Customer Reviews

Cion: A Novel

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

South African novelist Zakes Mda has always been a master of place. It is exotic locations, places steeped in history, tradition, and quite possibly, magic, that inspire his literary muse. His previous novels have all been set in his native South Africa, but his newest work, Cion, is placed firmly in the American heartland, in Appalachian Ohio, specifically the city of Athens and the nearby hamlet of Kilvert.

Mda transports Toloki, a professional mourner first introduced in Ways of Dying to Athens, where a chance encounter with a young man from Kilvert during Athens's world-famous Halloween celebration changes Toloki's perspective on life and the many ways of mourning. Toloki discovers the heart and soul of the impoverished Kilvert community and the mixed race (White/African/Native American) people who live there.

I live only a few miles from Kilvert and can attest to the authenticity and accuracy of Mda's observations of the colorful people and places in Appalachian Ohio. They are beautifully rendered and evocative of a past that no longer exists except in memory and hopeful for a future not yet realized.

Cion is a wonderfully poetic, moving and entertaining novel. Don't miss this one!



John Kachuba
Author: Ghosthunters: On the Trail of Mediums, Dowsers, Spirit Seekers, and Other Investigators of America's Paranormal World

I had not read of Ways of Dying or heard of Zakes Mda before reading the Essence article that featured Cion as the October 2007 book of the month. Based on the article's synopsis, I knew it was a book I wanted to read, so I ordered it immediately - in doing so, I have no regrets - what an insightful, creative, and often humorous read!

Cion follows the travels of Toloki, a professional mourner (which in itself is an unusual profession), as he ventures to Southeastern Ohio (Appalachian country). It is in this rural, impoverished setting and through Toloki's eyes that American pop culture, politics, and other "isms," such as racism, colorism, sexism, etc. are explored. A Halloween prank-gone-bad leads Toloki to form an unusual friendship with a local, rather eccentric family. His host family is self-described as WIN (White-Indian-Negro) and it is with them that the complexities of racial identity, prejudice, and stereotypes emerge.

Mda uses his creativity and playwriting skills to construct scenes that evoke crystal clear images and crafty dialogue/arguments to cover aspects of African American history (a wonderfully imagined Underground Railroad escape is presented as a sub-plot) and its far-reaching impact on Americans today. Toloki's observations and internal thoughts/commentaries are oftentimes laugh-out-loud funny and laced with truth and heartfelt honesty. This book is definitely in my 2007 Top 10 list - I have already ordered his earlier works and look forward to the reading experience.

