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Monkey's Wedding
Adolescents Elizabeth and Tururu--she's white, he's black--share an uneasy friendship on a sisal plantation in Colonial Zimbabwe when Britain declares the country part of a Federation without consulting the natives. Festering resentment to white rule is about to erupt. Elizabeth can't wait for the birth of her baby brother, while Tururu reluctantly helps his witchdoctor grandmother, Anesu, cast spells to drive out the whites.
In a bid for power and with a plan to kill the whites, Anesu's heir apparent, Karari, tries to steal her magic amulet. She confronts him and he inadvertently sets the ngozi, powerful fire spirits, against her, not realizing that he has tapped into their evil energy. Badly injured, Anesu manages to control the ngozi and banish Karari.
Unaware of his new power, Karari poisons the white's food supply, but only Elizabeth is poisoned. Tururu saves her with a magic potion and is accused of being part of the plot. He escapes, steals his grandmother's amulet, and sneaks it back to Elizabeth to protect her from Karari. Although suspicious and afraid, Elizabeth feels drawn to the amulet's mysterious power and reluctantly takes it. Tururu goes into hiding at his grandmother's invisible hut bitter at Elizabeth's lack of gratitude for the risks he's taken for her.
When Elizabeth's mother gives birth to a son with debilitating medical problems, Elizabeth is not allowed near him. Desperate, she steals her brother away and sets off across the hot African veld along with the amulet to seek a cure from Anesu. She gets lost and the amulet is of no help at all. At the end of her tether, she digs deep inside herself and reaches out with her mind and heart to Anesu, pleading with the old woman to reveal her invisible hut. The hut appears. Impressed, a still ailing Anesu helps Elizabeth's brother, and after consulting her magic bones, allows Elizabeth to keep the amulet.
Karari, with his increasing new powers, seeks to impress rebel leaders, but they reject him, afraid of his unpredictable magic. When he learns that Elizabeth has Anesu's amulet, he spirits himself to her parent's party while his followers set fire to the veld. In the confusion he grabs Elizabeth.
Tururu goes to Elizabeth's aid and is almost killed. A debilitated Anesu spirits herself to the scene, but in her weakened state, alone, she's no match for Karari. She calls on Tururu and Elizabeth for help. Despite her fear, Elizabeth finds the courage to stand up to Karari. The amulet comes to life, transforming into a massive spirit bird, and Karari is destroyed.
As Elizabeth's parents make plans to leave Zimbabwe, Anesu gives Elizabeth her own amulet and tells her that the magic is in her not the amulet and that she must believe in herself. She also tells Elizabeth that she and Tururu will meet again. They are the future of Africa.
In a bid for power and with a plan to kill the whites, Anesu's heir apparent, Karari, tries to steal her magic amulet. She confronts him and he inadvertently sets the ngozi, powerful fire spirits, against her, not realizing that he has tapped into their evil energy. Badly injured, Anesu manages to control the ngozi and banish Karari.
Unaware of his new power, Karari poisons the white's food supply, but only Elizabeth is poisoned. Tururu saves her with a magic potion and is accused of being part of the plot. He escapes, steals his grandmother's amulet, and sneaks it back to Elizabeth to protect her from Karari. Although suspicious and afraid, Elizabeth feels drawn to the amulet's mysterious power and reluctantly takes it. Tururu goes into hiding at his grandmother's invisible hut bitter at Elizabeth's lack of gratitude for the risks he's taken for her.
When Elizabeth's mother gives birth to a son with debilitating medical problems, Elizabeth is not allowed near him. Desperate, she steals her brother away and sets off across the hot African veld along with the amulet to seek a cure from Anesu. She gets lost and the amulet is of no help at all. At the end of her tether, she digs deep inside herself and reaches out with her mind and heart to Anesu, pleading with the old woman to reveal her invisible hut. The hut appears. Impressed, a still ailing Anesu helps Elizabeth's brother, and after consulting her magic bones, allows Elizabeth to keep the amulet.
Karari, with his increasing new powers, seeks to impress rebel leaders, but they reject him, afraid of his unpredictable magic. When he learns that Elizabeth has Anesu's amulet, he spirits himself to her parent's party while his followers set fire to the veld. In the confusion he grabs Elizabeth.
