Whites

by Norman Rush

In this magnificent collection of stories, Rush produces indelible portraits of Euro-American ex-patriates at loose ends in the black African republic of Botswana. The author's characters are unforgettable, while their predicaments are funny, improbably logical, and almost affecting as Africa itself.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Africa, Literary Fiction, American, Botswana, Audiobook

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Norman Rush (born October 24, 1933 in Oakland, California) is an American novelist whose introspective novels and short stories are set in Botswana in the 1980s. He is the son of Roger and Leslie (Chesse) Rush. He was the recipient of the 1991 National Book Award and the 1992 Irish Times/Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize for his novel Mating.

Rush was born in San Francisco and graduated from Swarthmore College in 1956. After working for fifteen years as a book dealer, he changed careers to become a teacher and found he had more time to write. He submitted a short story about his teaching experiences to The New Yorker, and it was published in 1978.

Rush and his wife worked as co-workers for the Peace Corps in Botswana from 1978 to 1983, which provided material for a collection of short stories he published as Whites in 1986, and for which he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His Botswana experience was also used in his first novel, Mating, which won a National Book Award for fiction in 1991, and in his second novel, Mortals.

He lives in Rockland County, New York.

Reviews

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started subscribing to the Paris Review this year. I know, kind of silly, since almost all of their stuff is online. But I like the short stories, often, and I like feeling the thickness of the pages when I read it outside. One thing I've picked up from the issues I've read is that there seem to be a lot of writers who are seen as touchstones in American fiction, most of whom are completely unfamiliar to me - what I have begun to call the MFA canon. It includes names like James Salter, Marilynne Robinson, John Williams, Lydia Davis, Grace Paley, Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore, Evan S. Connell, and at the top of the chain, the Tolstoy and Flaubert of the canon, John Cheever and Raymond Carver. The defining quality of this fiction is a very minimalist, introverted, calmness. It concerns itself with the domestic lives of mild-mannered people, who observe the world with a wry wit and defeated mien. Overly complex plots are rare. I get the sense that MFA students, focused on recreating this lapidary, elegant prose, aren't going anywhere near the experimental pyrotechnics of John Barth or Thomas Pynchon or D Foster Wallace (perhaps the latter, only through his short stories).

Which isn't meant as a criticism at all. The stories that the Review prints - some indie writers, some stuff from the slush pile, whatever Zadie Smith is working on - are superb. Having never been in an MFA program, I'm more at the stage of learning and processing than critiquing. But there seems to be a cluster of influence here that I've only just begun discovering. (Can someone let me know if this is what that whole MFA vs NYC thing was about?

Anyway, this collection of short stories is another book by a "writer's writer" that I'd place firmly in the canon. The first four stories are five-star brilliance. They, like the rest, concern American expats living in Botswana, mostly as aid workers or government contractors. Norman Rush lightly describes the lives of well-off, educated Westerners living in a society filled with danger and poverty and great kindness. Africa is filled with contradictions and causes people's values to veer wildly and their identities to change, like a psychic Bermuda Triangle.

While most of the characters are the eponymous Whites, one story is narrated by a native BaTswana in broken English, and, amazingly, comes off as wonderfully sympathetic and real, without an ounce of condescension. Rush finds his characters frustrated and tired, overshadowed by an ever-present drought (mentioned roughly once every ten pages). But like the physical one, their spiritual drought refuses to break. Africa still eludes them, as it has eluded every writer seeking to get to the bottom of it. Rush wisely doesn't try that. His style is naturalist and authentic, and perfectly suited to his subject.

[Jennifer Spiegel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewing this book is really just an excuse for me to talk about South Africa. To be more specific, it’s an excuse for me talk about why I write so much about South Africa. First, the book. Then, me. That’s fair, right?

I liked it!

Okay, me.

No, really. Here’s the thing: the topics are kinda inseparable. What I liked about Norman Rush is why I write about South Africa.

