Reading Response: Welcome to Our Hillbrow

          The book Welcome to Our Hillbrow by Phaswane Mpe is a novel that illustrates the lives of characters and the issues that existed in the Hillbrow neighborhood. The story is told through the second person narrative as the author often uses the word “you” as a subject of the novel. One of the unique things about this novel is how the author uses a variety of perspectives to tell the story. These perspectives include the author’s perspective, Refentse’s perspective, the perspective from heaven, the perspective of Tiragalong people toward the city people of Johannesburg, and the perspective of South Africans on non-South Africans. In the novel, Mpe illustrates his perspective through facts and his commentary on the characters’ situation. The narrator, as the author himself, often tells historical facts that happened in the South Africa such as the 1998 Soccer World cup and the system of apartheid. Due to Refentse's perspective, the readers also understand and know more about Hillbrow. Refentse’s perspective is illustrated by the events that happened during his lifetime in Hillbrow which led to the downfall of other characters. It also illustrates the causes of his behavior which led to the choice of committing suicide. The narrative mostly uses Refentse’s perspective to illustrate the true life of the Hillbrow neighborhood. The text states: “you already knew that Hillbrow was a menacing monster…Hillbrow had swallowed a number of the children of Tiragalong, who though that the City of Gold was full of career opportunities for them” (3). Another perspective is from the heaven. The text states: “Heaven is the world of our continuing existence, located in the memory and consciousness of those who live with us and after us” (124).  Heaven is a placed where our souls exit and our memories still continued with us. Similar to the narrator, the perspective of heaven also knows everything that happened in the story. Since God knows everything about us and the world, then the heaven perspective can also be viewed as God’s perspective.
          The author uses the perspective of the Tiragalong people towards the city people of Johannesburg to illustrate the mindset of rural people to the city people. This perspective creates conflict to the main character. Through the illustration of the narrator in the Map section, the reader can see that rural people, especially the Tiragalong people, believe that Johannesburg is a dangerous and the most corrupt place. The text states: “tiragalong drank in the scandal eagerly…everyone knew that the Johannesburg women are bound to bring disasters upon any man’s life (44).  This statement illustrates how the Tiragalong people think about the Johannesburg women which caused Refentse’s mother to dislike Lerato. This lead to the quarrel between Refentse and his mother. However, as the reader continues to the read the story, Refentse’s mother's attitude toward Lerato changed when they met each other in heaven. Similar to the rural people perspective to the city people, the perspective of South Africans toward non African is no different. South Africans people do not like non South Africans or the Makwerekwere. The text states: “AID’s travel in route into Johannesburg was through Makwerekwere” (4). This is one of the reasons that caused South African people to disliked non South African as they believed that this evil disease, a.k.a AIDS, was caused by the foreign germs that spread throughout the areas and killed their people. They treated foreign people poorly and also make fun foreign people as they called these people as “Makwerekwere”.This word is from the sound “kwere kwere”,which is the sound the unintelligible foreign make when they speak (20). I believe that the author uses different perspectives as a way to help us understand more about the character’s minds. It also helps us to know more about the causes and effects in the story and characters’ lives.