Tururu goes to Elizabeth's aid and is almost killed. A debilitated Anesu spirits herself to the scene, but in her weakened state, alone, she's no match for Karari. She calls on Tururu and Elizabeth for help. Despite her fear, Elizabeth finds the courage to stand up to Karari. The amulet comes to life, transforming into a massive spirit bird, and Karari is destroyed.
As Elizabeth's parents make plans to leave Zimbabwe, Anesu gives Elizabeth her own amulet and tells her that the magic is in her not the amulet and that she must believe in herself. She also tells Elizabeth that she and Tururu will meet again. They are the future of Africa.
194 pages, Paperback
First published January 31, 2017
37 people are currently reading
42 people want to read
About the author
Rossandra White
4 books17 followersRossandra White, a fourth generation South African, spent the first twenty-three years of her life in Zambia, where she had a baboon for a pet and learned to tell a log from a crocodile. She’s the author of the recently published novel, Monkey's Wedding, set in Zimbabwe, as well as the memoir, Loveyoubye: Holding Fast, Letting Go, And Then There's The Dog. She lives in Laguna Beach with her two Staffordshire Bull Terriers, with whom she fights for space in her bed. When she’s not writing, she's at the gym or hiking the hills behind her home in Laguna Beach.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 4, 2017
Monkey's Wedding by Rossandra White is a story I enjoyed. It had mystical and spiritual magic, thoughts of old. A history in the keeping. It touched lightly of racism and other social issues. It was an odd kind of book that was enjoyable.
February 14, 2018
*Received for free via the Kindle Scout program*
Now this isn’t a genre I would usually read, but after seeing its popularity on Kindle Scout, and having also read the preview, I was tempted. I can honestly say that I wasn’t at all disappointed.
Many of us in the Western world are somewhat aware of African history, from history classes, history books, documentaries, and the occasional news report. Most of us have heard of Nelson Mandela, a few of those who have are aware of the ANC and Mandela’s presidency, and even fewer still are aware of the politics that led up to it. Then there’s Zimbabwe, which aside from Mugabe and the land redistribution, I don’t suppose many will know much about its history and formation, let alone its precise location. Of course, we are all aware of the colonial era and that there were revolts and how countries were “set free” (which gained control themselves and which were eventually granted own rule, well, that’s a bit of a grey area, too).
So I came into this story with a hazy list of fragments of knowledge, not much better than the list above, by far not good enough to fully understand the era described in the story. Yet it is depicted so well, we get a view from “both sides of the fence” as it were – the white colonialists, and the black natives who by most treated not much better than they had been during the slave era.
The year is 1953. The place is Southern Rhodesia, which would later become Zimbabwe. The Central African Federation has just been formed. In this setting we have two adolescents – Elizabeth, who is white, and Tururu, who is black. They grow up together and somehow, despite their families, backgrounds, cultural distrust, and apparent dissimilarities, they manage to form a tenuous friendship. This friendship is fragile enough that a disaster threatens to break it, yet even with their families on both sides through their mutual distrust trying to push them further apart, somehow they find a way through and gain a bigger understanding and respect for each other. In the end they discover that they are far more alike than they realise.
This tale is told with all the beliefs and magic of the period come to life, primarily through the eyes of these two young people. It is not only enlightening and fascinating, but also heart-warming and just plain wonderful. The characters are so real that you feel like you could reach out and touch them, the places they live shimmering just behind them. When I first begun the story I expected to be left indifferent by it, but as the pages unfolded I just couldn’t help but fall in love with it. It might have taken me a year to finally get around to reading it, but it was worth the wait, making me wonder why I didn’t pick it up sooner.
Final rating: ★★★★★ – Loved it/couldn't put it down
Now this isn’t a genre I would usually read, but after seeing its popularity on Kindle Scout, and having also read the preview, I was tempted. I can honestly say that I wasn’t at all disappointed.