Reviewed by Phyllis
October 6, 2007
APOOO BookClub
Nubian Circle Book Club

Cion, a fictional narrative by Zakes Mda, gives a unique perspective on American culture through the lens of an outsider from South Africa. By interweaving the past with the present, Mda creates a patchwork of stories that shows the importance of heritage to an American family.
The novel begins when Toloki, a professional mourner from South Africa, haphazardly ends up in Athens, Ohio during the yearly Halloween festivities. While observing Americans partaking in the "parade of creatures," Toloki befriends a young man named Obed Quigley (Mda 15). Fascinated by Toloki's profession, Obed invites Toloki to his home in the rural village of Kilvert. When Toloki arrives at the Quigley residence, he meets the members of Obed's family, including Mr. Mahlon Quigley (Obed's father), Ruth Quigley (Obed's mother) and Orpah Quigley (Obed's sister). During the first evening Toloki spends with the Quigleys, Mda gives the reader a glimpse of the Quigley way of life by describing their dinnertime conversation. In this conversation, Ruth uses the phrase "our people" several times to describe the rich traditions that the people of Kilvert carry on from their collective past (Mda 31). This provides a conduit into the next chapter of Cion, which is a flashback to the lives of the Quigleys' enslaved ancestors: The Abyssinian Queen and her two sons, Nicodemus and Abednego. For the rest of the story, Mda traces the family's history from the escape of Nicodemus and Abednego to the founding of Tablertown, which is present day Kilvert. As Toloki becomes more familiar with the Quigleys' past, he notices incongruities between who they think they were and who they actually are, finally concluding that "memory is what you make of it...we all construct our past as we go along" (Mda 272).
One aspect of the past that Ruth Quigley overlooks in order to validate her present is the religious beliefs of her ancestors. Throughout the story we learn that the two parts of Ruth that weigh most heavily on her daily choices are her Christian faith and her family's heritage. She votes for George Bush because he is "a man of God" and "he [gets] his messages direct from God" (Mda 63). She complains that scientists are "crazy" and they "always think they are smarter than God" (Mda 75). Ruth frequently quotes scripture to provide support for her political choices, such as her belief that gay marriage should not be allowed (Mda 81). She also uses her ancestry as a reason for much of what she does. Ruth grows carrots, cilantro, onions, kale, cabbage, and Swiss chard in her garden because her people, "them Indian people," have always raised their own food (Mda 79). She sews quilts in her spare time because "her people are a quilting people" (Mda 32). For someone to whom family tradition is so very important, it is interesting that Ruth chooses to reject certain traditions if they are contrary to her religious beliefs. While her Irish forebear, Niall Quigley, actively participated in Christian revivals, the other two-thirds of her ancestry, the Native Americans and the Africans, participated in activities that Ruth would consider unchristian (Mda 192).
In chapter four, Mda writes that Abednego worshipped the God of the Shawnee, who was believed to be a female (Mda 121). Later on, Ruth expresses with certainty that the Quigleys have Cherokee heritage rather than Shawnee because "them Shawnees were crazy anyways...how can God be a woman?" (Mda 140). Even though she will not accept the possibility of having a Shawnee heritage, by claiming that the Shawnees were crazy, she is also calling Abednego, her beloved ancestor, crazy. For the sake of her own veracity, Ruth chooses to overlook the fact that she might not agree with her African ancestors' beliefs.
Another tradition from her family's past that Ruth disapproves of is the custom of story-telling. The story-telling began with the Abyssinian Queen's nightly tales of escape at the Fairfield Plantation, incorporating elements of fantasy and magic (Mda 49-51). Eventually the lady of the plantation confronts the Abyssinian Queen, offended that her "voodoo stories" have no mention of Jesus, and insists that the Abyssinian Queen tell Bible stories instead (Mda 51). In chapter nine we learn that Ruth became uncomfortable with the stories the more she read the Bible (Mda 268). Like the lady of the plantation, she decided that the stories "about the sun that was lonely because nothing had been created yet" were unchristian and thus, banned them from the Quigley household (Mda 269).
Ruth's unwillingness to allow unchristian elements of her family's past to take place in the present is especially apparent when Obed begins his quest for the occult. Motivated by the desire to make money, Obed "dabbles in everything that is remotely connected with his heritages" (Mda 229). He sets up a tent near the creek and opens up a "hand trembling" business, assuring people that because of his Native American ancestry, he can tell fortunes (Mda 129). Ruth is vehemently opposed to this, giving him daily sermons from the Bible that condemn such practices, regardless of whether their people took part in such practices in the past (Mda 130).
In one situation, Ruth explicitly and surprisingly chooses to honor her religion over her ancestry. Toward the end of the book, Ruth expresses an interest in making "Bible quilts," showing Toloki the Biblical figures she cut out to appliqué to the fabric of the quilt (Mda 306). This is shocking because previously, Ruth was disgusted when Orpah tried to incorporate some of her original artistic designs on a quilt (Mda 137). Ruth complains that Orpah's "newfangled designs are not our tradition...our patterns have come down from our great-great-grandmothers, and ain't no little squirt's gonna change that" (Mda 138). Eventually, Ruth chooses to go against the grain of the past tradition of quilt patterns in order to create something that honors her religion.
It is ironic that Ruth Quigley refuses to carry on certain traditions she deems "unchristian" while proudly claiming to be a Cherokee princess and the descendent of an African queen (Mda 268). Throughout Cion, Ruth chooses the elements of the past that she wishes to incorporate in her present. This points to the observation Toloki makes in chapter nine: What actually happened doesn't really matter. What matters is what Ruth believes happened (Mda 272). By providing a detailed history of a Southeastern Ohio family, Zakes Mda does an excellent job of connecting the ghosts of the past with the spirit of the present. Sometimes what we choose to believe overrides what has actually happened and the past can be changed to validate the present.

