The Netherlands' media are currently obsessed with the "Multicultural Tragedy," a widening economic gap
between white Hollanders and the growing number of immigrants from their former
colonies. While it may seem restrained when measured by the standards of the
over-hyped Decision 2000, the Multicultural Tragedy has weighed heavily upon
Dutch minds for over a year. Pundits from all shades of the ideological spectrum
offer prescriptions for bringing a lost generation of immigrants into the fold
of the Dutch economy, with conservatives arguing stridently for mandatory lessons
not only in the Dutch language, but in mores, civics and Dutch history as well.
In the midst of this discussion emerges a Dutch actor and opera singer whose
historical novel is surprisingly timely.
In The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi, Arthur Japin writes a profound first
novel--one that plumbs the roots of the Multicultural Tragedy. His stranger-than-fiction
tale of two 19th-century West African princes shipped from their Ashanti homeland
to Holland for an education subtly captures the purgatorial experience of being
trapped between cultures.
The tale begins in the Dutch colony of Java, 1900. Kwasi Boachi reflects upon
his life as he prepares for a jubilee celebration marking 50 years of service
to Holland. Japin uses the familiar conceit of the memoir to spin a tale that
masterfully blends the voices of the old disenfranchised Kwasi with his wide-eyed
younger self. The story explores a mystifying riddle: how did an Ashanti prince
educated in Holland come to live out his final years on a fallow coffee plantation
in Indonesia?
At times, Japin undermines the depth and breadth of this question by treating
it as mere grist for the mystery mill. He peppers the Java sections with nebulous
references to a "mandate" that precludes Kwasi's ascension through the ranks
of the Dutch East India Company; the inferred conspiracy, however, never quite
materializes. Fortunately, the rest of the novel avoids this strain
of plot.
The book shines when Kwasi casts back to his years as a child in a Delft boarding
school. Japin captures Kwasi's estrangement when he and his cousin, fellow prince
Kwame, encounter turns of humiliation and fetishization at the hands of their
hosts. The two princes grapple with their alienation in different ways. Kwasi
goes to great lengths to assimilate into a Dutch society that will never fully
accept him, while Kwame clings to his African heritage.
The two perspectives collide violently when Kwasi is accepted into an exclusive
club and makes a speech denouncing his people. "They are heathens!" he declares,
"Fetish worshipers. The Ashanti believe in a supreme being whom they call Jan
Kampong, Lord of All That Is." Kwame, sitting in the audience, can tolerate
no more. "He threw back his head and opened his mouth," Japin writes. "He roared
like a wounded animal, like an epileptic."
The novel's strongest section comes in epistolary form from Kwame. He returns
to Africa to fulfill his role as king, but Ashanti policy has soured on European
engagement so he is not welcome. Instead, wanted neither at home nor abroad,
he passes time in an isolated Dutch fort on the African Gold Coast. He sends
a series of heartbreakingly lucid letters to his cousin, reporting his long
descent into despair and speaking across centuries and continents to the alienation
that inheres in any transcultural experience.
Unlike his cousin, Kwame is unable to participate in the charade of assimilation:
"Enough about the young ladies in Weimar, and more young ladies in Freiberg!"
he writes to Kwasi. "All clamoring for a lock of your hair, because they are
enchanted by the tight curls. And you allow them to pluck you like a chicken.
You tell they have even named their weekly meetings the 'Ashanti Circle' in
your honor....You evidently still enjoy being the center of attention. Attention,
Kwasi, is not the same as acceptance. Being tolerated signifies not being equal."
The Dutch are famous for their tolerance, but now they must confront the painful
fact that socioeconomic equality requires something far greater, though this
is hardly a problem peculiar to the Dutch. American readers, too, will find
much here to ponder.
Historical fiction is frequently maligned as a genre, but if it is well done,
it speaks to the present, tacitly urging the reader to view the modern world
in the past's light. Japin avoids demonizing or sentimentalizing any of the
novel's principal figures by using deft characterization and meticulous historical
research. The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi is a rich, colorful book that
painstakingly captures the double bind of assimilation and individuation. It
reveals a sad piece in the colonial-era puzzle that fits all too neatly into
our own time.
The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi
