Title: Conquer Author: Rudo Bingepinge-Dzenga ISBN 1450511112
REVIEWED BY BENIAH MUNENGWA
RUDO Bingepinge-Dzenga’s second novel, Conquer, a 2012 publication, stands out as a brave introspection of society’s view on albinism and the neglected case of the boy child as an equal candidate for sexual abuse even from a mother.
A number of reviews have lauded the work for its noble stance in exploring the often-ignored male sexual abuse, as well as the continuation of discrimination against people living with albinism.
The book’s major strength is that beyond uncovering these thorny issues, it also proffers possible solutions like therapy, positive and optimistic thinking for victims.
The storyline is centred on September-Rain, a girl born with albinism. She strives for success in her teaching career and, in the process, proving that being an albino is just, but a skin condition and does not, in any way, affect one’s intellectual competence.
While growing up, she is kidnapped, discovers that her real mother killed herself because she could not stomach the thought of having birthed an albino, while pregnant women tended to spit saliva onto their chests whenever they see her.
At the same time, she is also not accepted into the family of her prospective suitor.
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The author uses all these heart-rending experiences to illustrate myths and misunderstandings surrounding the condition of albinism.
On the other hand, Booker, a medical doctor by profession, faces an emotional breakdown while at his workplace, ending up in fights with the patients.
All these revelations are just necessary pointers in driving the plot towards revealing that Booker was sexually molested by his real mother while his father was away, working in South Africa, at a time when he was running away from economic hardships in the nation.
But what stands in common between Booker and September-Rain is that the circumstances in which they are put by their mothers demand that the reader re-examines the definition of “mother”.
Is a mother, the one who gives birth to you or is a mother, a human being in spite of sex or background, who acts as one?
But in the middle of this jinx is a love roller coaster, here and there jammed and pushed off plot by the society and its hypocritical expectations. For such a pregnant plot, I salute the author.
However, numerous punctuation and layout errors did not escape my eye when I was reading through the text.
In terms of setting, I also lost myself in either discovering whether the plot was set in a growth point that had surgeries, apartments and crowded residential areas or in a rural village.
And it is also not clear how Vusi’s mother ends up acting like she did not know that her prospective daughter-in-law, September-Rain, was an albino, when in one day, before the introductions, she had confessed to knowing that she knew how her mother had killed herself because she had sired an albino.
The storyline is somehow rushed into convenient circumstances, places at which the author felt comfortable to descend heavily with her moral and intellectual teachings.
And in circumstances when conflict has to escalate, the narrative voice fails to rise up to the occasion.
I, somehow, felt the text lacked the innocence associated with a voice of a mature storyteller.
But how could it have been innocent when there was a donor’s influence at hand.
The story would have budded and grown to maybe 150 pages if the author did not choose to omit the moss that would have kept the the story warm.
It must be noted that at least the text tried to kill two birds at the same time and after reading the book, some of your perspectives about life will be altered, shaken and tilted towards the right side of thinking; somewhere where harmony can be achieved.
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