Many of us in the Western world are somewhat aware of African history, from history classes, history books, documentaries, and the occasional news report. Most of us have heard of Nelson Mandela, a few of those who have are aware of the ANC and Mandela’s presidency, and even fewer still are aware of the politics that led up to it. Then there’s Zimbabwe, which aside from Mugabe and the land redistribution, I don’t suppose many will know much about its history and formation, let alone its precise location. Of course, we are all aware of the colonial era and that there were revolts and how countries were “set free” (which gained control themselves and which were eventually granted own rule, well, that’s a bit of a grey area, too).
So I came into this story with a hazy list of fragments of knowledge, not much better than the list above, by far not good enough to fully understand the era described in the story. Yet it is depicted so well, we get a view from “both sides of the fence” as it were – the white colonialists, and the black natives who by most treated not much better than they had been during the slave era.
The year is 1953. The place is Southern Rhodesia, which would later become Zimbabwe. The Central African Federation has just been formed. In this setting we have two adolescents – Elizabeth, who is white, and Tururu, who is black. They grow up together and somehow, despite their families, backgrounds, cultural distrust, and apparent dissimilarities, they manage to form a tenuous friendship. This friendship is fragile enough that a disaster threatens to break it, yet even with their families on both sides through their mutual distrust trying to push them further apart, somehow they find a way through and gain a bigger understanding and respect for each other. In the end they discover that they are far more alike than they realise.
This tale is told with all the beliefs and magic of the period come to life, primarily through the eyes of these two young people. It is not only enlightening and fascinating, but also heart-warming and just plain wonderful. The characters are so real that you feel like you could reach out and touch them, the places they live shimmering just behind them. When I first begun the story I expected to be left indifferent by it, but as the pages unfolded I just couldn’t help but fall in love with it. It might have taken me a year to finally get around to reading it, but it was worth the wait, making me wonder why I didn’t pick it up sooner.
Final rating: ★★★★★ – Loved it/couldn't put it down
September 1, 2017
Anyone who has ever witnessed a sun shower and is asked about it later likely experiences a variety of curious and immediate memories. For myself, two branches of thought come together, starting with my mother’s frequent assertion that rain on one’s wedding day is good luck. This merges with the historical status of animals as purveyors of phenomena explanation in such folkloric expressions as monkey’s wedding, which refers to rain falling when the sun is shining brightly. It is magical and wondrous, typically a short-lived event that nevertheless has the capacity to elicit thrill and awe at nature’s fantastic contradiction. Perhaps people once witnessed a group of monkeys acting joyfully during a sun shower and related it to what made sense to them, deciding the simians must be on their way to a wedding.
In my own memory a monkey’s wedding really is magical, and so, might I add, is Monkey’s Wedding. Author Rossandra White brings the theme to bear on her novel starting with the cover’s color tones—dark profile of a hut and baobab tree set against the bright, hot orange and red of the sun and sky to the contradictions throughout, sometimes so subtle we don’t recognize their droplets as they nevertheless work out as part of the situations within which they exist.
Elizabeth and her British parents live in 1950s Rhodesia, members of a society in transition as indigenous peoples begin to demonstrate their resentment of white rule. Annie, Elizabeth’s expectant and often moody mother, seeks to keep her daughter separated from “those kaffirs” even while the girl is developing a disallowed friendship with Turu, son of Nelson, the family’s houseboy (an ordinary but telling appellation). Though she reveals to her mother he is nasty toward his son, Annie tends to be focused on how the help are “getting bolder.” The pair maintain a strained relationship and Elizabeth’s father plays peacemaker, though she at times agrees with her mother’s assessment.
Turu, too, evades suspicious adult eyes as he navigates through time with his grandmother, a Shona high priestess who has chosen the boy for a position he severely doubts he can fill. White expertly shifts between perspectives, revealing some but not all there is to know from any given quarter. Her narrative is also tinged with a feeling of silent mystery, as if we are approaching something that knows we are there, and the sense of expectancy is heavy as Anesu the priestess seems to speak for our benefit, all the while enjoying our unfamiliarity, playing us a bit as she leads us along a path we know not.
The plot’s parameters widen, and we see Elizabeth and Turu off on their escapades, ordinary activities for children—even their plot to steal extra sherbit from the shopkeeper— were it not for the underlying, unspoken awareness of their race differences. Each child harbors thoughts about the other’s race and its implications, though they also spend time exchanging information and peacefully learning about one another. The book’s title reflects their friendship as they sustain a mostly productive relationship amidst societal shakeup. They do row on occasion, their tiffs sometimes being related to the increasing temperature and pressures of racial tensions booming over their heads, but their childhood wisdom often sets right derailed moments and each achieves opportunities to see for themselves who the other really is.
