I met Overall at the 2024 Book Fair Australia, I must have been impressed enough to buy her book and I’m really glad I did. It’s a beautifully written piece about women who are really doing it tough. Sometimes they don’t have enough to eat but they still have enough dignity to be able to help others. This book highlights my privilege to me. Overall takes us deep into worlds I will never be able to see, even if I visited these countries I’d be stuck in the tourist areas and never understand these women. I will never see the poorest of the poor, and I will never fully understand how it’s possible to live like that if not for books like this.
We’re talking about Haiti, Guatemala and Washington. And I’ve been to Washington DC, but I only saw the tourist areas, the more affluent parts. But Jayla is on welfare, yes, she has a job, but that’s because the director tries to employ welfare mothers. She lives within ten minutes of the White House, I’ve walked near her place and not seen the details Overall brings out in this book. And our introduction to Jayla is with ‘an occasional explosion of boisterous laughter’ which made me love Jayla from the first. Overall asks Jayla to type up her notes from her own visit to jail, and her visits to Haiti to Guatemala. Jayla doesn’t seem to hold back from her own admiration of the ladies in Haiti. ‘Looks like they can survive just about near anything’ she said and then asked more questions. It seems as if Jayla did more than just type, it feels to me as if she provided her own commentary from her underprivileged point of view.
Having started from the end of the book I’d like to go back to the beginning. Overall spends a couple of weeks in a jail in Guatelama. She is able to get out because she is American and therefore has power and money. The ladies she speaks to in jail can’t because they have nothing. One thing she learns from them is her need to learn more, and she eventually travels to work in Haiti where she spent time in a small village called Mare Rouge.
I found it fascinating to read about Haitians. They seem like such lovely people, always caring for the whole family and sometimes the families can be very large. One lady is one of 35 children. Apparently their father had five wives and they all lived together. The little that we were shown of the family is one that is very close. They have a farm, but it is a long way away and there are issues with water so the crops don’t grow well. Despite having very little money and very little food they share what they have. They worried about Overall and took her to someone who could help her with a rash on her back.
We get gems such as ‘But we knew she was going to die. Still, a person must care for the dying.’ Madame DeVrai is stoic throughout, talking about God’s will and how it’s important to be good to family. Even looking after her sister as she died. This caring for the dying is something we often forget in more affluent countries.
When Overall walked away from Mare Rouge people called out to her as she walked. By this time she knew this was because ‘no-one should walk alone’ and she understood that people were just looking out for her rather than wanting to prey on her. It seems to be such a lovely community. In Australia we’re taught not to talk to strangers calling out to us as they could be dangerous, but in Mare Rouge they were the opposite of dangerous.
She then moved on to a job in Guatemala where she met Teresa and Tina. Overall expected to be able to talk to people in Spanish, but that is the language of the oppressors. She wanted to learn the local language, Kaqchiquel (they call it Lengua as if there is no other language), but found that a challenge as they wouldn’t talk to her in Spanish. It took a while, but she eventually learned enough Kaqchiquel to be able to understand. It turns out that the clothes they wear tell a story and the narrative depends on where the wearer comes from. From behind both Teresa and Tina look alike because they wear the same clothes, with the same pattern and the pattern tells the story of their life.
I loved this book. It tells me about people and cultures that are so different to mine and makes me feel so privileged with the amount I have. I mean, I can read and write, but not all of the people we’re shown in this book can.
It is interesting to get so much detail on these women in Haiti and Guatemala, to find out so much about their lives and then to transfer to Washington DC and find a lady who also has so little, but lives in the richest nation on the earth.
We need more books such as this that open our eyes to the problems of both gender and caste. We need more books such as this that show how the thing that really connects us to our neighbours or to people on the other side of the world is humanity. Not the essence of being a human, but the virtue with altruistic ethics. There are far too many people in power who lack this virtue and it’s causing us great problems.
The question I always ask myself is ‘would I recommend this book to others’? And the answer is ‘yes’. I’m thinking of lending this to my Mum, and from her to some of her friends. Despite their age they seem to mostly have their brains and would read a book like this with interest.
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