- Hardcover: 152 pages
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press (Jan 1 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1558494774
- ISBN-13: 978-1558494770
- Product Dimensions: 22.5 x 14.5 x 1.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 340 g
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#2,096,536 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #41 in Books > Travel > Africa > Rwanda & Uganda
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Product Details |
Product Description
Book Description
"Tropical Fish" is a collection of linked short stories that explore the coming of age of three African sisters. Introspective and personal, the stories reveal the unexpected ambiguities of the young women's lives. The setting is the lush beauty of Uganda and the background is the aftermath of Idi Amin's dictatorship. But even in such trying circumstances, the stories show that people everywhere face the same basic human struggle to understand themselves, their world, and their place in it.
Each story develops the theme of exploration and discovery as the sisters mature and their interior and exterior lives expand. The youngest sister, Christine, becomes aware at an early age of the bittersweet dynamics of family love and later grapples with romantic and erotic, if problematic, love. Her explorations lead her across racial lines, when she has an affair with a British expatriate in the title story. What is initially an act of curiosity brings forth questions of racial and gender identity. Eager to stitch together a new pattern for her life, Christina ventures to another continent, North America, where she attempts to create a new home and a new self.
In another story, Christina's sister Patti writes in her diary about the vicissitudes of daily experience at a typical Ugandan girls' boarding school and the impact of class and religion on her relationships with fellow students. Other stories are written in the voice of the oldest sister, Rosa, who as a precocious teenager tries to decipher the mysteries of sex. Unfortunately, her promising future is harshly disrupted.
In the final story, Christine returns to Uganda and finds her perspective irrevocably altered. She is more acutely aware of her home's natural beauty, but its physical vibrancy is in stark contrast to the social and political conditions she encounters. Her journey of self-discovery comes full circle, but without any tidy resolutions. Ambiguities and uncertainties remain. What is clear, however, is that this book marks the arrival of a remarkably gifted writer.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Review of Doreen Baingana's Tropical Fish, Mar 27 2005
By Menahem Prywes - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Tropical Fish: Stories Out of Entebbe (Hardcover)
Tropical Fish is book of short stories about a girl growing into womanhood in a sometimes middle-class and well-educated household in Uganda. Baingana writes in a spare, evocative, and therefore readable style. Her tone is intimate, so the stories seem personal, even autobiographical. Yet she seems to reflect from a distance, with keen objectivity. It seems Baingana writes fiction to learn the truth about her characters.Ultimately, this book is about another point of view on being human. It is a calm and clearly female point of view. This contrasts with other works on growing up in Africa. For example, the Ugandan writer Moses Ishigawa, in Abyssinian Nights, writes of his hyperactive and sometimes violent experiences growing up during the times of Amin and of the spread of AIDS.
Baingana's lead story, `Green Stones,' recounts a young girls' exploration of the mystery of her parents' marriage, the wounds left by her father's alcoholism, and her mother's enduring strength. With time the mystery dissipates, the sense of charm disappears, and what remains is a sense of loss and pain. `Hunger' and is a story about the loneliness of life a protestant girls' school, modeled on Uganda's Gayaza High School. `Passion' is about an adolescent's queasy awakening as a woman at Gayaza.
The title story `Tropical Fish' is about a young woman's affair with a `muzungu,' a white man. The characters are prisoners of their roles: the young woman's role is to break into a bigger world and the lonely and randy businessman's role is to find a shadow of companionship. Despite their sexual connection the couple never manage to exceed their roles and establish a deeper human connection.
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