Norman Rush, from my minute research (Wikipedia) is an American author who lived in Botswana from 1978 until 1983, which is just north of South Africa. I spent a modicum of time in South Africa (very modicum—I admit this now, lest my expat friends balk), just after Apartheid ended—when Nelson Mandela was president. His fiction is set in Africa, and it’s preoccupied mostly with whites (Whites?)—Expatriates—in Africa.

So, yeah, I read it with bated breath. Part of me does wonder what it would be like to read these stories without having experienced the expat-in-Africa thing. Would they still be compelling? I can’t say, honestly. I didn’t find the prose particularly lush or hypnotizing, but I did find his stories gut-wrenching in the final analysis. In “Near Pala,” his Whites—for that’s what these stories are about, Whites in Africa—find themselves on a road trip in which they’re confronted with Africans nearly dying, literally, for water. Their response—this fleeting moment—is the magic of story, the breathtaking climax, the raison d’ être for writing about Southern Africa. Will they give them water or not?

Norman Rush treats his characters with dignity. He is honest, though. And I appreciated that. The stories are authentic—a writing virtue I especially treasure—and tragic too. I think he captures something true. Many people want to do good for Africa, but the desire is tamed by mind-boggling realities. Inspiration wanes. Resignation sets in. And there’s pride as well—pride in knowing how things really are in Africa. There’s White Nobility. There’s White Inspiration. There’s White Resignation. And there’s White Pride. Am I being overly-simplistic? Probably. But that’s what I like about Norman Rush: he captures the complex whole of the White Man or White Woman in Africa.

I write—or wrote (I think I’m done)—about South Africa because, in this amazing way, so many crazy things are brought together. Try to list your basic polar opposites: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, black and white, fertile and barren. Then, consider this: The landscape is spectacular. The politics can be gruesome. There’s someone like Desmond Tutu on one end of the spectrum. On another, behavior rivaling Nazism! Christianity has roots there in all kinds of complex ways—with strong Reformed and Calvinist branches, and new-agey mystical cultish veins. But, then, despite the Protestant influence, we’re still talking sangomas, witch doctors, Conrad’s Heart o’ Darkness. (This isn’t even mentioning Muslims who Rush doesn’t mention, and neither did I encounter.) South Africa, at least, was this eddy, this whirlpool, for political, spiritual, geographical, cultural, and philosophical conundrums. (I can’t really say how it is today.) One could climb a mountain capped in rolling clouds and squat in a house made of tin can on the same day. The world there backs the idealistic American against the wall and asks, “Who do you really think you are?”

I don’t want to digress into pure silliness, but I think my own fascination with the Wikileak fiasco has its roots in my interest in Africa. There, too, is a question about good intentions, and what happens in the face of reality. Of course, I have no clue about the intentions of, say, Julian Assange—but I like to fictionalize them. In my imagination, the intentions were noble. End subterfuge, the artifice of diplomacy, the scourge of nationalistic violence. But, well, what about the reality of national sovereignty, of endangering lives? Can idealism survive? When does the ego get in the way? Can ego not get in the way?

Is it like the Whites, who work in the foreign service, who are diplomats, who are philanthropists—who suffer from a measure of pride, who can’t help it because, well, they know how things really are? Am I being harsh?

Allow me to share one of Norman Rush’s weighty jokes. In “Official Americans,” a foreign service official with insomnia thinks up a goofy scenario in which he suggests—with tongue-in-cheek—to the Agency for International Development that the poor should no longer be referred to as poor. Rather, they should be referred to as the pre-rich.

Do you feel the weightiness of this joke?

And, as it should happen, I write—or wrote—a lot of stories set in South Africa. About Whites. They’ll appear in my collection. Let me name them, just for fun: “Advent,” “Free Dive,” “Goodbye, Madagascar,” “Nipples Beads Mealie Pap,” and “Lemon.” I write—or wrote—about South Africa because I aspired to capture the weightiness. Whether or not I succeeded is another story.

