{"id":219894,"date":"2018-05-12T15:46:03","date_gmt":"2018-05-12T19:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/?p=219894"},"modified":"2019-02-10T07:19:14","modified_gmt":"2019-02-10T12:19:14","slug":"the-wifes-tale-a-personal-history-by-aida-edemariam-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/219894","title":{"rendered":"The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History by Aida Edemariam (Book Review)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aida Edemariam may not have intended the title of her book to recall the Wife of Bath, of Chaucer\u2019s \u201cCanterbury Tales.\u201d Still, three themes fundamental to that canonical work are also at the capacious, warmly beating heart of \u201cThe Wife\u2019s Tale,\u201d Edemariam\u2019s chronicle of her grandmother\u2019s life in 20th-century Ethiopia. Chaucer\u2019s medieval classic unfolds as a storytelling battle among pilgrims traveling to the shrine of an English archbishop martyred in a church-and-state intrigue. The Wife throws down with a story about a knight who, to escape punishment for rape, embarks on a quest to find out what makes women happiest. (Sovereignty over their husbands, it turns out.) Edemariam\u2019s sublimely crafted tribute to her grandmother also involves sparring storytellers, religion (including pilgrimage and church-and-state intrigues) and the happiness and sovereignty of married women. <\/p>\n

Aida’s book (The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History Hardcover \u2013 March 20, 2018<\/a>) is a personal history because Ethiopia\u2019s public dramas and denouements are refracted through the domestic prism of her grandmother Yetemegnu\u2019s life. <\/p>\n

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Yetemegnu marries at 8, in the mid-1920s. Her husband \u2014 a priest and church administrator \u2014 is two decades her senior and as much a father as a husband. He is also an accomplished religious poet, who, as a student reciting his verse in competition with his peers, was singled out for praise. By turns tender and jealously controlling, he beats Yetemegnu with a stick when she ventures outside their home. Once, on her return from a quick errand to a neighbor\u2019s, he hurls a machete, missing her by a hairbreadth. He is her master, as Italians were for a time masters of Ethiopia, ruling it with a brutal, repressive hand. Intimate history meets the sweep of imperial history when Yetemegnu finds the courage to resist. With her husband\u2019s rod raised above her, she stares him down with a steady, shaming gaze; meanwhile, Ethiopian guerrillas take to the hills to fight the Italians.[…] CONTINUE READING<\/a><\/p>\n

Aida talks about her book: Video
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