Belonging to the Land–a review of Far From Home by Na’ima B Robert – The Pirate Tree
J.L. Powers
I grew up in the Southwestern Desert of the United States, the Chihuahua Desert, the driest desert of North America. I once wrote an essay about how the land shapes the people there—only survivors are left, I wrote, but we have grace for people who fail because all desert people know what it means to fail, to pick up again and start over.

Maybe that sentiment is true and maybe that’s just my romantic imagination, inspired by generations of thought filtered through Walt Whitman’s consciousness. But there is no doubt that people’s perceptions of the land they currently own, aspire to own, or once owned in the recent or even distant past can shape the historical outcome of nations and ruin many, many lives. In recent history, nowhere is this truer than in Zimbabwe.

It is this sense of belonging to the land and the land belonging to one’s self—the violence it engenders, the awe it inspires, the willingness of people to sacrifice everything they hold dear, including children and family, to hold onto that land—that Na’ima B. Robert explores in her forthcoming young adult novel, Far From Home (Frances Lincoln, 2012).

The novel starts in the 1960s, when the country was still known as Rhodesia and ruled by a privileged white minority who held ownership to most of the land, denied blacks the right to vote, and created a protected status for whites to enjoy the fruits of black labor. Yet although the statement I just wrote is true, it also fails to probe the psychosocial layers of a complex and subtle history where both blacks and whites loved the African land they simultaneously occupied and fought for.

In her recent memoir about her mother’s life in Africa, much of which was spent defending ownership of a farm in then-Rhodesia, Alexandra Fuller writes how her mother’s choice to live in Africa (rather than to return to Scotland or to England) was a choice of life and death, since two of her four children died as a direct result of the decision to stay there; and yet she decided to stay because she had been possessed by the land, like many of the whites who settled there.

Robert explores both aspects to the question of “who owns the land,” offering both a black and white protagonist, linked not only through the same piece of land but through a violent secret that has the potential to destroy both of their lives.

Tariro narrates her experience of being forcibly removed from the land her family had lived on for generations, herded like cattle to live in dusty tribal territories so that the lush farmland could be sold to white farmers. But the second section, set thirty years later, portrays the experiences of Katie, a white girl who, like Tariro before her, is forced to leave the only home she had ever known. Although Robert clearly shows the way Africans were violently cheated out of the land they had lived on for hundreds of years, she also shows how whites who had turned the land into productive farmland were thrust into the cold, losing all their worldly goods, as former guerilla soldiers reclaimed rights to the land that they had fought for in Zimbabwe’s long war for liberation. In the end, it is possible to have sympathy for most of the protagonists involved, with the exception, perhaps, of Katie’s parents.

Rhodesia was built on several racist assumptions and Africans suffered the injustices and economic deprivations that came with colonialism and white settlement for a hundred years before finally winning independence and the ability to claim back the land their ancestors had lost at the turn of the 19th century. Yet white farmers also invested enormous sums of money, time, and energy into the land they lost during the farm seizures earlier this century. When they lost their farmland, they lost their homes, their country, and their money—just as Africans had lost the same things so many years before.

In Far From Home, Robert reveals that although justice can come for some, it is often delivered at a cost for others.

Postscript: Of the war in Zimbabwe, Alexandra Fuller writes, “No one starts a war warning that those involved will lose their innocence—that children will definitely die and be forever lost as a result of the conflict; that the war will not end for generations and generations, even after cease-fires have been declared and peace treaties have been signed. No one starts a war that way, but they should. It would at least be fair warning and an honest admission: even a good war—if there is such a thing—will kill anyone old enough to die” (Cocktails Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, p. 196).

Author/illustrator/storyteller/recovering-teacher/poet, Linda Boyden has written six and illustrated five picture books, The Blue Roses, Powwow’s Coming, Giveaways: An ABC Book of Loanwords from the Americas, Boy and Poi Poi Puppy, Roxy Reindeer, and Boy and Poi Poi Puppy in Doggone! She has had many poems published in various literary journals. She belongs to the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, and Writers Forum of Redding CA. She says, “I spoil kids and grandkids. I write. I teach. I color in or outside the lines. 2016 is my fifth year of writing a poem a day. Poetry gives voice to our silent songs.”

