Writing the Journey: June 1999

"How We Talk About the Servants: A Look at Isak Dinesen's Farah and My Habra"

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Mary Beth Simmons
Bloomsburg University
msimmons@planetx.bloomu.edu

I wish to explore the very complicated and controversial subject of white, expatriate women employing African men and then writing about them. In the presentation I'll be looking at passages from Dinesen's Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass and comparing/contrasting them with my own writing. I also wish to discuss the fact that while I've published a good number of essays that deal with my African Peace Corps experience, I have been reluctant to craft a formal essay about Habra, for fear of negative reaction from readers. How does one go about beginning this modern day narrative? "I had a slave in Africa . . ."? No matter what approach I take in telling this story, I will be under attack. The truth is that this doesn't bother me as much as it once did. Now I'm concerned with telling the story of the most important person in my life in Cameroon. Or, to mirror Dinesen who wrote of her servant Farah, "Were any reader to object that I might choose a character of greater importance, I should answer him that would not be possible."

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Mary Beth Simmons
118 Bakeless Center for Humanities,
Bloomsburg University
400 East Second Street,
Bloomsburg PA 17815-1301
msimmons@planetx.bloomu.edu

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Updated May 23, 1999