Cultural appropriation and (mis)translation in Petina Gappah’s ‘Washington’s wife decides enough is enough’

ABSTRACT

Based on a close reading of ‘Washington’s wife decides enough is enough’, which is taken from Rotten row, this paper discusses how Gappah deploys the themes of cultural appropriation and (mis)translation to anchor the tensions between tradition and modernity. In the focal story, the writer uses the conflict between a mother-in-law and daughter–in-law to foreground the social and cultural appropriation of the Shona cultural nudity curse, its subsequent misidentification and desacrilization by other members of the family, witnesses, the police, and the media. This drama takes place in the contemporary urban space of Harare, which, as I argue, is a largely detraditionalized space.

KEYWORDS:

• Nudity curse
• social and cultural appropriation
• (mis)translation
• tradition
• modernity

Notes

1. In addition to the Roman Catholic church and The Celestial Church of the Power in the Blood International, in Gappah’s narrative there is also the African Reformed Church where the wedding takes place. All these churches are mentioned to show how Christianity has transformed.

2. In the general Zimbabwean context, the passenger’s seat is sometimes refered as ‘mama’s seat’. The assumption, as one could argue, is that women do not normally drive family cars, even if they have the driver’s license. In other cases, occupying the passenger’s seat, kudya window as it is described in Shona, is some kind of honor. One could also argue that the interior of the car is an ‘ambivalent modern space’ in which people that relate in certain ways in which social distance is necessary to sustain mutual respect are suddenly brought together in a small enclosed and intimate space. For such relaltionship, this is a challenge – one is reminded of say a relationship between son-in-law and mother-in-law in Shona culture that thrives on social distance.

3. Higham reports that ‘perhaps the first person to attempt an experimental study of rumor was the seventeenth century M.P, Thomas Chaloner who would go into Westminster hall in the morning and tell some strange story and would come thither again about 11 or 12 to have the pleasure to hear how it spread and sometimes it would be altered, with additions he could scarce know it to be his own’ (1951, p. 42).

4. Old buses are named as such, because in addition to carrying people from the countryside, they are also used to carry vegetables, fruits, chickens, goats, and other things to the city.