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Week 2, I'm interested in the Z-Day episode that begins in the morning with Grace's elation about a free Zambia and ends after midnight with Grace & Agnes walking & talking about the Lumpa Church (pp. 122-25). 1/10 #TheOldDrift
Not conversant in Kaunda's Presidency, the United National Independence Party's (UNIP) political dominance from '64-'91, or Alice Lenshina's standing as prophet founder of the Lumba Church, I've been reading up as I can to emulate Serpell's implied reader 2/10 #TheOldDrift
Such study is part of the encyclopedic fun of this big history fiction and my rapid, amateur research has me all the more impressed with the way this episode invests Z-Day with ambivalence. From Grace, we learn that "the African vote" carried UNIP to power, but 3/10 #TheOldDrift
...among women, only the married could vote. Grace "never felt so proud" to be Zambian, but is denied franchise. A second ambivalence is introduced when Grace rescues Agnes who is alone on a bus and lost. 4/10 #TheOldDrift
Ronald isn't with Agnes this time because he's with his parents who have joined the Lumpa Church. Grace's surprised thoughts about the "religious cult" add to our records the UNIP's violent suppression of the "Lumpa Church Rebellion" (124). 5/10 #TheOldDrift
With more than 50K members and its refusal to pay taxes, this indigenous Christian church was regarded by Kaunda as a threat to the UNIP's authority & independent Zambia. This Alice Lenshina entry includes a hostile quote from Kaunda. 6/10 #TheOldDrift
So this episode, focused mostly through Grace and a bit at the end with Agnes, narrates Z-Day with a suggestion of two inaugural events: UNIP's electoral success + its lethal exercise of state violence against a religious movement founded by a woman. 7/10 #TheOldDrift
On the final page of our week two reading, the mosquito narrators return us to the Lumpa. They address "you," Alice Lenshina, telling her in present tense how her visions and religion originate from cerebral malaria. She's called "our Joan of Arc." 8/10 #TheOldDrift
What to make of the mosquitos' tone? Arch? And how will the novel proceed to treat dissidence, religious and other kinds, relative to the stories of Zambian self-determination? 9/10 #TheOldDrift
p.s. I couldn't help but peek at just one more page to see that we'll next step back to 1953 & the Afronauts Serpell also writes about here. 10/10 #TheOldDrift https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-zambian-afronaut-who-wanted-to-join-the-space-race