As the author steers us through events, discord amongst the unseen occurs too, as ancient spirits demand reckoning, pulling Turu into events in ways that confuse and shake him, and Elizabeth seeks a path into a world hidden from her, all while in plain sight. With Elizabeth, we catch proverbial glimpses of another world, perhaps with some recognition as Anesu performs chants and prepares poultices, admonishes Turu’s avoidance of his duties and bestows upon Elizabeth something that recognizes a connection even she doesn’t quite understand. Exotic though it may seem, it offers a real alternative to Elizabeth while powerful forces of both worlds thunder over their lives, threatening everything they know.
Thanks to White’s proficiency in winding through varying perspectives, scenes and histories, details are deliciously different yet also familiar, and we find that identity isn’t always what we might have previously experienced. Amidst exposure to traditional mythology, we also encounter a moment in which Turu’s handling of a modern machine is optimal given Elizabeth’s inability to do. There is, of course, the male/female stereotype to consider, but Turu’s ability to get the car running also highlights the reality that this mechanical place is also his world, whatever his ethnicity. Afterward,
[a]lmost right away, it felt as if Jasu, God of the Sun, had turned his face toward them. The deep green of the sisal turned to hard green, scrubby grass the color of a lion’s haunch. The smell of rain hung in the air. On the distant horizon in front of them, the huge baobab tree beside bwana van Zyl’s shop looked like a fat stalk with tiny twigs branching upward. Acacia and other thorn trees dotted the veld. Three hundred yards away, five eland buck appeared out of nowhere and floated on a heat wave past the jagged outline of his people’s ruins.
Later, Elizabeth joyfully shifts attention to the ongoing monkey’s wedding, explaining to Turu about making a wish. His dismissive attitude highlights awareness of their shifting, sometimes merging, roles when she owns the superstition and he practical modern knowledge, bringing to delightful life the novel’s epigraph, an African proverb about sharing paths. White doesn’t spell any of this out, which is part of what makes it so superb. She allows her characters to be who they are, retaining the emotional or mystical nature of any given moment by employing a beautifully minimalist style.
Having said that, it should be noted that the author also brings to life these amazing events with imagery so stunning it provokes the senses and emotions, allowing readers to experience the moments as well, easily calling to mind scenes both reminiscent and foreign, whether ordinary or exceptional, a further union of opposites.
After tea Elizabeth headed for her bedroom, where she lay on her back on the cool cement floor. The tin roof creaked as the sun beat down on it. In minutes, she was asleep.
*
Night had spread its blanket over everything.
*
The air stirred around her, and she opened her eyes. A short distance away, down a gentle slope, sat a hut with walls the rich color of a gazelle’s hide and thatch that was plump and golden. A strange, mesmerizing, blue-tinged fire burnt in front.
*
He returned with the milk and plunked the bucket on the table harder than he meant to. Milk sloshed up. The small brown creature on the other end of the table gave a short jerk of surprise and blew a spit bubble.
The contradictions rain down on us throughout the book, though sometimes so subtle in application it’s as if a shower has passed us before we had time to register it. Black and white, magic and ordinary, resentment and joy, life and death, young and old, outspoken and voiceless—these and more mingle with one another, like a monkey’s wedding, inspiring those it touches as they at times recognize a spiritual connection made between a twain that ordinarily “shall not meet.”
While Monkey’s Wedding now is amongst my top five reading recommendations for those wishing to know more about Africa, I’d also add that part of White’s dexterity in storytelling is that this tale could have happened nearly anywhere, simultaneously being particularly African, further adding to her mastery of fluently combining the unlikely. Set in 1953, it also is a timeless tale, evocative, magical as its spirit, like those within, wisping in and out of environments, maintaining an absolute embrace of our senses while setting us completely free to imagine.