The novel, Cion was written by Zakes Mda and published in New York in 2007. The story goes back and forth from the past to present day. Throughout the story, there are many reoccurrences of enemies, whether it is from the past or present. Every character has an enemy, even if they don't think they do; they each have to watch out for themselves.
Cion starts off with a character named Toloki, who is a professional mourner, that comes to Athens, Ohio in search of mourning (Mda 1). He meets Obed Quigley, a student from the university, and becomes really close to the Quigley family: Ruth, the mother, Mahlon, the father, Orpah, the daughter, and Obed, the son. While his stay at the Quigley's house, Toloki learns about a generation of the Quigley family from a long time ago: Nicodemus, Abednego, and their mother, the Abyssinian Queen. They were slaves at Fairfield Farms, and were taught by their mother how to use the patterns on the quilts to escape. Nicodemus and Abednego, at last, escape, and run into many people during their journey that they can't trust because they're slaves. Going back to the present day, Toloki notices that Ruth is against Orpah because she won't listen to her mother. Ruth is a strict mother, who follows tradition, but Orpah refuses to, and Ruth gets angry, but says, "Orpah will come around one of these days" (Mda 89). Mahlon comforts Orpah, whenever she is hurting because of her mother. Toloki begins to acquire feelings for Orpah; Mahlon detests Toloki, but finally likes him when he finds his mother's gravestone that they were never able to locate. The story ends with Toloki and Orpah going off with each other in search of mourning.
No matter how people look at it, everyone has an enemy and "won't survive without an enemy" (Mda 8). Things can change for the best, but in the end there will always be an enemy; Ruth is like an enemy to Orpah as the slave owners are to Nicodemus and Abednego. The slaves try to escape from their owners to have freedom. The Abyssinian Queen taught her children how to read quilts; the quilts had different patterns that would help the sons to escape one day. Their eagerness to escape became stronger when Abednego was punished for drumming because David Fairfield, the owner of Fairfield Farms, had declared that drums were banned; David Fairfield found out the drums were used by slaves to send messages (Mda 54). "Nicodemus received the whipping of his life" because of his desire to learn how to read and write (Mda 55). Slaves are treated so poorly by their owner that they are punished just for wanting to know how to read and write. The owner's daughter was teaching him how to read and write in exchange for him teaching her how to play the flute, but she was ecstatic and couldn't keep her excitement to herself and this resulted in telling everyone, including her mother (Mda 55). One night the two boys were outside and saw Madame Fairfield, the wife of David Fairfield, exiting from a slave's house (Mda 94). "The boys knew immediately that their eyes had no right to see what they had seen" because now they would for sure be punished (Mda 94). Slaves are punished for everything, even if it is something they didn't even want to see. The next day Nicodemus and Abednego were asked to see Madame Fairfield, and so they went to see her; she threatened Nicodemus with his position as a stud if he ever told anyone about the previous night, and told Abednego that the Irish girl he grew to love was sold incase he too were to tell someone (Mda 96). This outraged the boys, so they tried to escape from Fairfield Farms to get to Ohio.
As a life of a slave shouldn't they be hesitant to whom they trust? When anyone mentions Ohio, their minds think of freedom, and believe whoever. On their journey, Nicodemus and Abednego run into a Caucasian male who said he was an abolitionist and would take them to Ohio (Mda 107). He treated them nicely at first, but then the man grew unkind, and they both caught on that he was not saving them; the boys escaped the man by hitting him with a musket repeatedly (Mda 108-109). They didn't know how they would get back on track since they were further south now. Eventually, they came upon a small log cabin and were greeted by an older man, most likely over eighty years old, who was pleased to now have slaves of his own (Mda 113). They were confused because after all they were in Ohio, where they were supposed to have freedom, but they went along with it to get stronger because Abednego was ill from escaping in the cold weather (Mda 113). The enemy, in this case, wasn't as bad as the others before because they benefited from him. They finally gained their strength and traded the man the musket, from the so-called `abolitionist', for their freedom (Mda 113). They were now free and continued on with their journey. While they were resting, a huge black man that looked very wealthy startled them. To them, it was very odd to see a black man dressed in such nice clothes. The man's name was Birdman, and he told them, "I am gonna look after you and hand you over to other conductors until you get to Canada", where it would be safer than Ohio (Mda 115). Finally they met someone who didn't want to be there enemy, but only to rescue them. He took them to a house that was part of the Underground Railroad, but a man named Tobias, who soon became an enemy for the two boys, broke in to find the slaves; Nicodemus was shot and killed and Abednego was left alone (Mda 117-120). Abednego now knew that wherever he was to go, he had to be careful of enemies.
Orpah will constantly drive Ruth crazy because she doesn't want to follow Ruth's rules. Orpah is around forty years old and lives at home, and doesn't have a job; Orpah sits in her room and plays her sitar or draws. The first time something is wrong with Orpah is when she refuses to come down and eat dinner, and Obed goes up to give her a plate of food. When he returns, Ruth asks if she has eaten and says, "she'll get over it soon enough" (Mda 84). Ruth has obviously done something to Orpah that made her hold a grudge against her mother. While at the dinner table, Ruth talks about how it all started when Orpah got a sitar; Orpah had to stay the night at a motel because of a flood and that was where she fell in love with the sitar, and bought it off of an Indian girl (Mda 85-86). Ruth said that before she got the sitar Orpah was "outgoing, even though she still made her "fancy drawings" and read her "ghost stories"" (Mda 85). After she learned how to play, her communication with her family dwindled down.
The drawings are another story why Ruth is very upset with her daughter. One night Toloki finds drawings in the trash can, and Orpah saw him with them and told him that Ruth had torn them apart (Mda 134-135). Toloki doesn't know why Ruth would do this because the drawings were beautiful, but supposedly Ruth hated anything that is beautiful; Ruth's nickname became "the Taliban" because Toloki said that only a Taliban would do this (Mda 135). Taliban isn't a nickname to give a mother, but to an enemy. The reason why Ruth keeps up with this destruction of Orpah's drawing is because Orpah didn't make quilts the traditional way (Mda 137). By not following traditions, can that create enemies? As for Orpah, it does because she gets upset at her mother for destroying her drawings, but Ruth thinks she's doing it to help her. When Ruth tried to show Orpah how to quilt, Orpah attached beads to them and made other designs instead of the traditional designs her mother wanted her to do; Ruth was disgusted because she believed that was disrespectful to her culture, and vowed to never let Orpah use her sewing machine (Mda 137). This resulted in Orpah creating the drawings of patterns and Ruth tearing them up. Ruth is so traditional that it ruined her relationship with her daughter; Orpah will always hold a grudge against Ruth.
Things can change, as will the enemies. Enemies can be recognizable or unknown; enemies can be in any shape or form. It goes to say like that old quote about keeping your friends close, but your enemies even closer is very accurate in relation to this book. Cion was an enjoyable novel to read about the relationships of enemies and how they will always exist. It was also very interesting to read a book with a setting that I am familiar with.

