#60: One Story, Different Versions
A Review of The Museum by Leila Aboulela
The Museum is a short story about Shadia, a Sudanese woman studying in Scotland, and Bryan, a Scottish man who becomes interested in her. It was first published in 1999 and won the first Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000. It was later published as part of Coloured Lights and is now part of Elsewhere, Home published in 2018.
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I hope you are doing well and taking good care of yourself.
Welcome to another edition of this spectacular newsletter.
Struggling to understand the courses for her Master’s degree in Statistics, Shadia summons the courage to ask her classmate, Bryan, for his old notes. She had heard from another classmate that he was one of the best students, having graduated with a first class in the same course.
“Understanding after not understanding is fog lifting, is pictures swinging into focus, missing pieces slotting into place. It is fragments gelling, a sound vivid whole, a basis to build on. His notes were the knowledge she needed, the gaps.”
What Shadia did not know when she first approached Bryan was that it would be the beginning of their complicated friendship. After a coffee date goes wrong, Bryan asks Shadia to go to a museum about Africa with him. While Bryan is fascinated by the storytelling, Shadia is torn by the misrepresentation.
This short story highlights cultural identity, love, alienation, and the challenges of cross-cultural relationships. It explores the interrelated politics of museums as institutions of power and places of memorialization that tell a particular story of the past (and the present). It is a reminder that Western museums have not kept up with the complex realities of a rapidly changing and multicultural world.
“‘They are telling you lies in this museum,’ she said. ‘Don’t believe them. It’s all wrong. It’s not jungles and antelopes, it’s people. We have things like computers and cars. We have 7Up in Africa and some people, a few people, have bathrooms with golden taps…I shouldn’t be here with you. You shouldn’t talk to me…’”
Have you read this book? What did you think about it? Leave a comment, maybe? 😊
#58: How Much Is Too Much?
Set in South West Nigeria in the the 1980s, during the country’s military era, Stay With Me is the heartfelt story of Yejide and Akin, a young couple who resort to other means after four years of marriage with no children. It is the author’s debut novel, published in 2017.