describes the poor conditions of the Blacks.
Well, I certainly hope that their conditions are now vastly improved, and I believe so.
I can’t really recommend the book because it is so out of date.
One of the reasons why I have such respect for Lessing is because she supported the Africans and wished them to obtain the same rights as the Whites, equal pay and the same opportunities for work. Her neighbours believed that the Blacks had a lower intelligence than the Whites, were backward and could not do skilled work. She knew this was untrue, though they did need more education.
She writes much about the colour bar, which was what everyone talked about there.
The drawbacks to the book are that it was first published in 1957, and thus its contents are in a sense history, and do not reflect the situation now in the parts of Africa she wrote about.
Also she seemed to assume that the readers knew as much about Africa as she did, whereas I read the book only because it was by her and not because I was particularly interested in Africa or knew anything about it.
Thus I knew nothing of “Partnership” or “”Federation”” which she often refers to. I could have done with an index that explained things.
She lives in Southern Rhodesia but goes on a trip to Northern Rhodesia, and talks to various people about their views. She listens to a friend talk to an African in “”kitchen kaffir”.
She talks to her friend about the colour bar but he tells her she is not in touch with their problems because she has been out of the country for six years.
She describes the poor conditions of the Blacks.
Well, I certainly hope that their conditions are now vastly improved, and I believe so.
I can’t really recommend the book because it is so out of date.
June 6, 2011
I do not see how this memoir could have been any better. While its subject refers to 1956 Central Africa, the problem of political rights and fairness is still important in 2011. The reader learns about African nations now called Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, and South Africa, and Lessing's quote in 'Eleven Years Later' about the need to be always vigilant as regards individual freedom is a universal concern. Sad to say, official treatment of Lessing's desire to roam freely in these countries and to speak to residents met with surveillance and denial. She appears brave in those circumstances. The conditions of the 1950's are mixed with memories of her childhood and young adulthood in the form of poetry and reminiscences. Black-and white-drawings by Paul Hogarth were drawn in situ during his journey with Lessing.
September 2, 2022
Back in 1956, after years living in England, Doris Lessing set out for a trip back to her native country, South Rhodesia. Here was a diary, then, written as a report for a newspaper, and that served as a pretext to this chronicle -a return to her roots.
If the book is partly autobiographical (childhood memories, her parents, and, even, the clichés comparing sunny Africa to rainy London) this is not where its key interest lies. What she does above all indeed is to offer a pessimistic, yet bluntly honest portrayal of a country, then under the boots of an handful of British bureaucrats, those mindset was corrupted by colonialism in one of its ugliest forms: paternalistic racism.
A lot of things have changed since she had left! Grouped together with North Rhodesia and Nyasaland in a Central African Federation, the country was then a political experiment led by the British, and those purpose was to conciliate White population as much as the independentist aspirations of Black people. Relying on both demographics, led by an otherwise 'liberal' leader when it came to racial issues (Garfield Todd) the endeavour purported to be skilful, and yet... Racial issues, well, inevitably, would waste it all.
Like a cancer, it will in fact sicken the Federation and throws itself at the face of the author, baffled observant, so taken aback that she mostly talk only about it. Racism was an obsession, nearly pathological.
From Salisbury, her native town, to the mines of the Copper Belt, communist sympathiser those anti-segregationist ideas are well-known of the political police that will follow her, she gives us to see, through various interviews with people from no less various backgrounds (trade unionists, bureaucrats, political leaders, nationalists....) the irrational and stupid insanity of a whole system, which has no qualm discriminating against Blacks, from education to housing and employment. Here's a Federation that self-proclaimed itself a 'Partnership', yet those hypocrisy, in the end, won't even sustain it for a decade, doomed as it was to collapse and give birth to what are nowadays the Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi.
More than half of a century after the facts, 'Going Home' definitely remains a damning testimony about a whole part of colonialism, that will interest anyone curious, about Africa, colonialism, the shaping of a new world, and/ or racial issues.
If the book is partly autobiographical (childhood memories, her parents, and, even, the clichés comparing sunny Africa to rainy London) this is not where its key interest lies. What she does above all indeed is to offer a pessimistic, yet bluntly honest portrayal of a country, then under the boots of an handful of British bureaucrats, those mindset was corrupted by colonialism in one of its ugliest forms: paternalistic racism.
