Purple Hibiscus and the Troubling Father Amadi - Entrepreneur Generations

The first time I read Purple Hibiscus, I was bored. I blame this on the fact that I didn't actually read it; I listened to it on Audible, and the narrator is... dull. I later learned that the audiobook narrator that I had heard, Lisette Lecat, is a South African-born white lady, and, knowing the content of the novel and its anti-colonialism stance, that's an ironic choice indeed. I do notice that the novel has been re-recorded with a different audible narrator, Adjoah Andoh, and I'd recommend getting that one.

Anyhow, I blanched at our team's desire to teach the novel, but it was the All-Maryland book last year, and, last year, reading along with students, I discovered that I liked the book a lot more than I initially thought. It reminded me so much of To Kill a Mockingbird: a female protagonist, but really telling the story of the older brother, who has the most growth, and the father impacting the narrative a whole lot. Purple Hibiscus also features a fun twist of an ending, female characters (Ifeoma and Amaka are pretty awesome) who have some agency and resist their patriarchal society, and symbolism that 9th graders can do a decent job of analyzing.

In short, it was a fun book to teach.

This second time, however, probably didn't go as well as the first time. One reason: I have more boys this year, and it is definitely not a "boys' book" (thank goodness we head into August Wilson's Fences next). It's slow and the action is few and far between. They like the scenes of violence (one of which, in particular, traumatizes me), but tracking the subtle way that Kambili develops her voice? Not so much. That's not to say they shouldn't be exposed to it. Yes, it can be a little slow, and a teenage boy (Jaja, the older brother in the novel) being so impressed by a purple flower might make them roll their eyes a little, but that's all fine with me: the boys can muddle through the book, with me knowing they'll love their next one.

One of the issues during this read-through was this ambiguous character of Father Amadi. Last year, I sort of trusted my colleague's interpretation that Father Amadi isn't doing anything strange, that this is just Kambili's first crush so we're seeing all of his actions through her eyes. He's just being a nice guy and getting her out of her shell, this colleague argued. Kambili is so repressed that she falls in love with the first male who shows interest in her. But I think that only follows through for the first 200 pages or so. As Kambili gains agency and voice, Amadi seems even more drawn to her, and, as they say their goodbyes with promises to write and with Amaka asking Kambili if she wants Amadi to drop out of seminary school to come begin a relationship with her. She is still just 15 or 16 years old at this point.

I now see the relationship with Kambili is inappropriately close, from the flinging of his tank top on her face (she's 15) to his lack of response to the teasing that Amaka and Ifeoma level at him for being in love with her. There are intimate, though admittedly not sexualized, moments between Kambili and Amadi that concerned my students, and concerned me.

I was so happy that for my female students, red lights went off at some of his behavior. He's 23 or 24, and she's 15 or 16. Yes, he helped her find her voice. But, he's up to a decade older than Kambili, and

Why does Adichie craft the character as such? It seems to me that in this patriarchal society, that she wants to show that even well-meaning individuals (Amadi himself, as well as Ifeoma and Amaka, who seem like progressives yet wink at this crush) help propagate. Or, at least, I hope so.

All this is to say that I still think Purple Hibiscus  is a great novel to teach. But as the #metoo era has made me more aware of the dynamics of gender and power and relationships, the character of Father Amadi, in all his complexity and creepiness, adds one more thing for kids to discuss.

from Epiphany in Baltimore https://ift.tt/2Dp6pAg Purple Hibiscus and the Troubling Father Amadi - Entrepreneur Generations

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