Description:
All Under Heaven is the story of a Chinese family in South Africa from the early twentieth century to the first years of the twenty-first. It follows the lives of three generations in a country where Chinese once were classified 'non-white' and now are deemed not to have been 'previously disadvantaged'. Struggling with questions of identity and belonging, neither Western nor Western, not Asian, not African, the family lives in limbo. This is the universal story of families that leave behind their home and community, in search of a better life. But it is also a secret history that is long overdue. In charged and elegant prose, Darryl Accone tells the story of his Chinese-South African family over three generations, from the early 1900s to today. He writes about the young boy Ah Leong, who left China in 1911 for the unknown land of South Africa. He also tells the story of his Prussian great-grandmother, whose family tried to have her marriage to a Chinese merchant from Mauritius annulled. This book also relates the wider story of the Chinese in South Africa: a discreet and secret history that is long overdue in the telling. “Neither Eastern nor Western, not Asian, not African, classified non-white in the old South Africa but not deemed previously disadvantaged in the new, we live in perpetual bifurcation. Home is here, at the tip of Africa, but also across the sea, as it was for my Kong Kong, my grandfather.” This is beautifully written book, which, in the tradition of Maxine Hong Kingston, opens up a new world to the reader. A reading of All Under Heaven brings to mind sharply the question why, in a country made out of migrations, journeys, accidental arrivals, fateful crossings and dramatic generational counterpoint, there are so few books that take a multi-era, cinematic perspective, encompassing the far-flung locations and journeys out of which South African identity is made. A blend of fact and reconstructed fact, the manuscript draws on and includes community history, extensive clippings files on the Chinese in South Africa, memoir, family biography and autobiography in examining identity and the loss, rejection or lack thereof, as well as issues of assimilation and acculturation.
