The human urge to identify and catalogue every little thing is an odd phenomenon, indeed.
Evolutionarily speaking, it makes sense. A species needs to identify what is “self” and what is “other”, not only to identify danger but, in the case of species that eat other animals, identify what it can prey upon.
But humanity has graduated from scrabbling to survive in a world of predators that are bigger, stronger and faster than us to having tamed our natural environment to the point that we can watch reality TV at 3am.
Our need to identify, to differentiate, has been taken to some weird and sometimes horrifying places.
Take, for example, marketing. An entire industry based on categorising people so we can figure out what to sell them and how to sell it to them.
This does not only apply to worldly goods and possessions but things as subjective and soulful as the arts and even romance. Heaven forfend we miss an opportunity to sell something to someone who has fallen in love.
Many of our sciences spend large amounts of time relentlessly cataloguing things as well. We must know exactly which genus and species a beautiful bird belongs to, or we have somehow failed.
But nature has a way of messing with us in return. Just as we have finished naming this species of royal blue bird with red eye patches after someone’s uncle or favourite comedian, the exact same bird shows up with powder blue plumage and yellow eye patches, and we are thrown into a new frenzy of identification.
But nowhere has our need to identify and differentiate been so detrimental, cruel, frightening and downright destructive as when it manifests as racial discrimination.
History is littered with examples where mankind has turned our need for identification inward to devastating ends.
Unfortunately, one of South Africa’s many contributions, good and bad, to human history is a particularly grisly one that falls into this category — apartheid.
Humans classifying humans. A ridiculous notion, rooted in avarice and lust for power. But it happened and we still bear the scars today.
I mention all of this because the human need to identify, but also to possess identity, is one of the driving themes in Lindani Mbunyuza-Memani’s blistering debut novel, Buried in the Chest.
The novel introduces us to Unathi, who is finishing school just as South Africa is cresting the final hill in our battle to instil true democracy.
Unathi lives in Moya, a tiny riverside village in a rural part of the Eastern Cape. She is being brought up by Gogo, her grandmother, as her mother is conspicuously absent in her life, as are so many of the mothers of Moya.
Unathi is a bright and dynamic young woman who, historically, would have been crushed into a life of meaningless servitude due to the colour of her skin. However, the wind of change has begun to sweep the nation and Unathi is swept along with it.
Wind is a powerful narrative device in this novel. Moya experiences frequent gales, which not only shape the local flora and fauna, but the lives of the residents as well.
Wind can be calm or it can be angry. It brings life when it drags rain clouds along with it, but can bring doom when it strips and erodes soil.
And the residents of Moya have come to know and understand the wind in a powerful way.
Full disclosure — I cheated a little in that last paragraph. I was lucky enough to attend the launch of this book, and Mbunyuza-Memani explained to us in wonderful detail how she deliberately used wind as a framing device.
But it does jump off the page at you. The presence and movement of air are constant allegorical touchpoints throughout the novel, with evocative and delightful results.
And another powerful narrative device is Unathi and her struggle for identity. She never knew her mother, and feels as though a large chunk of who she is has gone missing along with her. Gogo has details, but keeps them to herself, the complicated mix of pain and shame provoking her silence.
Unathi’s struggle to find her mother and, in doing so, find herself is the central thrust of the novel.
The first act deals with life, love and loss in Moya. The second act is where Unathi transcends her humble beginnings to attend teaching college and begins working in an upscale boutique, where she rubs elbows with people attending and presiding over the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Throughout both acts, Unathi’s will to find her mother never falters. It is this will that propels us into the third act as if via jet stream.
While not a departure narratively, it does place us in new and interesting territory, bringing to mind certain Stephen King and Lee Child books, where a screaming left turn in the middle of nowhere brings us to an unexpected, but perfectly logical, destination.
Underpinning all of this is Mbunyuza-Memani’s evocative and emotionally impactful writing style. Many different topics are handled with equal aplomb. Depictions of day-to-day life are descriptive without belabouring anything. Emotions and their physical effect on our bodies are relayed with stirring impact.
The love scenes, while not plentiful or lurid, were intimate enough that I, a middle-aged man with children, could feel myself blushing.
And the passage describing why the word “ngomso” (isiXhosa for “tomorrow”) can never have the same meaning to Unathi again was so emotionally devastating that I actually had to take a few minutes to compose myself after reading it.
Mbunyuza-Memani has come thundering out of the gate with a debut novel that will entertain, provoke thought — and make you feel.
Buried in the Chest by Lindani Mbunyuza-Memani is available at Jacana Media for R260.