美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Next Door' Neighbors Gradually Learn To Get Along In Post-Apartheid Cape Town（在线收听）

LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

For decades, the two strong-willed women in Yewande Omotoso's new novel were committed enemies. One is black. The other is white. Their properties are next door to one another, separated by a hedge in an affluent neighborhood in Cape Town, South Africa. At the beginning of the book, they only meet at the neighborhood committee meeting, where they always fight. But an accident brings the two together and so starts an unexpected voyage of discovery for them both. The book is "The Woman Next Door," and the author, Yewande Omotoso, joins us from South Africa, where she lives, to talk about it.

Welcome to the program.

YEWANDE OMOTOSO: Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here talking to you.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: It's great to have you. I want to talk about these very richly imagined characters. These are two women who are widows. They've lost their partners. Their life is filled with many regrets. And they find themselves at sort of the end of their lives with not many people around them. It's unusual to have characters like these.

OMOTOSO: I definitely wasn't trying to be unusual, and sometimes stories kind of come up and say, this is a story you ought to write. And the story captures me because the other question is - is it ever too late to redeem yourself? Is it ever too late to forgive and be forgiven? Is it ever too late to find happiness? For these two women who are so isolated, is it ever too late to try and make friends?

You know, I don't know if they ever do manage that. I like to think of what they have as a hate-ship (ph), rather than a friendship (laughter). But I think all stories are important, including this one about human beings. They happen to have lived, you know, into their 80s. And, yes, they happen to be women, but their stories matter just as much.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: One of the things that divides these two women are not only the fact that one is black and one is white but that they're living in South Africa. They've experienced apartheid in two very different ways. It hangs over the whole novel. Explain a little bit about how you talk about this in the book.

OMOTOSO: I was really interested in looking at - what is it like, particularly for Marion's character, to have been someone during the apartheid days who didn't necessarily resist apartheid, disagree with it but kind of went along? What is it like now, you know, post-apartheid? What does she do with her opinions? What does she do with the mental gymnastics she had to create for herself to agree with something like an apartheid system that says this kind of skin color is better than that kind of skin color?

I wanted to look at this character, or attempt to look at her, with compassion. A friend of mine, who's a psychologist, often says, you know, being racist is a bit like being an alcoholic. You have to be able to acknowledge your racism and your prejudice, and that's the beginning. And I wanted to have this character, Marion, who's definitely full of prejudice and so stuck because of it and, like, she's on - she cannot give it up. She's righteous and is trying to, like, make the last few years of her life - and resist acknowledging that she was wrong, that apartheid was wrong, that it was a horror and that these are the things it did to the country she lived in.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You write about her with a lot of compassion. It is something that's very interesting because she is a person who has such very strong views about racism and race and its place in society.

OMOTOSO: The challenge for me was that - Yewande, can you write this? You know, can you portray her, and can you be fair? Can you portray her fairly? Does she deserve fairness? It can often seem kind of trite or pat, but I think part of the idea of the book is compassion is necessary because how do we repair without compassion? How does someone like a Marion get an opportunity to repair or to move towards repair?

And I think that's an important question the world over, but definitely - you know, I live in South Africa. We're kind of 20-plus years after the democratic government was elected, and we're in repair. You know, we're attempting to talk to one another. These are races and cultures and languages that were separated. The very meaning of apartheid is apartness, separateness. So repair was very important and compassion is very important, I believe.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: One of the things that I think is so very well done in this book is how you paint the genteel white ladies at the neighborhood committee meeting, their sort of casual, unspoken and intimate, you know, racism that manifests itself in these very tangible ways that impacts people. It can seem so innocuous, and yet it is so very present. What's important about showing that kind of micro-legacy of racism?

OMOTOSO: Yeah, I think it's incredibly important. To take a totally different example, we can always look and see corruption. We can look at government, and we can say - oh, government is corrupt. But when we drive drunk or run the red light or whatever, we do not recognize that as a corrupting. And I'm really interested in individuals recognizing the little things, the seemingly innocuous things.

And part of this whole thing is that shame still carries. You know, Marion carries a lot of shame. Underneath her anger and righteousness is a deep shame because the humanity in her, whatever is there, knows. So how do you begin to release that if you don't address even the most innocuous things as a kind of violence? Those things have their own kind of violence.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You know, ultimately, I think what I was struck by is this is a very optimistic book, and it also feels like a very immediate one. Conflicts about race, as you mentioned, it is something, obviously, that are still being dealt with in South Africa but also here in the U.S.

OMOTOSO: Yes.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Is there a message in the fact that these two women can become, if not friends, at least companions?

OMOTOSO: Cautious optimism, I think, is what I believe in. I think the caution is important. I didn't want to write a book with a very simple, happy ending. And I don't necessarily think that's what I did. I think it is - it feels like it's delicate. That's the caution, that this is delicate. And I think it's important to remember, as we connect and repair, that it's delicate. And so you could tip this thing any way at any moment. And so the optimism is as important as the caution because we also get careless sometimes. And we think, oh, you know, we did it.

And I think South Africa, in a way, may have been careless. I don't know if that's quite the word, but if - we talk now about the rainbow project, you know, rainbow South Africa, the rainbow nation. And we sometimes talk about it disparagingly because it feels like that was too optimistic and that we didn't do the really hard, dirty work to kind of peel underneath the scab.

My sense of Marion and Hortensia is that they're just going to try and plod along. They're going to argue a lot. There might be long periods of sulking (laughter), you know. And occasionally, they would have a meal, or they'll sit down together - and that that's OK because it means that we're always trying and always attempting, which I think is more important than feeling like we've arrived somewhere.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yewande Omotoso's new novel is "The Woman Next Door."

Thank you so much for joining us.

OMOTOSO: Thank you so very much.

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