In my own memory a monkey’s wedding really is magical, and so, might I add, is Monkey’s Wedding. Author Rossandra White brings the theme to bear on her novel starting with the cover’s color tones—dark profile of a hut and baobab tree set against the bright, hot orange and red of the sun and sky to the contradictions throughout, sometimes so subtle we don’t recognize their droplets as they nevertheless work out as part of the situations within which they exist.
Elizabeth and her British parents live in 1950s Rhodesia, members of a society in transition as indigenous peoples begin to demonstrate their resentment of white rule. Annie, Elizabeth’s expectant and often moody mother, seeks to keep her daughter separated from “those kaffirs” even while the girl is developing a disallowed friendship with Turu, son of Nelson, the family’s houseboy (an ordinary but telling appellation). Though she reveals to her mother he is nasty toward his son, Annie tends to be focused on how the help are “getting bolder.” The pair maintain a strained relationship and Elizabeth’s father plays peacemaker, though she at times agrees with her mother’s assessment.
Turu, too, evades suspicious adult eyes as he navigates through time with his grandmother, a Shona high priestess who has chosen the boy for a position he severely doubts he can fill. White expertly shifts between perspectives, revealing some but not all there is to know from any given quarter. Her narrative is also tinged with a feeling of silent mystery, as if we are approaching something that knows we are there, and the sense of expectancy is heavy as Anesu the priestess seems to speak for our benefit, all the while enjoying our unfamiliarity, playing us a bit as she leads us along a path we know not.
The plot’s parameters widen, and we see Elizabeth and Turu off on their escapades, ordinary activities for children—even their plot to steal extra sherbit from the shopkeeper— were it not for the underlying, unspoken awareness of their race differences. Each child harbors thoughts about the other’s race and its implications, though they also spend time exchanging information and peacefully learning about one another. The book’s title reflects their friendship as they sustain a mostly productive relationship amidst societal shakeup. They do row on occasion, their tiffs sometimes being related to the increasing temperature and pressures of racial tensions booming over their heads, but their childhood wisdom often sets right derailed moments and each achieves opportunities to see for themselves who the other really is.
As the author steers us through events, discord amongst the unseen occurs too, as ancient spirits demand reckoning, pulling Turu into events in ways that confuse and shake him, and Elizabeth seeks a path into a world hidden from her, all while in plain sight. With Elizabeth, we catch proverbial glimpses of another world, perhaps with some recognition as Anesu performs chants and prepares poultices, admonishes Turu’s avoidance of his duties and bestows upon Elizabeth something that recognizes a connection even she doesn’t quite understand. Exotic though it may seem, it offers a real alternative to Elizabeth while powerful forces of both worlds thunder over their lives, threatening everything they know.
Thanks to White’s proficiency in winding through varying perspectives, scenes and histories, details are deliciously different yet also familiar, and we find that identity isn’t always what we might have previously experienced. Amidst exposure to traditional mythology, we also encounter a moment in which Turu’s handling of a modern machine is optimal given Elizabeth’s inability to do. There is, of course, the male/female stereotype to consider, but Turu’s ability to get the car running also highlights the reality that this mechanical place is also his world, whatever his ethnicity. Afterward,
[a]lmost right away, it felt as if Jasu, God of the Sun, had turned his face toward them. The deep green of the sisal turned to hard green, scrubby grass the color of a lion’s haunch. The smell of rain hung in the air. On the distant horizon in front of them, the huge baobab tree beside bwana van Zyl’s shop looked like a fat stalk with tiny twigs branching upward. Acacia and other thorn trees dotted the veld. Three hundred yards away, five eland buck appeared out of nowhere and floated on a heat wave past the jagged outline of his people’s ruins.
Later, Elizabeth joyfully shifts attention to the ongoing monkey’s wedding, explaining to Turu about making a wish. His dismissive attitude highlights awareness of their shifting, sometimes merging, roles when she owns the superstition and he practical modern knowledge, bringing to delightful life the novel’s epigraph, an African proverb about sharing paths. White doesn’t spell any of this out, which is part of what makes it so superb. She allows her characters to be who they are, retaining the emotional or mystical nature of any given moment by employing a beautifully minimalist style.
Having said that, it should be noted that the author also brings to life these amazing events with imagery so stunning it provokes the senses and emotions, allowing readers to experience the moments as well, easily calling to mind scenes both reminiscent and foreign, whether ordinary or exceptional, a further union of opposites.