Yes, I’m done. I’m pretty sure, anyway. The final South Africa story is set to appear in mid-April 2011 (in Fringe Magazine on-line). It’s called “The Moon Thought Thy World An Angel,” and it’s not slated to appear in my forthcoming book. I do think it will be a chapter, however, in the novel on which I’m currently working. I love it (is that wrong to say?) for those Rush-like aspects: the captured complexities and contradictions. Alas, though, I’m moving on. I’m grateful to have stumbled over that terrain.

And I think Norman Rush offers a riveting picture of the terrain, that vortex of human complexity, at once stunning and at once hideous.

[atom_box Evan G · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have slogged through a few exotic but humorless Paul Theroux books over the years. If you too suffered Theroux, cast off that claustrophobic, airless depressive: enjoy Norman Rush, a writer who can throw more balls into the air to keep you off balance. Norman Rush's writing redeems the Peace Corps setting and makes it crackle.

The stories in Whites balance a lot of things and do it in very few pages. The characters are...complicated. And the arcs of his plot unpredictable. It's a man's world but Rush spends plenty of time considering the role of women living in it.

The narration is easy to follow. The stories move at a good pace. No two stories are the same. These stories are absurd and sardonic. The perspective is mature. Mechanically it resembles Hemmingway, which makes it easy to follow.

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories are about, yes, white people in Botswana but they all seem to revolve around unsuspecting people being confronted by something (people, animals, love/loss) that challenges their belief and standing in the world. I enjoyed seeing how Rush would carefully construct these circumstances and often upend everything with an emphatic ending. I do think some of the stories probably hit differently upon initial release (this collection was published in the early 80’s) but the juice is worth the squeeze. He’s a gifted stylist, as evidenced by Mating, which he would go on to write after. 3.5/5

[Sasha Rivers · Rating 4 out of 5]

norman rush you will always be famous. not as good as mating but still great

[Catherine Shattuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rush is one of my favorite writers. I fell in love with him via Mating many years ago, and wanted to read everything he'd written. At that time, all there was were these short stories (Mortals came out years later - I liked, but did not love, that one). I saved the stories because I couldn't bear for there not to be one more thing by Rush that I could read, and finally dug into them about 15 years later. I am not a short story fan but his are wonderful: revealing, intimate portraits of people told through the tiniest of details (I'm learning that this is the kind of writing I like a lot). I'm also enthralled with the way he writes Africa (Botswana specifically) alive. I wish I could read these all over again from scratch in one sitting, as it only hit me towards the end that many of the stories are tied together, one minor character in one popping up as the main character in another one much later. In fact, it would make sense to read them all again straight through to help illuminate those connections you can't make the first go round.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who has worked or spent time in Africa will get these stories - will recognize the characters, black, white, African, British or American. There is nothing stereotypical in their presentations, because Rush has taken great care to properly flesh out each character with essential personal traits beyond their nationality or race.

Having worked all over Africa for the US State Dept.,I could vividly recall the people depicted in their roles from Ambassador, DCM, the stiff upper-lipped Brit and the intensity of the local's gaze. I was completely transported- down to the sights and smells and power outages of Africa. An exciting and frightening continent from which we could learn a lot and could teach a few things, too.

I now can't wait to pick up the copy of Mating, which has sat on my bookshelf for far too long.

[Stephanie Josine · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who grew up in Botswana and who currently exists in the expat/aid bubble in Islamabad, these short stories were relatable to me on two levels. But, more than that, I loved them for their compelling capture of the inner workings of conflicted characters and cutting exposure of less savoury sides of human thought and nature. Rush’s style reminds me a little bit of JM Coetzee in this way, but less grim and more dark comedy.

[Will Byrnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a compilation of stories about characters in Botswana, set in the mid-late 20th century. It is excellent, using diverse viewpoints and tales to paint a picture of a place in a particular time. Recommended.