Quilts not only give us warmth; they tell an important part of our history. A part that makes America what it is today, a melting pot. They give us a glimpse into our part and hope for the future. Quilts have lead people out of their worse fears and into a world where their skin color doesn't matter. They say don't judge a book by the cover because nine times out of ten you will be wrong. This can be applied to quilts. Everything isn't always what it appears to be. Quilts were more of an art to be hung on the wall than a blanket to keep you warm. Now it seems that they have lost that precious job. The homemade quilts seem to have been replaced by quilts that have no meaning. You can buy a quilt now for twenty dollars at Wal-Mart. "Cion" by Zakes Mda was first published in 2007 by Penguin Books. In his book he takes the reader on a journey where quilts are important and homemade, where tradition is not lost, and where history was made.
Mda's character Toloki is a professional mourner who came from South Africa to America to get some different perspectives on mourning. He is about to set off on the adventure of a lifetime, an old quilt as his guide. He winds up in Athens, Ohio at the Halloween party where he meets Obed Quigley. Obed invites Toloki to his home in Kilvert, where Toloki meets the other Quigley's. His sister, Orpah a troubled soul who loves art and playing her sitar. He meets their mother Ruth and then Mr. Quigley, a quiet man with a garden of gnomes. Ruth and Toloki become good friends; she loves to talk about her heritage and Toloki is eager to listen. Ruth asks Toloki if he knows anything about quilting, when he says no, she begins telling him how her people are quilting people (Mda 32). The quilts tell stories; "cycles of loves and losses were enacted on the quilts. The souls of those who are gone rest in the very threads of the quilts" (Mda 33). Ruth has a very old quilt that is dear to her heart. The novel goes to the Abyssinian Queen; she was a quilter herself and made her sons quilts to help them escape out of slavery. Her son Abednego settles in Kilvert where his cions still live and have the very quilt he used to reach freedom. Then the novel goes back to Toloki and Orpah who have fallen in love and are going away together.
Quilts hold a story all of there own; they contain a path to freedom, codes, a special language and a mother's love. They are a gateway into the past from the present. Heritage is very important to Ruth. It defines whom she is, where she comes from, and what she wants to be. She talks about her past like it is present. The red slate she eats is "in memory of her childhood, and of the slaves who were forced to eat mud to ease the pangs of hunger" (Mda 204). Ruth compares the past and present constantly; "in those days" is a key phrase of hers (Mda 205). Ruth talks about quilts like the quilts are actual people, like they hung the stars. She comes from generations of quilt making. In fact "her people are a quilting people" (Mda 32). You can feel Ruth's passion about the quilts as she describes to Toloki about African quilts and how slaves used them to escape. The quilts had a unique musty smell. "The peculiar smell is the smell of history" and a "carrier of memories" (Mda 33). History is told through many things, for everything has history.
"The story is told by the earthy scent of the quilts" (Mda 33). The Abyssinian Queen lived on the Fairfield plantation; she was a house slave. When the slaves got pregnant they were told not to love their children. The children were took immediately and the mothers never got to see their newborns. This was David Fairfield's way of saving the women from pain. After birth several different women raised the children. The Abyssinian Queen would not have this and she kept track of which children were hers; Abednego, son of the plantation owner and Nicodemus the son of a field slave. The Abyssinian Queen was then made to sew and mend clothes. She learned from one of the older slaves how to make beautiful quilts "from scraps of fabric gathered from odd places" (Mda 47). She learned new patterns and became very good at it. The older slaves "taught her that the quilts her people made carried secret messages. Beauty that spoke a silent language" (Mda 48). The quilts held a path to freedom.
The beauty "was there for all to admire, yet its meaning rested only with those who knew the code hidden in the colors and the designs" (Mda 48). The Abyssinian Queen taught her sons how to read the quilts, which doubled as maps. Abednego's crazy quilt had the map of the entire plantation, along with other landmarks to lead them on their journey to Canada. "She taught them to identify some landmarks. A hill here. A forest there. A creek. A river" (Mda 48). The Abyssinian Queen made the maps according to stories she had heard; in fact she had never been outside of Fairfield plantation. "For Nicodemus she created a wonderful sampler with the well-known designs: the Drunkard's Path, the Log Cabin, the North Star, the Monkey wrench, Crossroads and the Flying Geese (Mda 52). The quilts were made for her sons out of love and hope that one-day they would be free and could make their own choices. The quilts were a perfect secret. "The way she arranged each of those designs and the color combinations that made each pattern stand out and yet blend in with the rest" (Mda 52). Each design carried its own message. "The Drunkard path [...] told them never to take a straight route when they escape. They should always take a zigzag path" (Mda 53).
Tradition is suppose to bring people together. With Orpah and Ruth it just tears them apart. When Ruth tries to teach Orpah to quilt, Orpah has a very artistic ability and tries new things by adding beads and different things to make the quilts different. Orpah "will not do slave patterns [...] because she does not need to escape to any place" (Mda 156). Ruth does not want things to change. "Ruth is so steeped in tradition that even poverty will not move her to be innovative in her use of the very traditional designs" (Mda 157). She doesn't like things that are not tradition and degrades the people who try new things; as she was admiring the quilts one-day, she said " them old-timers knew what they were doing. Unlike the quilts Orpah tried to make from her silly sketches, these have profound meaning. They speak a secret language" (Mda 271). She forbids Orpah from using her sewing machine again, until she can make normal quilts. From this moment on there is tension between the two. Orpah then goes to the Kilvert community center to try and get help on making the quilts but the ladies there don't want change either. The ladies end up teaching Toloki how to quilt.
Quilting was mainly a job or pass time done by women. Now there are more and more men learning to quilt. Toloki worked on his quilts a lot and got very good as did the Abyssinian Queen and Ruth. This is a land where you go for your goals no matter how big or small; a land of opportunity. So once domesticated jobs such as quilting have become diverse between men and women. Quilting, once a great tradition now has become a social event. When in the past the quilts were essential for survival. The quilts still connect the past to present, they still tell their stories you just have to know where to look. Don't forget the past, it is what got us here. History repeats itself and we have yet to learn that. We need to protect our history and heritage as much as possible. Mda's book had many fine points in it and it really does make you think about things you ordinarily wouldn't think about. It is a well-written book and I think everyone should read it, and when it gets a little weird don't give up on it, in the end it all makes sense.

