Ok, so I started Cry, The Beloved Country. She and I did. I read aloud and it was difficult to get the cadence down . . . at times feeling like I was reading an elementary level tome. Short and simple sentences and language. It brings me to a question. What's with the tense? One moment it's written in present tense and one moment it's past tense. What's up with that? Are the academics gushing over this? Is there an explanation? I don't really have a problem with it, only that it made, or is it makes, me go "hmmmm".
A few things I noticed so far. I feel the nerves and fear. I felt a lot like Kumalo when I gradually stepped foot into Caracas, Venezuela. It's a big, endless sprawl of shanties, industry, buildings, and danger. The Johannesburg of South America. Anyone else been freaked out by a big metropolis? The fear I think comes from the fact that these places swallow people up. All over the world, rural humans migrate to big cities for work, for survival. Dave Matthews, a South African, states it well, "All the little ants are marching, red and black and two by two. They all do it the same way". It's so easy to loose yourself it the hustle, lost is the bustle, and forgetting what really matters. Destruction in a big city that causes rural destruction. That's Kumalo's plight so far, or so I believe by page 57.
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