[Literati · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first three stories in this collection, and then really disliked the last three-which felt a bit ludicrous.
The whole set is about a series of contradictions-white industrialists, peace corps people and settlers all residing in Botswana- they live there but do not view it as their home, hence a feeling of alienation and a lack of responsibility regarding what happens there. I would have liked if this viewpoint was expressed in a more acerbic manner, rather then the level of playfulness this collection expresses.
The first story is the standout, as well as the story "Thieves"

[Natalie Vie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me embarrassingly long to finish this, but the first 3 stories were pretty boring. Instruments of Seduction was by far my favorite, but the following two were equally strong. I guess what frustrates me about Rush is the secondariness of the setting. He is primarily interested in heterosexual dynamics. Whatever. Is anyone going out tonight ?

[Max Mcgrath · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Pretty deft and funny collection of short stories. Aside from one misstep (story narrated by a Tswana guy in broken English) the rest are believable. Far from the worst fiction that takes Africa as a setting.

[Marijn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zes verhalen, mooi geschreven, sommige met humor. Schrijnend nu en dan. Leest heel makkelijk weg. Doet niks af aan het niveau. Gedetailleerde boeiende beschrijvingen van de personages (Amerikanen, Duitsers, Britten, Afrikanen, Nederlanders) maakt het levendig. Gevonden in de boekenkast van een IJslands hostel, uitgelezen in een boekencafé. Bier hier kost per glas 14 euro voor deze witman, heeft verder niks met het boek te maken, maar ook schrijnend.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

great short stories, most dealing with Botswana, from author's peace corp stay, though not about peace corps stuff, really. you can tell he used these stories to leap into his kick-ass novel "mating". frankly i like the short stories about as much as the novels, good 'real' characters, dealing with 'real' situations, in erudite, not-un-surprising ways.

[Karen Chung · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative - especially for anybody interested in what real everyday life is like in an African country like Botswana - and deeply humorous. Actually, in terms of the enjoyment it brought me, this book gets a full five stars.

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories in this book are uneven, but Instruments of Seduction and Alone in Africa are two of the best short stories I've ever read. Worth checking this out just for those two.

[Philip Carlsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Norman Rush’s WHITES, from 1986, is a collection of six stories set in Botswana. The “whites” are the people like Rush himself: foreign writers, missionaries, anthropologists, aid workers, Peace Corps volunteers, embassy personnel, etc., come to southern Africa for humanitarian or scholarly or creative or adventuresome purposes, sympathetic to the oppression and poverty of the native blacks, but forced, as visitors, to accommodate to the realities of a country in which the other whites, the Boers, essentially run the show. Rush has a keen eye and ear for the absurdities and frustrations of the situation. The first story, about the Christ-like figure Bruns of the story’s title, is narrated almost like a case study by a female anthropology grad, in an acerbically jaded and detached voice: “Boers run Keteng. They’ve been up there for generations, since before the Protectorate. When independence came, it meant next to nothing to them. They ignored it. They’re all citizens of Botswana, but they are Boers underneath forever, really unregenerate…. For a woman, I’m somewhat of an elitist, and hierarchy always interests me. I admit these things. The Boers own everything in Keteng, including the chief. They wave him to the head of the queue for petrol, which he gets for free, naturally, just like the cane liquor they give him. They own the shops. Also they think they really know how to manage the Bakorwa, which actually they do…. It’s so feudal up there you cannot conceive. That is, it has been until now.”

Rush fully inhabits his characters, conveys their point of view, captures the idiosyncracies of their speech. I was especially impressed, in the story “Thieving,” with the voice he gave to Paul Ojang, a young native Botswanan trying to make his way in the world, trying to adhere to what he thinks God wants of him, occasionally finding help and kindness, but again and again coming up against treachery and deceit and a deck that seems to be stacked against him. Here he is, in his own remarkable version of English, describing the way he was framed at his boarding school: “At Boiteko, we few Bakgalagadi were ill treated by Bamalete and Coloured boys at times, myself the most. It was because I am tall, and fast in my English. I was first in Geography by far. To this day I state Headmaster Sebina and bursar Chibaya made a crime ring, with hiding of sports fees and claiming of a cashbox stolen, with, then, Sebina found as owner of a new van for hire. They feared inspectors coming. So that if some boys could be shown out as thieves for taking food and cooked eggs from the kitchen, those boys could be given all blame, and so forward with more crimes!”