A lot of things have changed since she had left! Grouped together with North Rhodesia and Nyasaland in a Central African Federation, the country was then a political experiment led by the British, and those purpose was to conciliate White population as much as the independentist aspirations of Black people. Relying on both demographics, led by an otherwise 'liberal' leader when it came to racial issues (Garfield Todd) the endeavour purported to be skilful, and yet... Racial issues, well, inevitably, would waste it all.
Like a cancer, it will in fact sicken the Federation and throws itself at the face of the author, baffled observant, so taken aback that she mostly talk only about it. Racism was an obsession, nearly pathological.
From Salisbury, her native town, to the mines of the Copper Belt, communist sympathiser those anti-segregationist ideas are well-known of the political police that will follow her, she gives us to see, through various interviews with people from no less various backgrounds (trade unionists, bureaucrats, political leaders, nationalists....) the irrational and stupid insanity of a whole system, which has no qualm discriminating against Blacks, from education to housing and employment. Here's a Federation that self-proclaimed itself a 'Partnership', yet those hypocrisy, in the end, won't even sustain it for a decade, doomed as it was to collapse and give birth to what are nowadays the Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi.
More than half of a century after the facts, 'Going Home' definitely remains a damning testimony about a whole part of colonialism, that will interest anyone curious, about Africa, colonialism, the shaping of a new world, and/ or racial issues.
November 7, 2018
I found this heavy going despite being very interested in the subject and impressed, in parts, by the writing. As a document it will no doubt be useful to students of colonial Africa, especially Rhodesia, but as a reading experience I found it oddly tedious. Before reading this I read Boyhood, Coetzee´s account of his childhood in South Africa, and felt his portrayal of place was achieved with far greater economy and skill than this clever but ultimately dull book.
May 24, 2021
Very very difficult to concentrate on this one, despite being an avid fan fiction of Doris Lessing. This one was heavy going. The subject matter was interesting in some parts, but what put me off was perhaps the way it was written. I felt no enjoyment while plodding through it, and in some places I thought it read like a ‘White Paper’ about the Fundamentals of Litmus Paper in a Biology class. Because of the way it was written, the humour was dry and my interest waned as I continued. I had to force myself to finish this. As a Writer myself, I think she could have tried to use another method to tell this very well researched story. Going Home was personal. Too personal, perhaps and the insights into the ruthless administrations of Northern & Southern Rhodesia now Zambia and Zimbabwe, give a torrid bioscopy account of what life was like for the Africans during the Nyasaland days. Interestingly, many Africans seem to have no interest in reading about how the British, including the Dutch over in South Africa treated the African. Quite simply because Africans don’t like to read of this type of literature. Am I generalising? Perhaps. Because none of them has tackled the issue of how they were treated by the Whites quite as well as Doris Lessing has done, particularly in this book. She writes from a White Perspective, but the quality of her writing is raw and touches a nerve. I remember that when I read ‘The Grass is Singing’ it took me weeks to get over that book. As an African, it really touched a nerve and I was upset for days. And one almost understands how Africa was slowly and systematically strangled by the West, particularly by the British and the Dutch over in South Africa. To say that the Colonisation of Africa was fetid in the ruthlessness of its applications, is an understatement. But whose fault is it when the same ruthless determinations by the Whites is still being treated to these poor Africans the world over? For goodness sake, they seem to be under-represented in literally every single field of excellence. From African Writers getting sidelined in Publishing or ignored at Book Awards, or ruthlessly undermined at the Oscars for their contributions in Film etc, the point I’m trying to make here is that reading Books like this might (just might) shift the current narratives about this new type of predator many do not see. The invisible type of slaver who uses different methods to denigrate and discriminate. This is my point of view only, but many worth their salt would agree that perhaps tackling this from its source, and Reading and learning about WHY racial inequality is a disease that started over there.... and spread like a Cancer throughout the world, could and should mean movements like Black Lives Matter and other dis-equalities can be rooted out the world over for good. So that while this is a very important book, and I’m surprised it wasn’t on my Literature syllabus in Zambia. Because we studied ‘Cry the Beloved Country’ and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ at O’Level, but truthfully, these books are quite tame compared to this book.
