WIVES AND DAUGHTERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 755, 8 January 1954, Page 12

WIVES AND DAUGHTERS

DAUGHTER OF CONFUCIUS, by Wong SuLing and E. H. Cressy; Victor Gollancz, English price 15/-. BLACK MAN’S TOWN, by Isobel Ryan; Jonathan Cape, English price 15/-. THE FON AND HIS HUNWIVES, by Rebecca Reyher; Victor Gollancz, English price 16/-. O RUGGED LAND OF GOLD, by Martha eee Victor Gollancz, English price 13/6

(Reviewed by

D.N.

W.

RITING in their own language the Chinese may conceivably produce occasional bad books: writing in English they seem incapable of failure, and give us essays, novels, and autobiographies of style, dignity and charm. Wong Su-Ling’s story of her life, Daughter of Confucius, is no exception. The author was born in 1918 as Girl Number Seven into a matriarchal Chinese household of 51 persons. Her family belonged to the small, powerful class of landlords, scholars and_ officials, people who still ordered their way of life on the same patterns their ancestors had traced for centuries. The women led a cloistered life behind the bamboo curtains. Theirs was almost a sonnet form of existence, confined and disciplined, yet it produced a strength and flowering of character comparable perhaps to the results of a certain type of Scottish upbringing. The details of mandarin-style living are sharply drawn and the variety of characters in the family-community are portrayed with a novelist’s skill. Black Man’s Town can be recommended to any woman whose husband is considering a post in West Africa, Isobel Ryan, the wife of a timber trader, spent two years on the Gold Coast, and her book is an honest straightforward account of life as she found it. There is about her writing the fresh immediate feel of a letter written on the spot by an intelligent, level-headed woman-not unlike our own Lady Barker. Mrs. Ryan makes no attempt to solve the problems of Africa for all men for al] time, a modesty which is refreshing in white writers about coloured countries. As much cannot be said about the third author on this list, an American journalist. Rebecca Reyher gives us a one-woman exposé of African polygamy, along Mother India lines, all alarm and no responsibility. The most disturbing statement in The Fon and his 100 Wives will be found among the "Acknowledgments" at the end of the book. The author says: "I have not violated any confidences, as it was always clearly understood that I was planning to tell a story, to write a book. Nevertheless, I am concerned about the two runaway wives who told me their tales. I could have tried to disguise their identity by changing their names, but that would have been a little silly, as the Kom grapevine knew all about my visits. I am hoping that if the book, or the stories revealed in it, ever reach the Koms, the Baminda authorities will find ways of assuring these women protection from persecution." 'O Rugged Land of Gold is described by its publisher as an "intensely moving story. of unquenchable courage." The difficulty is that the courage is described by the person who showed it. Autobiographical accounts of heroism require a special technique in writing, a virtuoso reticence and under-statement. These qualities are absent from Martha Mar-

tin’s narrative of a winter alone in the Alaskan wilderness. I have nagging doubts about the authenticity of this book, ,