The blurbs on the back jacket include praise from Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee. As I recall, I came upon this book totally by chance, browsing the stacks of our local library. A very happy find!

[Reet · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite stories:

Bruns p. 16: A Dutch Vegan conscientious objector comes to volunteer at a little village in Botswana where the boers have everything sewed up: the chief of police, the stores, etc. This unassuming Vegan stirred things up, in his pacifist way, for those dang boers. Lol

Near Pala p. 31: two white married couples are traveling on the roadless roads in Botswana to a hotel destination. One of the women, pregnant Nan, is sympathetic to the natives, their poverty, their oppression by whites. Her husband Gareth, is not, "We can't set a foot right if we're white, can we?" (That's right, Gareth.) When 3 women and a baby, "bushies," come along side the car, begging for water, Nan is the only one sympathetic. What happens next? Let's just say, if I were there... instant divorce.

Instruments of Seduction p. 74: How refreshing; a story about a woman who seduces. And she's 50. You don't get that every day.

Alone in Africa p. 150: A man's wife leaves for a vacation, leaving him alone at home in a town in Botswana. He's getting drunk when a native girl taps at his door and he is ready to be seduced. Only one problem: the next door neighbor is an Uber Christian and sound carries.

Quick and entertaining read.

[Bryan Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief, knowing little collection of stories revolving around white expatriates in Botswana in the 1980s, told primarily from the perspectives of the expatriates themselves. It's clear that Rush had a strong body of firsthand knowledge to work off of here (apparently he lived in Africa for 5 years, and these stories somehow manage to feel both newer and fresher than their age would indicate and like something from the epoch of Hemingway. There are a few standouts in the bunch, with fascinating details sprinkled throughout and much lively dialogue between foreigners and locals, and amongst the expats themselves.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of short stories set primarily in Rwanda among expatriate whites. By and large these characters are exploiting the black African population but in a casual, ignorant way buttressed by a sense of innate superiority. The flawed characters are intriguingly linked together over the course of the collection. I read Rush's long novel Mating many years ago.Most of his novels are intimidating in length so these stories are a great way to read a very talented writer without having to commit to a long siege,

[Brad Wilber · Rating 4 out of 5]

At some points you feel like Rush is an heir to Updike, in that a story with a male narrator regularly falls into sexual speculation, opportunism, and entitlement, but in fact the stories and the male s themselves vary nicely here even with expats in Botswana always serving as the populus/backdrop. Interesting enough to lead you to open up either of his big novels. Three stories feature the multifaceted dentist's wife Ione Napier.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

A densely written collection of literary short stories about expats in Botswana. Some interesting observations, but these are the kind of short stories with non-ending ends that leaves the reader, at least this one, scratching her head, and wondering what's so great about this. If I were to write these, would they be so roundly praised? Dunno.

[Kion You · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haven't read another novel where a white American author writes more incisively and probingly on whiteness and its relationship to blackness: it's almost a shame the book had to be set in Botswana, almost as if whiteness can only really be examined by white people once they are taken out of white-dominant cultures.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

A prequel to Mating. The first story Bruns is the best, about a Dutch man who outschemes the local big man even while dying. Most of the stories were about white embassy employees in Botswana. Thieving was from the perspective of a local teenager.

WSU library

[Lee Thomas Holden]

Really good stuff by one of your consummate favorite writer's favorite writer. He does a good job of never condescending toward non-white characters nor depicting the white characters as mere buffoons. It feels real and authentic and good.

[Armin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erzählband ohne Schwachpunkt, auch wenn die erste und die letzte Erzählung sicher den Gipfel darstellen.

[Alex Gleason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes!

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the best best best. His writing is so incredible. These short stories are Alice Munro quality.

[Kimron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this author

[Bob Peru · Rating 3 out of 5]

better as a novelist. much better.