Cannot Give
Reading How To Be A Revolutionary by C.A. Davids will undoubtedly make you a better version of yourself.
I’m not sure these are book reviews she says, her honey eyes alive with mischief. They read like a blog with a cursory reference to the book thrown in somewhere. There’s no plot outline and no teasers. I have no idea what one would call these book reviews of yours. They’re like book opinions maybe, maybe book notes to say you’ve read this book. Who cares what you read anyway? Read what you like — with apologies to Bantu Biko.
There’s a gentle silence following her assessment of my award winning book reviews; punctuated by a gurgling babe in arms and the quiet conversation of the adults. A truck is idling away out of sight. The occasional car passes by and a bougainvillaea is blooming in the chilly Highveld afternoon. Honey eyed babe settles herself more comfortably in the wingback chair and we proceed to leave behind the disaster of my oddball book reviews for the on-trend convo about politricks. I’m schooled in the ways of democracy, the ineffable Constitution of the holy land and her detailed assessment of the state of the nation. I’m bored stiff but it’s harmless. This is her livelihood and talk (and school) about it, she must. As the little gathering of highveld friends ends, we part with the tentative promise of a second meeting.
Returning to the cold flat I ponder her words about who cares what we read. Who cares also being the title of a Malcolm Jiyane painting from over a decade ago. Maybe the UN WHO should use that as their tagline. WHO Cares — it would be sweetly fitting or not. Who cares? Well for starters, being a parentless adult is a state that requires additional care it seems. I’ve no idea why this is so; even if I did I’d have no idea how to make the idea make sense. Even to myself, maybe especially to myself. I’d settle for only to myself at this point. And this muddling point is the point of revolution. Someone and their buddies cares enough to say this is not cool. We want better. We want to do better, we want to be better. We are better than this version of the game. Or maybe just a better version of ourselves than we were yesterday. Reading How To Be A Revolutionary by C.A. Davids will undoubtedly make you a better version of yourself. But this is not the late-night shopping channel, so there’s no money back guarantee. You like, you pay; okay.
In this case, you pay about 300 Randelas for How To Be A Revolutionary, which in SA represents just about 6% of the monthly minimum wage. While the cost is apparent, the value of the book is an altogether different thing to fathom and using mere numbers to do so will leave one vexed and depending on how well (or not) you play the rabid capitalist game, likely broke too.
Thankfully I’ve never been good with the numbers, in spite of one half of my genetics stemming from the corner shop. This leaves me free to consider value in airy-fairy terms like did I enjoy reading this book? Has it made me laugh, maybe shed a tear, maybe sit up and think or did I get lost reading this book? Would I gift it to a dear friend or will it end up travelling around with my itinerant self for a while? How To Be A Revolutionary by C.A. Davids managed all of the above and then some.
A sprawling book moving between the present and past, flowing across continents and standing in the shadows of some of the 20th century’s biggest events in China, the United States and of course our little holy land. Reaching deep into the young adult mind of a child growing up under white supremacy, throwing in fictional Langston Hughes letters and meandering through present day Shanghai; Davids is not afraid to manspread herself across time and space. It’s a good thing then that she writes beautifully. Despite the different eras and intrigues of a range of characters, including Shan, Kay and the grimy Karl, the story flows and holds the threads together firmly, but oh so gently.
The writing is sparse and squeaky clean, it reminds me of a style somewhere between Lahiri and Ishiguro. You see, feel and hear the story come alive from the opening, in the way a bottle of wine is shared between Beth and Zhao. With How To Be A Revolutionary, C.A. Davids has done an altogether rare thing. She’s written a punchy, raw and detailed account of major global history in a way that will have you wanting to learn everything you can about those events; while you’re reading her book. Which of course means that you’ve got to set the book down every now and then and find other books. Read other things and then go back to the book. Which makes reading How To Be A Revolutionary, a long engaging process. And a thoroughly enjoyable one at that. The fictional Langston Hughes letters though; what a thing — I daresay Davids could give us another book with a posthumous Hughes writing a bunch of letters to friends around the world circa 2024. She would nail it.
Of course, you can just read How To Be A Revolutionary, cover to cover and leave it at that but I’d know nothing of that. Like I know very little about writing book reviews. Still, honey eyed babe has confirmed she’s coming round for a coffee, bearing cake no less — maybe she’s up to schooling me on how to write book reviews? Lord knows I can use some schooling.
How To Be A Revolutionary, C.A. Davids, Umuzi, 2022
Cannot Give is avowedly not a book review. It is what it is, the way it is.
© Jesh Baker for Oppi Stoep 2024, All Rights Reserved
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This article was published on November 28th, 2024 in Long. Sweet. Valuable. publication.
