The Colours That Blind Review
The Colours That Blind
The Colours That Blind tells the story of Tumirai, a 14 year old boy living in Zimbabwe with albinism who is desperate to join the national swim team. However, disaster strikes when Tumi must go to stay with his ambuya (grandmother) in a rural village, stopping him from going to his daily swim practices. If that wasn’t bad enough, Tumi is convinced that something isn’t quite right with his grandmother, who has stayed in contact with her son, who is in prison for trying to kidnap Tumi. But when Tumi discovers a letter containing part of her diary, it seems there is more to her than meets the eye. Ambuya has a story to tell Tumi; is it time for him to overcome his fear of her and listen?
Content warnings: violence, racism, mentions of rape
At first, I couldn’t really get into the story. I found that the beginning didn’t interest me or capture my imagination in any way, partly because I don’t have much of an interest in sports-based books. Yet once I’d reached roughly the second part, something captivated me. There were suddenly a lot more questions that I wanted answers to, which made it hard to put the book down! I loved the switches between Tumi in the present day and Ambuya’s diary, and later her telling the story to Tumi, set in the past. Her story was thrilling from beginning to end, and I was quickly drawn in to it.
The language used in the book was almost poetic at times, there were some beautiful pieces, but at the same time it wasn’t too overwhelming with metaphors, similes, etc. When reading from Tumi’s point of view, the language had bits of slang thrown in as well, which helped to lighten it up a bit and kept it realistic.
Overall, by the end of The Colours That Blind, I’d been pleasantly surprised. The story had got much better than I expected it would, and I’m glad that I did carry on. The book is especially relevant during this time, when I think that we should be making as big of an effort as possible to educate ourselves on matters like the racism that is dealt with in it. I never knew anything about the history of Zimbabwe, and now I’ve definitely learnt and understand a lot more.
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