Whenever I give a review about a book, I don’t usually talk about the story itself, but rather how the Book AFFECTED me as a reader. It burned my brain and touched a raw nerve. And just intensified the pain that is still there. About how Africa might course through my veins, yet England seems to have my heart. What irony then that David Livingstone’s heart was buried in Zambia while England (the very same that contributed to these feelings of displacement in me) seem to have won my heart. So my PoV here is subjective, and sadly helps me understand why I have not gone back to Africa in 30 years since coming to live in England. Again, reading this book affected me personally and I couldn’t finish it. Really heavy going.
I will read it again after about a year to see if my sentiments about Africa have changed. I live in England now, and yes, somehow, it’s books like this that teach me about who I am and how as African Writer (Soft in Flowers), I might be able to change the narrative about how we Africans are regarded - going forward, especially when we write about our History from our perspective. As I write this Sasha Johnson, another Black woman was killed AGAIN today, which just asserts what I’m trying to say in this review - that nothing has changed. I still don’t understand the point to racism in whatever format it appears!
Whenever I give a review about a book, I don’t usually talk about the story itself, but rather how the Book AFFECTED me as a reader. It burned my brain and touched a raw nerve. And just intensified the pain that is still there. About how Africa might course through my veins, yet England seems to have my heart. What irony then that David Livingstone’s heart was buried in Zambia while England (the very same that contributed to these feelings of displacement in me) seem to have won my heart. So my PoV here is subjective, and sadly helps me understand why I have not gone back to Africa in 30 years since coming to live in England. Again, reading this book affected me personally and I couldn’t finish it. Really heavy going.
I will read it again after about a year to see if my sentiments about Africa have changed. I live in England now, and yes, somehow, it’s books like this that teach me about who I am and how as African Writer (Soft in Flowers), I might be able to change the narrative about how we Africans are regarded - going forward, especially when we write about our History from our perspective. As I write this Sasha Johnson, another Black woman was killed AGAIN today, which just asserts what I’m trying to say in this review - that nothing has changed. I still don’t understand the point to racism in whatever format it appears!
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June 27, 2014We have reach the 'L's in our project to put all our fiction in GR and I was relived when we got to Doris Lessing because I knew I hadn't read anything by her, nor was ever planning to, so we could just zip through and I wouldn't have to stop and set aside books to try to write belated reviews, check new vocabulary, or copy interesting quotes. Why, you might ask, am I so sure I would absolutely read nothing by this Nobel Laureate? I tried her once, just a few pages, got sick to my stomach, and didn't even finish the first chapter. Particularly Cats had given me nightmares, ones which continue to this day. The funny thing is, I just took a look at the offending chapter, the horrible page, and it is not how I remember it: kids and father, abandoned by the mother for the weekend (it was her fault), chasing hundreds of cats into one room and dispatching them with swinging bats. The actual words aren't that much better, the kids help chase them into the room, but the father takes care of them himself with a revolver.
Anyway, all this was to say that I was very surprised to see my handwriting on the inside cover of Going Home. Just a list of page numbers, no notes, no dates, though it must have been before the cats book. As I went through it I discovered some interesting things. I like her politics, and her spunk defending it, and I impressed at how easy it was for her to make up words. For example, Doris Lessing is almost the only person that calls a red cedar a 'cedrilatoona' (5 hits on Google), one of the rare persons to use 'anarchistical' rather than 'anarchistic', or to use 'asperous' for people instead of plants. And what about the use of 'ginger' in this sentence: Capricorn is not a political party, but a kind of ginger group? Brownie points to the first reader who figure that one out.
I suppose it might be ever so slightly possible that I might read something by this author. There is a whole shelf-full of her books just sitting there waiting. If I am still alive after finishing everything else.
Bits which caught my eye:
Officials always complain about the venality of African leaders; sometimes they are venal or careless. But this is not a weakness confined to Africans.
I do not see...why it proves I am anarchistical if I prefer the light-hearted breading of wicked and unjust laws, to suffering them in resigned patience.
