Waiting for an Angel

I loved the start of this book! It starts in prison, bonus! Political prisoners, writing poetry locked up. Then Lomba discovers that his captor is actually human when he talks to a woman from the outside. I loved how this went down. The Superintendent is viewed as nonhuman, a thing not a person. But toward the middle and end of that section Lomba discovers that he is a human "Even jailers fall in love". It reminds me of a part of The Wire, season 3 episode 2. Three police are out at the movies and from the movie across the hall two drug dealers they are always hassling and locking up walk out too. The line is "Huh, ya'll see movies too". Perfect. We never think of people in authority as "real people" "(even teachers and professors).


This novel gave of a sense of urgency at the beginning. I think it is because after the prison part we start with a character getting killed! What! Then we flashback to six months before the character being shot to a time where the three characters go to the beach and find a fortuneteller who tells the character is going to die and Lomba's future is only prison. We know what is going to happen in the end to two thirds of the main characters, so the story seems to be sprinting toward that ending. At any moment, what they do could automatically land them in jail or dead. Sadly, as I progressed through the novel this urgency tapered off, I wish it had held up throughout the entire book.

Wigs. I underlined wigs the first few times they were mentioned. Seems odd to me that African women would be wearing them, well, odd that revolutionaries would be wearing wigs. Wigs, to me, would have been ascribing to European hair trends, or at the least a European look. And you can't tell me that these student revolutionaries wouldn't have put it together that their current problem in the country wasn't linked back to European occupation. So, allowing yourself to go along with the hot trend of the time would have been very, anti-revolutionary. I thought it a unique point the author put in. I am not sure what he is trying to say with it, maybe that the revolutionary bug caught on so quickly people did not fully change their lives over to the African way?

Getting toward the end of the novel, the protest oddly reminds me of another essay I have read, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers by Tom Wolfe. Wolfe's essay is meant to be funny and I don't think Waiting for an Angel was suppose to be, but when the bus of prostitutes came on the scene I started giggling some. Imagine 20 prostitutes stumbling out of a bus, to me that is comdey. It shows unity yes, but think of the big wigs they have on to boot, I am picturing beehive hair, in my mind this motely crew looks ridiculous.