This was very uncomfortable to read. Mainly because the author has a paternalistic view on her tenants that feels very dated. This book was written in the 1930s, so of course they had a completely different view on colonial relationships. If you intend to read a good account of the relationships between colonizers and colonized, however, this might be an interesting thing to read. It shows how rich white people dealt with Africans and how they saw their role in the Empire. And (at least for me), this is very interesting in several levels.

Isak Dinesen (aka. Karen Blixen) was an upper class European woman who moved into Africa with her husband. This book shows her views on the natives and colonization. Obviously, she seems to think that they are doing something good for them. But, unlike other colonizers, she appears to put some sort of value in the traditions and cultures of the people in the farm. Other times, though, she presents them as quaint rather than as having equal value to European culture. She moves along this spectrum of possibilities throughout the whole book, so it’s rather hard to get what she really thought about them.

This memoirs chronicle her life in a farm in Africa. She talks about the daily life in it and its surroundings, her relations with the people who work for her and so on. She has a direct and straightforward style, which makes the book quite easy to read. Not too adorned or too bare.
As said before, this book is hardly a critical analysis of colonial relations. The natives are not given a voice (obviously, these are Blixen’s memoirs) and the whole story is tinted with some sort of romantic ideal of African in mind. At some points she reminded me of my missionary aunt, who’s just arrived from Mozambique and seems to feel that it’s her duty to preach us about it. Both Blixen and my aunt make a point of emphasizing how innocent and pure the natives are, and how generous they are for inviting them to their houses. I’m not saying that this people are actually mean or evil. But I think that characterizing them in this way is Othering. Blixen and my aunt other Africans by thinking of them as people in another category.

This is why I found this book so hard to read. I’m a twenty-first century English major. I know that people don’t fit in tiny little boxes, that they are complex, that their relationships cannot be described in single ways. And reading the memoirs of a twentieth century aristocrat in Africa is also showing me a completely different way to see the world. One which I don’t agree with, as well.
Blixen/Dinesen’s view of Africa feels a little as if she’s talking about a completely different planet. And I guess that is because it is a different planet for her, a completely different world. And in that sense, this book works really well as a historic document, presenting a woman’s point of view about the empire, from the position of the colonizer. I’d have liked to see more of the other side, but I’m realistic enough to understand that it wasn’t possible.

If you’re interested in Colonialism, read it. If you don’t really care for it, I’d give it a miss and read something else instead.