Anyway, all this was to say that I was very surprised to see my handwriting on the inside cover of Going Home. Just a list of page numbers, no notes, no dates, though it must have been before the cats book. As I went through it I discovered some interesting things. I like her politics, and her spunk defending it, and I impressed at how easy it was for her to make up words. For example, Doris Lessing is almost the only person that calls a red cedar a 'cedrilatoona' (5 hits on Google), one of the rare persons to use 'anarchistical' rather than 'anarchistic', or to use 'asperous' for people instead of plants. And what about the use of 'ginger' in this sentence: Capricorn is not a political party, but a kind of ginger group? Brownie points to the first reader who figure that one out.
I suppose it might be ever so slightly possible that I might read something by this author. There is a whole shelf-full of her books just sitting there waiting. If I am still alive after finishing everything else.
Bits which caught my eye:
Officials always complain about the venality of African leaders; sometimes they are venal or careless. But this is not a weakness confined to Africans.
I do not see...why it proves I am anarchistical if I prefer the light-hearted breading of wicked and unjust laws, to suffering them in resigned patience.
June 5, 2019
1957
Personal experiences on a sort of journalist's tour of Rhodesia after Lessing had lived elsewhere [London] for 7 years. Mixed in with childhood memories, and with enlightening interviews/conversations with [black] Africans as well as white colonial officials and other residents. I had to learn from her the term "color-bar" to describe this society with what amounted to a thorough apartheid policy. Interesting comparisons with South Africa.
Good way to come to realize more what it was like, Rhodesia in the 1950s, in this description in the present tense. Always amazing to observe how one group of people can delude themselves into thinking they are superior to some other group of people and then thinking they are justified in treating this other group as slaves. Lessing takes many perspectives or approaches to help us realize all this.
Now I want to go back and read her early novels, which I have not read before.
Personal experiences on a sort of journalist's tour of Rhodesia after Lessing had lived elsewhere [London] for 7 years. Mixed in with childhood memories, and with enlightening interviews/conversations with [black] Africans as well as white colonial officials and other residents. I had to learn from her the term "color-bar" to describe this society with what amounted to a thorough apartheid policy. Interesting comparisons with South Africa.
Good way to come to realize more what it was like, Rhodesia in the 1950s, in this description in the present tense. Always amazing to observe how one group of people can delude themselves into thinking they are superior to some other group of people and then thinking they are justified in treating this other group as slaves. Lessing takes many perspectives or approaches to help us realize all this.
Now I want to go back and read her early novels, which I have not read before.
February 11, 2019
I am not sure why there are 4 amorous pictures of men and women of indeterminate race entwined in each other arms (one appears to be a threesome) on the cover. There (thankfully) is no sex in this book at all. It is an eye-opening and sort of sickening look at the "colour bar" in Northern and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). It is written by British journalist Doris Lessing, who grew up in Northern Rhodesia, and became a communist, moved to London, and returned to Rhodesia for a visit in 1953. The whites are complete idiots and completely preoccupied with the "differences" between black and whites, and how those differences justify the atrocious treatment of the blacks.
I know very little about the history of Africa, and this book has made me really curious.
I know very little about the history of Africa, and this book has made me really curious.
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November 26, 2020"But now, steadily flying south for hour after hour, one sees forest, mountain and lake; river and gorge and swamp; and the great riches of the flat, tree-belted grassland. The yellow flanks of Africa lie beneath the moving insect-like plane, black-maned with forest, twitching in the heat. A magnificent country, with all its riches in the future. Because it is so empty we can dream. We can dream of cities and a civilization more beautiful than anything that has been seen in the world before."
January 27, 2019
‘Going Home’ is Doris Lessing’s account of her first journey back to Southern Rhodesia (now modern Zimbabwe) after an absence of almost 7 years. As a literary exercise, it situates ‘home’ as a peripatetic site of wistfulness, exile and alienation. Neither sheer reportage, nor a travel book, this is a personal journal that sometimes offers glimpses of the experiences of the people at the time of decolonisation. A stimulating read even if it frequently lacks some depth of analysis.
February 27, 2018
Great journalism. Even better writing. Impressions and facts meld seamlessly.
March 20, 2020
Interesting history of Africa and Lessing.
May 23, 2024
A fantastic historical record.
