Maru

Maru (1971) by Bessie Head exploring racism and ethnic conflict, specifically that of the Tswana and San peoples. It centres on an orphaned Masarwa girl who comes to the community of Dilepe to teach

Quotes

• It never stopped the tin cans rattling, but it kept the victim of the tin cans sane. No one by shouting, screaming or spitting could un-Bushman her. There was only one thing left, to find out how bushmen were going to stay alive on the earth, because no one wanted them to, except perhaps as the slaves and down-trodden dogs of the Batswana. That half she would be left alone to solve.
  • Page 11
• a king in their society”
  • Page 2a
• Maybe life had presented him with too many, destinies, but he knew that he would accept them all and fulfill them. Who else had been born with such clear, sharp eyes that cut through all pretense and sham? Who else was a born leader of men, yet at the same time acted out his own, strange inner perceptions, independent of the praise or blame of men?
  • Page 1
• The man who slowly walked away from them was a king in their society. A day had come when he had decided that he did not need any kinship other than the kind of wife everybody would loathe from the bottom of their hearts. He had planned for that loathing in secret; they had absorbed the shocks in secret. When everything was exposed, they had only one alternative: to keep their prejudice and pretend Maru had died.
  • Page 2
• There had never been a time in his life when he had not thought a thought and felt it immediately bound to the deep center of the earth, then bound back to his heart again—with a reply. Previously, the stillness with which he held himself together to hear the reply had always been disrupted by people. People were horrible to him because they imagined that their thoughts and deeds were concealed when he could see and hear everything, even their bloodstreams and the beating of their hearts. If they knew all that he knew, would they not have torn him to shreds some time ago, to keep the world the way it was when secrets and evil had the same names?”
  • Page 2
• At least, the present was simple. But there was a depth of secret activity in him like that in his mind like that long, low line of black, boiling cloud. There was a clear blue sky in his mind that calmly awaited the storm in this heart that calmly as the storm in his and when all had been said and done, this earth would be washed clean of all the things he hated. He slowly continues his walk home, his gaze turned toads the horizon. It was very beautiful.”
  • Page 3
• The man who slowly walked away from them was a king in their society. A day had come when he had decided that he did not need any kingship other than the kind of wife everybody would loathe from the bottom of their hearts.
  • [1]
• Before the white man became universally disliked for his mental outlook, it was there. The white man found only too many people who looked different. That was all that outraged the receivers of his discrimination, that he applied the technique of the wild jiggling dance and the rattling tin cans to anyone who was not a white man.
  • [2]
• When no one wanted to bury a dead body, they called the missionaries; not that the missionaries really liked to be involved with mankind, but that they had been known to go into queer places because of their occupation. They would do that but they did not often like you to walk into their yard. They preferred to talk to you outside the fence.
  • [3]
• There was something Dikeledi called sham. It made people believe they were more important than the normal image of humankind. She had grown up surrounded by sham.
  • [4]
• At such times he would think, 'What will I do if she does not love me as much as I love her?' A terrible reply came from his heart, 'Kill her.
  • [5]

External links

• Mura
• super summary
• goodreads