Nancy Bo Flood lives on the Navajo Reservation where she writes, hikes, and attends local rodeos. Her award-winning books include: Navajo Year, Walk Through Many Seasons (Arizona Book Award), Warriors in the Crossfire (Colorado Book Award, YALSA), No-Name Baby (Bank Street’s 100 Best Children’s Books of 2012; Horn Book’s top choice historical novels). Cowboy Up, Ride the Navajo Rodeo, a recent poetry-nonfiction, is a Library Guild selection. Visit her at www.nancyboflood.com.

Lyn Miller-Lachmann is the author of the 2009 novel Gringolandia (Curbstone Press/Northwestern UP), a ALA Best Book for Young Adults and Americas Award Honor Book about a teenage refugee from Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship. Her 2013 novel, Rogue (Nancy Paulsen/Penguin), a Junior Library Guild selection, portrays a young teenager with Asperger’s and an X-Men obsession in search of a friend and her own special power. Surviving Santiago, the companion to Gringolandia, was published by Running Press in June 2015. Lyn translated the picture books The World in a Second (Enchanted Lion, 2015; a Kirkus and Boston Globe Best Book of 2015), Lines, Squiggles, Letters, Words (Enchanted Lion, 2016; a USBBY Outstanding International Book); The Queen of the Frogs (Eerdmans, 2017); Three Balls of Wool (Enchanted Lion, 2017; a 2018 Skipping Stones Honor Book); and Olive the Sheep Can’t Sleep (Charlesbridge, 2018) from Portuguese to English. Visit her at www.lynmillerlachmann.com.

Sarah Marwil Lamstein, former teacher, librarian, and puppeteer, is the author of four picture books, a middle grade novel, co-author of a Nepali folktale collection, and a poetry chapbook. Her picture books include Big Night for Salamanders, a Smithsonian Notable Book; Letter on the Wind/A Chanukah Tale, Sydney Taylor Honor Award; I Like Your Buttons! a Bank Street College of Education Best Book for Children; Annie’s Shabbat, a Booklist Top Ten Religion Book for Youth. Her middle grade novel Hunger Moon, set in the 1950’s, shows sixth grade Ruthie struggling to make her way in a dysfunctional family, which includes a brother beset with Aspergers at a time when there was little awareness of the disorder. On the making of her Nepali folktale collection, From the Mango Tree, she collaborated with Nepali writer Kavita Ram Shrestha. Her poetry chapbook, Breathless, was published by Finishing Line Press. To learn more about Sarah and her books, visit www.sarahlamstein.com

Peter Marino is an English professor at SUNY Adirondack. His novels for young adults Dough Boy (2005) and Magic and Misery (2009) have been nominated by the American Library Association for Best Books for Young Adults. Magic and Misery made Booklist’s Top 10 Fiction for Youth (2010) and the ALA Round Table’s Rainbow Books Bibliography.

J.L. Powers is the award-winning author of several books, most recently a YA novel she co-wrote with her brother, M.A. Powers–Broken Circle. She is also the author of a picture book, Colors of the Wind: the story of blind artist and champion runner George Mendoza , illustrated with Mendoza’s artwork. She is also the author of several young adult novels: The Confessional (2007), This Thing Called the Future(2011), a coming-of-age novel set in post-apartheid South Africa, and editor of That Mad Game: Growing Up in a Warzone, an anthology of essays from around the world (2012). Her novel Amina(2013) was published in Australia and explores a girl graffiti artist growing up in Mogadishu, Somalia. Visit her at www.jlpowers.net.

Padma Venkatraman is the author of three critically acclaimed novels: A TIME TO DANCE, ISLAND’S END and CLIMBING THE STAIRS, each of which was released to multiple starred reviews. Cumulatively, her books have several awards and been honored with inclusion on over fifty best book lists. Her 4th novel, THE BRIDGE HOME, is about homeless children in India and is scheduled for 2019 Spring release by Nancy Paulsen Books. She enjoys teaching and mentoring and visiting schools and has presented keynote addresses at national and international conferences. Visit her atwww.padmavenkatraman.com and @padmatv.

E.M. Kokie, Terry Farish, Varian Johnson, and Ann Angel all gave of their time, passion, heart and soul in the past to The Pirate Tree and we gratefully acknowledge their help and much needed contributions both to The Pirate Tree and also to children’s literature.