Summary Analysis on Cion
Maps are used all over the world. They guide and direct us to where we need to go. Usually when a person wants to find a place they use a map. In Zakes Mda's novel Cion, maps are used in a totally different way, through quilts. One would probably think, how a quilt would be used as a map? As Mda explains in Cion, during the time when America had slaves, slaves would make quilts with different symbols on them to make them look like some kind of map to escape to freedom in the north. Mda shows a transition of the use of quilts in the novel from using them as a map to more of a social event. The quilts really take a leap out of their traditional use as a blanket to the use for maps and social events.
The introduction of the use of quilts is brought up in the second chapter of Cion. This chapter mainly outlines one of the main characters of this story, the Abyssinian Queen. She was a woman who was sold into slavery, and had two sons, Abednego and Nicodemus (Mda 34-35). Later on in the chapter the Abyssinian Queen was given the job to sewing and mending clothes. Then one of the matriarchs who the Abyssinian queen worked with taught her how to make quilts from colorful left over fabrics. The Queen spent a lot of time on sewing quilts that she got really good at it. Then the matriarchs taught her that the quilts had a certain meaning to them. They were secret codes to get them to the promise land, essentially a map. Then the Queen had her two children study the quilts she made, and showed them the many landmarks she put on the quilt. The Queen would tell stories about the quilts she made to the other slaves, as well as the white people, but mainly would tell the stories to escape to the north to her sons and the other slaves (Mda 47-57). Next the Queen's two sons Nicodemus and Abednego escaped north to freedom, and took their mothers quilt to guide them the way to what they called the promise land (Mda 91-122). Next Niall Quigley, who used the use of quilts to escape to freedom to the north, was a white Irish man who was captured for tricking the Owner. The Owner darkened his skin to black and made him a slave on the Owner's plantation. The quilt led Niall Quigley to the area around Kilvert and he settled with Indians (Mda 166-196).
In the beginning of the book Zakes Mda shows how significant the quilts are used as tools, like maps and special codes to help slaves escape to freedom in the north. Each quilt would have patterns that represented a certain land mark or body of water. This is a point where a quilt would move out of its traditional use into more of an aid to the life of freedom. Mda shows how the slaves really clink to the idea of the quilt, and really keep it to themselves as a soldier would their gun. "Openly it was there for all to admire, yet its meaning rested with those who knew the code hidden in the colors and the designs" (Mda 48). This shows that to all the people, like the whites did not know the code of the quilts, and to them it was a beautiful quilt, but to the slaves it was something way different.
As the slaves saw the codes to these beautiful quilts, they spoke a certain language to each other that every slave could understand. It is like they had their own language and it was not understood unless it was taught to a group outside. Of Course the way of how the code spoke through the quilts was used to help the slaves escape to the north. Mda shows that the quilts give a sense of hope and confidence to give the slaves to escape to the north. The slaves have a vision of the promise land; they have the finish line in their mind, and they won't quit until they reach it. When they reach freedom, the slaves have a sense of accomplishment and have the quilts to look back at what they accomplished from escaping from the tyranny they were under.
Leading on to the accomplishment made through the codes of the quilts, the quilts could be set as reminders to reflect back of what took place. This could also lead to the generations of what the quilts lived through to show the people of what they meant and what they were used for at that time. It shows where heritage of quilting for the freedom to the north was popular, and were used other than a blanket.
In Cion, Mda shows the transition from the use of quilts as a matter of codes to escape to the promise land to more of a social event. Toloki, the main character in the book takes some quilting classes to figure out the heritage of the quilts, and as a professional mourner, Mda wanted to figure out the way of life the slaves lived. Mda shows that the transition shows in the class as a hobby more than what it used to be. Mda shows that it is a bunch of ladies getting together and sharing with each other while they quilt (Mda 197-237). The quilt goes more towards to its traditional use again, as a blanket or for decoration. It seems that after slavery was out of the picture, people lost the idea of the code, unless passed on by families, that quilts are the pretty colors that people see out of scraps of fabrics. It shows how people lost some touch to what the meaning of the quilts meant to people who used them other than the traditional use.
During the times of slavery in the United States, slaves made quilts as a tool to escape to the north. They had a secret code that was shown on the quilt and was taught as certain landmarks that would lead them to the Promise Land. Then after slavery, the transition from the use as maps to a social event. Mda shows the transition from the change in time that occurred from the point of the use of quilts. The more traditional way of the quilts were shown more in the modern times of quilting then how they were used in the 1800's.
I really had a hard time following this book. From the look of the essay you would understand. Every time I read the book I would fall asleep and it would take me forever to read it, so I gave up. The book is not interesting at all, and is seriously the slowest book I have read.

I bought my copy of "Cion" on Amazon for $.01 and when it arrived as a official "autographed copy", I felt like I had won the jackpot. When I read it, I was not disappointed.

This book turns a lot of tables on civilized American preconceptions about Africa and race. There can be little doubt that Toloki, the "professional mourner" from South Africa, is Zakes Mda's alter ego and mouth piece. The sly smile on the author's face in his photo is behind every witticism and absurdity in the book. He is, after all, a Professor at Ohio University in Athens where the story takes place. The academic prose and intellectual attitude of the mourner sounds at times a bit too professorial, even condescending, as a previous writer complained. I do not, however, agree with "speakingmymind"s sense that Mda lacks respect or sensitivity for his African/American characters. To the contrary, I think he has great affection for them - especially the brilliantly creative Orpah (can it be coincidence that my dyslexic brain insisted on seeing "Oprah).

Mda is a master of the English language. His prose sent chills down my spine at times and his wordplay is challenging and sophisticated. As his friend, colleague, and neighbor, John Kachibu attests, Mda demonstrates a sure eye and a sharp wit in describing the world of Athens, Ohio, but at times, I felt his dialogue lost the cadence of American syntax and the Professor peeked through.

The Professor did his research. His interesting and evocative use of the African/American quilt tradition must owe a debt to Jaqueline Tobin's "Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad." He even slips in an aside that indicates his awareness of the academic controversy surrounding the book.

Mda's portrait of the "compassionate" slave breeder who wants to spare his "property" the pain of separation by forbidding all human attachments is as chilling as any character I've encountered in fact or fiction. The South African experience of apartheid informs his portrayal of American slavery.

Some readers were critical of the book's structure. I found the shape of the story to be very satisfying. The time frame is exactly one year stretching from one Athens Halloween to the next. The African visitor is amazed and fascinated by the American version of masquerade and his fascination leads him into the Quigley family and and the African/American settlement of Kilvert, Ohio. Toloki's passion for Orpah and her art overcomes a lot of misunderstanding among the principal characters. The ultimate consummation of their love represents the reconciliation of the fraught relation between Africans and African/Americans. He recognizes the African deep sense of continuity and spirit in the African/American attachment to family past and present when he finds a place for his eccentric profession of professional mourner.

Scion, by Zakes Mda, is an interesting fictional novel, set in modern day Athens Ohio, about a professional mourner from South Africa named Toloki. Toloki is tired of mourning the deaths that happen in Africa so he goes on a journey with the "Sciolist" to find ways of making his profession more interesting and enriching his experience in the field professional mourning. In Scion, the protagonist Toloki, travels the world and ends up in Athens Ohio. When we first see Toloki, he is walking the streets of Athens during the Block Party Halloween festival, Toloki is intrigued by the party goers whom he calls "creatures" because of their crazy costumes (6). Toloki meets a young man dressed in tattered and bloody clothes who introduces himself as Nicodemus, the ghost of a dead slave. When Nicodemus is suddenly arrested and taken to jail, Toloki feels responsible for his new friend and goes to bail him out. It turns out that the young man is actually named Obed Quigley and offers Toloki a place to stay at his family's home. Toloki is taken to Obed's crazy family after crossing flood waters to get into the town of Kilvert, a poor hamlet in southern Ohio, where Mahlon, Ruth, and Orpah live. The Quigley family is poor, just like everyone in kilvert, and they welcome Toloki into their home with open arms. Toloki learns about the Quigley's strange family rituals, Mahlon, the father, who constantly watches his garden of gnomes; Ruth, the mother, who spouts out her political opinions like old faithful, and creates quilts in the tradition of her slave ancestors; Obed, who is constantly coming up with crazy get rich schemes involving his so called Shawnee heritage; and Orpah, the strange sister who sits in her room being anti social, playing her sitar and upsetting her mother. Toloki spends a year in the Quiqley's home, during which he observes the Quigley's behavior while they watch a television that shows a war which ravages on in the middle east, finds graves belonging to ancient ancestors of Kilvert's residents, and mourns at multiple funerals. During his stay, Toloki learns of a rivalry between Orpah and Ruth, Ruth hunts down and destroys drawings that Orpah creates and this is why Orpah hides in her room and seems to be depressed all of the time. Toloki begins to be very attracted to Orpah and her sitar playing and this, and other events, eventually lead to his leaving the house. In the end, Toloki finds the grave of Mahlons lost mother and mourns her death with the Quigleys which brings he and the family back together. Toloki and Orpah fall in love and Orpah decides she wants to travel the world, mourning for the deceased with her new love, Toloki. Jeremiah 9:17-Thus sayeth the Lord of hosts: Consider the call for the mourning women that they may come; and send for skillful wailing women, that they may come. Let them make haste and take up wailing for us, that our eyes may run with tears, and our eyelids gush with water (200-201). Those are the words spoken by Obed Quigley as Toloki, the professional mourner, wails and moans at the funeral of a child, killed by an exploding van. Toloki goes through many changes in the novel Scion, but the thing I find most interesting is how his perception of death changes as he lives in Kilvert. To see profit in the death of another is a strange thing commonly seen as evil, but in Toloki's case it is for the purpose of helping the bereaved deal with the death of a loved one. In the beginning of the book we see how Toloki is confused and intrigued by how the inhabitants of athens "celebrate" death while we would see him as strange for finding death so uninteresting. American culture is, in a strange way, very much obsessed with death. It is so preoccupied with staying young and avoiding the inevitable, we go around buying all kinds of anti-aging products and go on all of assortments of crazy diets; when we see someone who takes death so lightly, we are stunned. This shows a huge difference in culture between North America and South Africa. Toloki comes from a place where death, disease, and poverty are not uncommon and affect many people, the same can be said for America, but we choose to put most of these places out of mind. Toloki is used to death because he is surrounded by it and recognizes it for what it is, something that will happen to everyone. He profits off of it because he understands it and wants to help relieve some of the stress from his fellow mourners; in the book you learn that Toloki lost his wife, an event that may have helped him empathize with other people who suffer loss. Toloki mourned so often in Africa that he became desperately bored with the banal deaths of his fellow men, taken by illness and hunger. When Toloki thought of this he wished to spice up his life, to find more interest in his craft. Brought to America with the help of the "Sciolist", a strange character in the book, Toloki comes to athens and gets a whole new perspective on death. He learns of celebrations of death, Halloween, and he is fascinated by the meanings of the many costumes he sees at the block party celebration. He observes how the people of Kilvert watch television, filled with the violence of war and how they take death so lightly in such a disturbing way. Toloki sees death as something that happens to everything, while western culture takes death lightly because of the disconnect they have with the deceased. Toloki observes that the news shows war and chaos but does not allow the viewer to empathize with the soldiers at the other end, it is purely propaganda. All of the violence is edited to give such a skewed perspective of death, people are no longer people, but actors in the never ending drama that is the media. Toloki needs a death to mourn for to bring him back into a well state of being, the disconnect between people caused by media shocked him into a strange state of thinking; not knowing how to feel when presented with such a massive death toll. When he is able to finally mourn for a young man that died in Kilvert he can give the performance of his life, screaming and wailing like an undead being from hell. When he is able to connect with someone who has died, knowing of their past and their family he is able to reach deep inside himself and find a new meaning for what he does. After mourning at multiple deaths in Kilvert, Toloki gains new love for what he does, every funeral he is able to connect with the deceased and give himself energy that no other human could gain from such an incident. Toloki's understanding of death leads him on a path of happiness, after mourning at Mahlon Quigley's mother's grave, he is accepted back into their family and can find a way to live a life with the woman he loves. People's perspectives of death can have a surprising affect on their lives. Seeing death for what it is can give you new life, allow you to live every day like your last. Understanding where the people you see on the news come from can allow you to empathize with them and grow from a better understanding of how we live and die. Dwelling too much on the inevitable can cause you to live a stressful life in which you can never truly be content with what you have. Toloki's understanding of death was a great influence on how he treated himself and other people. To understand what our lives will eventually come to is a gift, we should live every day treating everyone around us with love and happiness, because we are not long for this world. I think that Scion is a decent book, it had an interesting story-line that switched between present day and the stories of slaves. The ending however was not quite as interesting as I'd hoped after reading such an intriguing story, it was very abrupt and seemed very cookie cutter ending; the happy hero wanders into the sunset with his new love. Some of the writing was also a little distracting, some word choices made in the slave part of the story threw off the mood because of the association people have with them in the present. All in all I found Scion to be an interesting read, it was a little repetitive and a little uncreative at times, but it made up for it's flaws with an original story and compelling characters.

In this book, Mda reveals the life of a mixed race family in the Kilvert Community in the U.S.-as narrated by Toloki, the professional mourner from Africa. The change of settings from present day and its linkage to the past is what makes the book interesting- and of course Mda brings in some subtle humour which always comes at the right time. Enjoyed the story and would recommend it for a book club.

This book is very hard to read especially in the beginning. It is a far-fetched, disconnected story that jumps all over the place. To top it off, the main character, Toloki, is a professional mourner. The story is full of vile sexual content and foul language. The book recieved great praise by a few descendants who claim to have read it. Did they not see the insult to their people, be it true or not?

I do feel that Mr. Mda captured the essence of the area, Kilvert, and "some" of the people as seen by outsiders. The people no matter whether black, brown, white, or some shade in between are all related. Mr. Mda's character, Toloki, doesn't understand this, being a true Black man from South Africia. He sees that the people are not all the same even tho they believe that they are, and that they cling to a long ago legend they don't really know that much about other than the oral history they present. He touches on the inner conflict, prejudice and pretense amongst some of these people, and in my opinion he is not totally wrong in that observation. Some of the people say they are colored or black, some are anything but black, some are Indian, Irish is a curse, white is a bad word. The solution to this is...call us WIN (White, Indian, Negro).

The people Mr. Mda came to befriend, as he calls it, and interview for his book, gave him the impression of not knowing who they are. I can understand that thru Mda's broader scope of vision in the world and mainstream societies. It is true that they, the people, all have a different version of what their race is...sometimes even in the same family. Mda also captures the attitude that "some" have about living in poverty; blaming the outside world, or the past, and not taking responsibility for themselves.

At any rate, Mr. Mda can call it fiction, but I could pick out many of the characters and stories he was writing about...Those he interviewed were obviously trusting of him, befriending him, and praising him without even reading the book. It is a very insulting book. If you have people in the area, or come from the area, you would feel something in your heart, no matter what your beliefs or understanding of the family history, no matter your racial self-identification. I felt truly saddened and nauseated at the way this man used these people to make fun of all of them and their stories in his book.

I'll just add the book to my collection because it mentions so many of our places and people, although with a very twisted and insulting version, yes he calls it fiction, but it is insulting, whether he meant it to be or not. Mr. Mda does not treat the subject with any respect or sensitivity, instead he seems to make fun of the history and the people of Kilvert. The Washington Post saw it that way (see below, read the definitions!). Mda's character Toloki comes off as the Black intellect amongst the mixed up, not so bright people of Kilvert. As much as an insult this is to many of the people in the area, and as sad and angry as it made me feel while reading the book, unfortunately if the shoe fits they'll have to wear it.

This Washington Post Review says it like it is:

"One of the most prolific black writers of post-apartheid South Africa, Zakes Mda, has now cast his roaming, wry (wry means marked by or displaying contemptuous mockery of the motives or virtues of others: cynic, cynical, ironic, ironical, sardonic) and satirical (satirical means contemptuous or ironic in manner or wit: derisive, jeering, mocking, sarcastic, satiric, scoffing, sneering) eye upon the United States, in particular the rural southeastern Ohio community outside of Athens, Ohio (where, incidentally, Mda teaches at Ohio University).

I give it a big thumbs down!