February 23, 2025
i love you, doris
January 7, 2016
Doris Lessing seems like a woman I could get along with. I’m not sure what she’s like in person, but the part of her that she puts on the page is someone that I enjoy spending hours with. I especially love her discussions of Communism. I’ve always felt a vague affinity for communism. When you look at the bare definitions of political systems, I think that communism makes the most sense. I also enjoy the way it annoys conservative Americans. Lessing is a card-carrying Communist during the trip to Africa that she records in “Going Home”, but she has an uneasy relationship with it. She’s not a gibbering proselytizer; she’s an intellectual who views Africa with Communist colored glasses. I can relate this journey to the only other book I’ve read by her, “The Golden Notebook”, where she records a later period of falling out of love with Communism. You can see the seeds of that transformation in this novel. It is part of her restless seeking of “truth” that leads her to question the motives of every single person she speaks with. Someone so intelligent could never be a true convert to any ideology. What makes her so enjoyable to read is that she never questions with ill intent. She’s like a kind, omnipotent being who sees through everyone and pities them for their ignorance and fallibility. But she’s even better than God, because she’s not infallible and she turns the same searching gaze inward and probes herself for weakness. Along the way she also manages to break up the heavy philosophizing with gorgeous descriptions of Africa and soliloquies about her love for the country.
In the postscript Lessing says that even though she became disillusioned with Communism, she could never regret her association with it in the 50s, in part because it was the only ideology that allowed a white person to relate to Africans on a basis of equality. This yearning to relate underscores the whole book. The impression that I get from reading Lessing’s book is that her position in Africa among other white people was like being the only sane person in an insane asylum. I don’t know how she managed to retain her humor and hope in humanity when confronted with such institutionalized prejudice. It’s an amazing thing that human beings can treat each other so badly and it’s a blessing to have such an insightful witness to help us remember the not-so-distant past.
In the postscript Lessing says that even though she became disillusioned with Communism, she could never regret her association with it in the 50s, in part because it was the only ideology that allowed a white person to relate to Africans on a basis of equality. This yearning to relate underscores the whole book. The impression that I get from reading Lessing’s book is that her position in Africa among other white people was like being the only sane person in an insane asylum. I don’t know how she managed to retain her humor and hope in humanity when confronted with such institutionalized prejudice. It’s an amazing thing that human beings can treat each other so badly and it’s a blessing to have such an insightful witness to help us remember the not-so-distant past.
May 26, 2020
For some reason, I've never quite been able to engage with Lessing. I've also, not, given her many chances. For many years, I had a copy of The Golden Notebook (1962), but never delved into it. In the 1990s, I read The Fifth Child (1988, which, though compelling, was personally disturbing). Going Home, a memoir of her return to her native Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) is a well done first hand account of the troubles and revelations that occur when she tries to re-engage with her native lands. Lessing's Leftist orientation (Marxist? Communist? Populist?) illuminates the inqualities and racism of 1950s Africa. At time didactic, Lessing's honesty, transparency, and ernest desire to create change, is not to be doubted. Lessing notes early in the book, the key concept under discussion: "Africa belongs to the Africans; the sooner they take it back the better. But—a country also belongs to those who feel at home in it. Perhaps it may be that the love of Africa the country will be strong enough to link people who hate each other now."
January 9, 2016
I am so glad I read this book (though I've only given it three stars because it is tough but worthwhile going at some points.) It is written and published as a memoir in 1956-7 when Lessing returns to her home, Southern Rhodesia (modern day Zimbabwe), after many years living in London. With Going Home, Lessing gives us an incredible look at Rhodesia and the Southern countries of Africa, the colour bar, the Federation, and Partnership; we are lucky to be privy to her moral compass and her evolving views of the time. (My edition, published last in 1996 had no less than three endnotes from '57 and then three afterwards from '67, '82, and '92. Surely later editions have even more considering Mugabe.) And, of course, for Lessing is a Nobel winning author, well written. I learned a great deal from this book and am pleased to find that it is probably best to read Going Home before moving on to her later works about Africa.
Want to read
November 17, 2013epub bookfi.org
December 29, 2013
The best I've read of Lessing's autobiographical, journalistic, political texts. Rich, adversarial, contemplative, and never wistful. Reminds me why I love her.
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