BookBrowse Reviews Call and Response by Gothataone Moeng

BookBrowse:

A sweeping collection of stories reflecting the paradoxical relationships Botswanan women have with traditional customs and modern life.

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Call and Response is a striking collection. Its nine lyrically written stories, some of which are lengthy, encompass the social paradoxes young Botswanan women face in a modern world. How adhering to cultural traditions can be messy and lonely. How the expectation to flourish in one's career is often mired in setbacks. How disciplining children may be less about punishment and more about tolerance. Set in the urban village of Serowe and the capital city of Gaborone, the stories are written by a talented social interpreter, Botswanan author Gothataone Moeng, who demonstrates an acute understanding of belonging to multiple worlds.

The nuances of identity, particularly in the face of unbearable pain, anchor "Small Wonders." A widow who has been grieving in public for a year, Phetso has obeyed ancestral custom and worn three mourning pieces of clothing: a cape, headscarf and dress. Now that the year is over, she cannot avoid the ceremonial undressing, a ritual to help both families turn the page on their bereavement, but she is reluctant to take part in it. She has embraced the cultural boundaries placed on her as a widow with aplomb; this has been self-therapy that has given her a sense of belonging in the social hierarchy and also allowed her, in many ways, to be erased. The expectation after the undressing is that she will return to her self and be who she once was. Marry again. But that is the conundrum: How can she possibly step over one boundary to celebrate another? How can she reclaim her identity as a young woman searching for love as if trauma had never happened?

In "Dark Matter," younger sister Onthatile asks older sister Nametso, "will we survive these white children?" By "white" she means privileged. Onthatile's daughter Sethunya is defiant and spoiled. Nametso has returned to Gaborone from the United States, where she lived for a decade but couldn't sell her novel, and subsequently became anxious, desperate and poor. Now, she chauffeurs Sethunya from school to swim practice, and she is lonely. Still struggling to make her novel readable, Nametso needs a job to reimburse her sister for the plane ticket home. She fears being a burden.

A different type of familial anxiety, that of how to proceed with a mother who exhibits neurological loss, makes for an emotional story in "Homing." Lebogang has instigated a family meeting with her half-sisters Sedilame and Boitumelo after a kitchen mishap — a blackened pot nearly melted — courtesy of their mother. When their mother speaks of her dead husband in the present tense while talking to Lebogang's son Leruo, Lebogang has had it. Something must be done. "We are women now," she says, trying to press her sisters into action. "We do not need a prophet to reveal to us that the woman in there, who raised us, is no longer the woman she used to be."

This is a collection for women and about women. But the stories are also a postcard of gratitude to Botswana for its lovely grace, which can be seen in their descriptive passages:

"Outside the sky was a vast blue dome, steadfast and distant, enshrouding the whole ward, the whole village. Wisps of white clouds trailed the sky's surface." ("Botalaote")

"It was September and the dust winds had finally swept in, dislodging the tail end of a long winter. A gust of wind buoyed a flurry of dust upward and skittered a Coke can against the paved parking light. The leaves from the acacia tree fell intermittently…" ("Small Wonders")

Moeng's talent as a writer is that she doesn't settle for the easy narrative. Her characters are complicated and layered and she writes with empathy, making us care about these women. Botswana is a sparsely populated country in a part of the world that gets little international attention, yet the vulnerability of Moeng's characters strikes a resonant chord of shared experience, reminding the reader that women are women all over the globe.

Call and Response is truly enriching. Before reading, I asked myself, what exactly lies beneath a quiet country that is rarely held up to the light? The question was quickly answered. Love and family, tradition, and expectation. And reflection. Gothataone Moeng's stories about the sacred and the brave are a profound literary experience.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in February 2023, and has been updated for the February 2024 edition. Click here to go to this issue.