After tea Elizabeth headed for her bedroom, where she lay on her back on the cool cement floor. The tin roof creaked as the sun beat down on it. In minutes, she was asleep.
*
Night had spread its blanket over everything.
*
The air stirred around her, and she opened her eyes. A short distance away, down a gentle slope, sat a hut with walls the rich color of a gazelle’s hide and thatch that was plump and golden. A strange, mesmerizing, blue-tinged fire burnt in front.
*
He returned with the milk and plunked the bucket on the table harder than he meant to. Milk sloshed up. The small brown creature on the other end of the table gave a short jerk of surprise and blew a spit bubble.
The contradictions rain down on us throughout the book, though sometimes so subtle in application it’s as if a shower has passed us before we had time to register it. Black and white, magic and ordinary, resentment and joy, life and death, young and old, outspoken and voiceless—these and more mingle with one another, like a monkey’s wedding, inspiring those it touches as they at times recognize a spiritual connection made between a twain that ordinarily “shall not meet.”
While Monkey’s Wedding now is amongst my top five reading recommendations for those wishing to know more about Africa, I’d also add that part of White’s dexterity in storytelling is that this tale could have happened nearly anywhere, simultaneously being particularly African, further adding to her mastery of fluently combining the unlikely. Set in 1953, it also is a timeless tale, evocative, magical as its spirit, like those within, wisping in and out of environments, maintaining an absolute embrace of our senses while setting us completely free to imagine.
February 11, 2017
I have only read the excerpt, but so far I really enjoyed Rossandra's prose, and found Monkey's Wedding to be engaging.
August 2, 2017
Fine read
A young white African girl and her best friend a black African boy. A crucial time in Africa's history. The story is kept on the level and seen through the eyes of the two children. The girl can see and share in the magic of the boy's grandmother. They can see through her that the difference is not so great after all. The future of Africa is in the next generation, her children.
A young white African girl and her best friend a black African boy. A crucial time in Africa's history. The story is kept on the level and seen through the eyes of the two children. The girl can see and share in the magic of the boy's grandmother. They can see through her that the difference is not so great after all. The future of Africa is in the next generation, her children.
September 4, 2017
Africa 1953
Taking place in Africa in 1953, it was interesting to read about customs of that time period, witch craft, and rebels go wanted to drive the white population away. It was in spring to read of the friendship that developed between a young teenage girl and her family helper's son .
Unfortunately several African words were intertwined with the novel without any definition, some you may be able to figure out. This is why I gave 4 stars.
Taking place in Africa in 1953, it was interesting to read about customs of that time period, witch craft, and rebels go wanted to drive the white population away. It was in spring to read of the friendship that developed between a young teenage girl and her family helper's son .
Unfortunately several African words were intertwined with the novel without any definition, some you may be able to figure out. This is why I gave 4 stars.
December 12, 2017
An unusual but wonderfully creative book. Set during a pivotal time in Zimbabwe's history, the story blends everyday events with magic seamlessly. The dual narrators were beautifully written and the story was well crafted.
February 6, 2018
Engaging and interesting read.
April 11, 2017
Excellent book. I love books that teach me about cultures I am unfamiliar with, and this one did a superb job of that. Set in Rhodesia during a time when a federation was being set up (forgive me if I got that wrong), it shows the world through the eyes of two children: one white, one black. You see a little of the mounting political tension between the black and white through things Elizabeth hears (from adults or the radio), but mostly that is the backdrop to the story. Where the story shines is in all its myths and folklore that come to life. The world around Elizabeth and Turu is vivid, from the red dust to the trees. It's a world where magic is real and "monkey wedding" wishes can come true. Amidst all the hate and racism, hope and love shine through. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn more about Africa.
April 11, 2017
Wow!
I loved this book. The character development was simple and impeccable. I felt that I was there, on the Veld with Elizabeth, experiencing everything she did. The book is magical-in many senses of the word.
I loved this book. The character development was simple and impeccable. I felt that I was there, on the Veld with Elizabeth, experiencing everything she did. The book is magical-in many senses of the word.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews