The Ivory Crocodile - Hardcover

Drew, Eileen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 156689042X ISBN 13: 9781566890427

Publisher: Coffee House Press, 1996

Synopsis

Discover Great New Writers Program, 1996. Finalist, PEN Center USA West 1997 Literary Awards. "Drew's real subject is landscape, internal and geographic--an exploration of the ways in which Nicole seeks acceptance of herself as African, as benevolent, as self-reliant."--The New York Times Book Review "Very highly recommended."--CHOICE

About this title

From the Back Cover:

The Ivory Crocodile is the mesmerizing story of an American whose longing to 'know' Africa produces the unexpected. Assigned to teach at a remote bush school, Nicole Spark immerses herself in village life. Though she gradually gains acceptance into the lives of Africans, her exotic ideal of the country, as well as her own identity as a white woman, begins to break down. Amid love and politics, progress and tradition, innocence and mistrust, Nicole looks for Africa - and finds herself. Her personal journey, however, brings the community to a startling crisis with unforgettable impact.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A young woman painfully learns about the pitfalls of unrealistic expectations and cultural myopia--in a beautifully rendered first novel by Drew (the collection Blue Taxis, 1989) that ultimately fails to deliver as much as it so tantalizingly promises. Narrator Nickie, married, a successful American photographer and chronically in love with Africa, looks back with nostalgia and regret to her youth, when she taught school in Tambala, a fictionalized Central African nation. A foreign service brat, she was born in Cairo and grew up in a variety of African countries. Her family, along with other Americans, had once been expelled from Guinea, and this memory, along with some glimpses of the Africa existing beyond diplomatic confines, shaped her life. Determined to live in the real Africa, not the isolated, privileged one of diplomats and bureaucrats and tourists symbolized by cute ivory crocodile trinkets, she signs on after college with AfricEd and heads to Tambala to teach English. She's assigned to Mampungu, a former mission station, where the electricity no longer works and the teachers aren't paid. Not a pleasant place, but it's Africa, and Nickie settles in, eager to be accepted. She learns, however, that her presumptions are arrogant and her ideal impossible. Nickie recalls her friendship with the local prefect's wife; her efforts to turn Diabelle, a beautiful student, into a modern African woman, savvy about birth control and careers; and her brief love affair with Bwadi, a political dissident, who uses her camera for political espionage. But when Diabelle, who's been the mistress of an American working on a nearby project, dies from a self- administered abortion, Nickie realizes that she's no better than the missionaries or the diplomats. Like them, she has seen Africa as a ``cartoon'' and, except for Bwadi, has done ``nothing for Africa on Africa's terms.'' Cultural mismatchings and misunderstanding limned with admirable candor but marred by a preachy conclusion and some sluggish pacing. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 156689042X
• ISBN 13: 9781566890427
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288