In January 2023 I encouraged you to read a book that tells about Africa. For the challenge I picked up a book written by Tom Buk-Swienty. It is The Lioness. I read it in Finnish and it is a book in my own library. It has almost 700 pages full of facts but each page is enjoyable and interesting. You get the best out of it reading first Blixen's Out Of Africa.
The Lioness is a documentary book that tells the true story about Karen Blixen's life. Tom Buk-Swienty has managed to reach the hidden information that was never before published.
When someone writes a biography of the self, you should wonder what are the motives and question the truth. Tom Buk-Swienty has done a great job for years seeking the truth. The truth about Karen Blixen in her biography Out Of Africa is not what we learnt to be the truth. She was spoiled white Danish woman who reached out what she wanted -literally- at any price. She could never have done what she did unless she had not other peoples funds to be spent. I claim, anyone could have done the same if having uncle like she had, if having the funds from other people's bank accounts like she had. I can only wonder which were the motives of the person to pour so much money over her white shoulders.
It is true Karen Blixen was liberal, progressive and modern with her attitudes towards native people in Kenya. The other side of the truth is she never had a farm in Africa as it never was her farm and could not have been in her hands without other people's funds.
I have admired Karen Blixen work and visited her museum in Denmark. I planned to go there again. But I won't, after reading this book.
This book is very educative and tells the faces of colonialism. The actions happen in Kenya but can be reflected to any place. The facts about the colonialism which I learnt at the school were never represented from the eyewitness view. This book is a great choice also for that, to see what kind of it was. It was not only the kings who said "let's go there". It was a lot about the persons who went there, agreed to habitat the lands which never belonged to them... and behaved like they did.
For the next it would be wonderful to read a native story and point of the view about the actions on the area at the same time Blixen was there, on the begin of 1900's.
