“Country Lovers” by Nadine Gordimer and “What It's Like to Be a Black Girl (For Those of You Who Aren't)” by Patricia Smith



“Country Lovers” by Nadine Gordimer and “What It's Like to Be a Black Girl (For Those of You Who Aren't)” by Patricia Smith

Introduction

Nadine Gordimer's, Country Lovers and Patricia Smith's What It's Like to Be a Black Girl (For Those of You Who Aren't) are powerful and unique reflections of racism at its highest. The most prominent things portrayed in both stories are the black race, racism, and the cultural background or setting. In a sense, the authors show that racism comes in many forms and can breathe inferiority into young lives. Country Lovers main character, Thebedi, is nothing like the little black girl in What It's Like to be a Black Girl, but their similarities are present for readers to see. Though racism is more or less on the back burners today; we still are still living in a society where some people are still pressured to be racist, and some are still profoundly racist.

Literary Analysis

The story Country Lovers by Gordimer is about the relationship between two children who grow up together; a black girl whose name was Thebedi, a white boy whose name was Paulus Eysendyck and the tragedy of their love child, during an era of apartheid. Even in the mention of their names one can conjure up who they were, Thebedi's last name was not mentioned, while Paulus' last name, Eysendyck was mentioned (Clugston, 2010b).

It is a story set in an era where white people were wealthy and the blacks were slaves or worked for white people in South Africa. Paulus' father owned the farm and Thebedi's father was a worker on that farm. They both knew they could not be together publicly; though this was not mentioned in the story, in reading one could understand that whites were deemed socially, intellectually and financially better off than blacks, in a period where blacks were slaves or worked for whites (Clugston, 2010b).

Development of bond between children was strong enough to be carried through to adulthood, though nothing could materialize of it. She told her father the missus had given them to her as a reward for some works she had done-it was true she sometimes was called to help out in the farmhouse. She told the girls in the kraal that she had a sweetheart nobody knew about, tat away, away on another farm, and they giggled, and teased, and admired her. There was a boy in the kraal called Njabulo who said he wished he could have brought her belt and ear-rings” (Clugston, 2010b). Paulus was in love with her or was fascinated by her innocence.

In reading, one would assume that Paulus killed the infant child that day when he returned to Thebedi's hut. The baby was not fed during the night; although she kept telling Njabulo her husband's it was sleeping, he saw for himself in the morning that it was ...