Abeng

In her attempt to understand Anne’s fate, Clare borrows all the books about the Holocaust from the public library, but there is very little information, and she needs to be secretive as her father would disapprove and her mother would support Boy. Part of the reason why Clare cannot fully understand Anne Frank’s death is that she would need “to reckon with her father’s culpability” (76), which would also mean “reckoning with her mother’s silences—and to see how silence becomes complicity.”  

Clare finds another Jewish girl’s account of the Holocaust, I am Alive, by the survivor Kitty Hart, whose mother actively fought to save her. She questions why Anne died but Kitty survived, and she wonders if it has to do with their respective relationship with their mothers. Anne’s mother was remote and restrained, dying before getting to the camps, while Kitty’s mother actively fought for her daughter, stealing food from the dead to keep her alive. 

Clare attempts unsuccessfully to find a reason for Anne’s and Kitty’s suffering, trying to visualize life in the concentration camps, but her imagination remains disconnected from the very real misery that exists in her own town. What she learns is that “just as Jews were expected to suffer in a Christian world, so were dark people expected to suffer in a white one” (77). She remembers an incident when an old Black woman in shabby clothing approached two of her darker-skinned schoolmates asking for the time. The girls turned away from the old lady, telling her to mind her own business. Clare called the girls “inhuman” (77). She does not understand why the girls would behave in such a manner because she cannot identify with the old woman’s inferior social position, signaled by her dark skin, unlike her two classmates. 

The concepts of “human” and “inhuman” link to the European expansion. Columbus carried with him several books that depicted the imaginary inhabitants of other lands as bestial and inferior. The people who were not white Christian were “all monsters. All inhuman” (78).

When Clare’s body begins to change, the only person she shares this with is Zoe, her closest friend who is the same age as her. Zoe, “as tall as Clare, and darker; her hair wound in braids around her head,” is the older daughter of Miss Ruthie, a poor woman who uses part of Miss Mattie’s land to make ends meet (83-84). 

Zoe goes to the local school in charge of Mr. Lewis Powell, a poet who became exposed to the ideas of Black nationalism during his visit to New York City in the 1920s at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. During his visit to the US, Mr. Powell discovers that Black Americans do not trust Black West Indians, as the two communities were colonized in very different ways, despite their shared ancestry. The former slaves in the States perceive the West Indians as too preoccupied with status and social achievement. 

The school is a mixed-level one, so the teaching instructions received from Britain are almost useless since almost all of the students remain the same from year to year. While following the curriculum to the best of his abilities, Mr. Powell also makes his pupils learn various poems by both British and Black poets. However, he does not teach them about the US or about African history, as he was deeply disappointed with life in the States after learning about the lynching of Black people and after one of his friends was arrested for his political activism. As a result, despite his exposure to Black nationalism, Mr. Powell is a supporter of the status quo. He fears that if his students begin to protest or become politically active, they might suffer the same violent fate as their counterparts in the US. He is happy with fostering love for Jamaica, which he believes to be superior to the States. As a concession to local nationalism, at the end of each school year, a girl recites the poem “Maroon Girl” by Walter Adolphe Roberts. The year she is 12, Zoe has the privilege of doing the recitation.