Read Online Because I am a Girl by Tim Butcher - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Tim Butcher
Ads: Link
Catholic Church chickens out of its obligations to those eggs. It fails to protect the children its policies have brought into the world, particularly all the little girls who have been pimped by their poverty-stricken parents or left to starve by an indifferent state.
Brazil is a patriarchal society. The girls must get up at six and help their mothers prepare breakfast. The sons get an extra lie-in. When the kids come home from school, the boys play soccer. The girls must help with domestic chores. Seventy-eight per cent of the population believe that domestic violence will go unpunished. During my time in Brazil, everyone was on swine flu alert. But Brazilian women have dated so many swine, even married one or two, and confessed to others in church, that they must surely be immune?
But even so, the spirit of the young Brazilian women I met shone through. Their joy and optimism in the face of adversity made my heart expand like an accordion. Every child I met had the sort of neon smile that made you wish you were wearing Polaroids. When I went swimming with some of the girls from the favela, they giggled uncontrollably at my conservative one-piece swimming costume and my unwaxed pudenda. Even though there is no money for waxing, the girls do trim. (Brazilians are obsessed with deforestation . The rainforest doesn’t stand a chance!) I retorted that I liked my pubic hair – that it was like having a little pet in my pants at which they roared with laughter, teasing me mercilessly. I may not wax, but I will wax lyrical about the resilient, beautiful young women of Brazil.
Ballad of a Cambodian Man
XIAOLU GUO
Xiaolu Guo was born in 1973 in south China. She studied film at the Beijing Film Academy and published six books in China before she moved to London in 2002. The English translation of
Village of Stone
(Chatto, 2004) was shortlisted for the
Independent
Foreign Fiction Prize and nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her first novel written in English,
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
(Chatto, 2007) was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.
UFO In Her Eyes
(Chatto, 2009) is her latest novel. Xiaolu’s film-making career continues to flourish: Her feature
She, A Chinese
received a Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno Film Festival (2009), and
How is Your Fish Today?
(2006) was selected for the Sundance Festival and awarded the prize for best fiction feature at the Créteil International Women’s Film Festival.
THE OLD POLICEMAN stepped into the muddy rainwater streaming through the market. A smell of rotted durian fruit hung thickly in the air. He walked fast, with a sad joy, constantly colliding with busy shoppers, driven on by his eagerness to get home. He had to fix his rotten motorbike as soon as possible, and then drive to a village fifteen miles away before sunset.
Dara, or ‘the old policeman’, as the locals called him, was not really old. He had only just hit fifty, but was still the oldest in his police office. In Siem Reap, or in any of the big towns in Cambodia, apart from those who became bosses, all the older policemen were either retired or had no need to work anymore, thanks to the pocket money they got from bribes. But Dara was still there, and had been for half his life, carrying a gun in northern Cambodia. He was neither rich nor particularly poor, and he was reasonably kind to people, if they weren’t discouraged by his silence and often grumpy, motionless face. Dara was, after all, a man with a secret, and an inscrutable dignity . He barely talked about his past; some people said that he had been a soldier when he was young. But his short, solid body showed none of the usual signs, unlike others who had lost their limbs to mines during the war.
Right now, the old policeman was trying to finish his shift without incident, though a small riot was stirring up in the food market; a mango seller was fighting with a motorcycle-taxi man.
Brazil is a patriarchal society. The girls must get up at six and help their mothers prepare breakfast. The sons get an extra lie-in. When the kids come home from school, the boys play soccer. The girls must help with domestic chores. Seventy-eight per cent of the population believe that domestic violence will go unpunished. During my time in Brazil, everyone was on swine flu alert. But Brazilian women have dated so many swine, even married one or two, and confessed to others in church, that they must surely be immune?
But even so, the spirit of the young Brazilian women I met shone through. Their joy and optimism in the face of adversity made my heart expand like an accordion. Every child I met had the sort of neon smile that made you wish you were wearing Polaroids. When I went swimming with some of the girls from the favela, they giggled uncontrollably at my conservative one-piece swimming costume and my unwaxed pudenda. Even though there is no money for waxing, the girls do trim. (Brazilians are obsessed with deforestation . The rainforest doesn’t stand a chance!) I retorted that I liked my pubic hair – that it was like having a little pet in my pants at which they roared with laughter, teasing me mercilessly. I may not wax, but I will wax lyrical about the resilient, beautiful young women of Brazil.
Ballad of a Cambodian Man
XIAOLU GUO
Xiaolu Guo was born in 1973 in south China. She studied film at the Beijing Film Academy and published six books in China before she moved to London in 2002. The English translation of
Village of Stone
(Chatto, 2004) was shortlisted for the
Independent
Foreign Fiction Prize and nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her first novel written in English,
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
(Chatto, 2007) was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.
UFO In Her Eyes
(Chatto, 2009) is her latest novel. Xiaolu’s film-making career continues to flourish: Her feature
She, A Chinese
received a Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno Film Festival (2009), and
How is Your Fish Today?
(2006) was selected for the Sundance Festival and awarded the prize for best fiction feature at the Créteil International Women’s Film Festival.
THE OLD POLICEMAN stepped into the muddy rainwater streaming through the market. A smell of rotted durian fruit hung thickly in the air. He walked fast, with a sad joy, constantly colliding with busy shoppers, driven on by his eagerness to get home. He had to fix his rotten motorbike as soon as possible, and then drive to a village fifteen miles away before sunset.
Dara, or ‘the old policeman’, as the locals called him, was not really old. He had only just hit fifty, but was still the oldest in his police office. In Siem Reap, or in any of the big towns in Cambodia, apart from those who became bosses, all the older policemen were either retired or had no need to work anymore, thanks to the pocket money they got from bribes. But Dara was still there, and had been for half his life, carrying a gun in northern Cambodia. He was neither rich nor particularly poor, and he was reasonably kind to people, if they weren’t discouraged by his silence and often grumpy, motionless face. Dara was, after all, a man with a secret, and an inscrutable dignity . He barely talked about his past; some people said that he had been a soldier when he was young. But his short, solid body showed none of the usual signs, unlike others who had lost their limbs to mines during the war.
Right now, the old policeman was trying to finish his shift without incident, though a small riot was stirring up in the food market; a mango seller was fighting with a motorcycle-taxi man.
Similar Books
