The Water Man's Daughter - Emma Ruby-Sachs

Representation matters. Emma Ruby-Sachs, the author of The Water Man’s Daughter, published in 2011, successfully represents unique, independent, strong-willed women. The novel takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa, with the two ‘main characters’ of Zembe and Nomsulwa. Zembe is an unmarried, local police chief of Phiri, who has independently bought her own house and car. She is also referred to as Mama Afrika within her community for being a dedicated leader within her church. Although she can be seen as the ‘mother-figure’, she is a complex authority figure who allows her moral beliefs to help guide her in her decisions. She is faced with balancing her loyalties between the police force and her community, but achieves this through human impulses and decisions. Zembe is an important figure as a successful, strong, intelligent woman of colour, a character who is normally very scarce in our cultural literature.

Nomsulwa is a single woman, who has also afforded her own home and car. It is briefly revealed that she is sexually attracted to women, but does not dwell on her sexuality. This inclusion of her sexual preference is another effort in progressive representation of sexuality, displaying a non-heterosexual character as a successful and respected leader within her community. She is portrayed as a ‘rebel leader’, the leader of a South African activist group who protests and opposes the corporate privatization of water and electricity within their township. The novel explores Nomsulwa's story, and the events surrounding the arrival of Claire, the young Canadian woman who comes to South Africa after her father, an executive ‘Water Man’, was found murdered while on a business trip.

Claire is the third female character, and in my opinion is a secondary character (much like Nomsulwa’s cousin Mira) in Ruby-Sachs novel. To me, Claire is not a primary character because the story is never told from her perspective, instead only switching between Zembe and Nomsulwa’s perspectives. She is less complex, and although arguably independent, she idolizes her father, and struggles to accept the realities of what his company is actually doing to the township communities near Johannesburg. Her sole purpose in the novel stems from her father, and therefore her character’s journey focuses more on her path to self-identity.

Unfortunately, the hook for the book suggests that the novel focuses more on the Canadian white woman searching for answers to her fathers death, instead of the two progressive South African women who represent diversity - in regards to race, sexuality, and the breaking of assumed gender roles.

I must acknowledge that Emma Ruby-Sachs is a young, white, Canadian woman, who is writing about South African women and their communities, and therefore representing the voices of women who she does not identify as. This being said, during my further research and in the acknowledgement notes, it was revealed that Ruby-Sachs lived in South Africa in 2003 and 2004, completed extensive research on the communities she intended to write about, and worked with a team of women and people involved in the anti-privatization movement in South Africa, as well as several translators to assist her with the translations found throughout the novel in the Zulu language. Therefore, I might suggest that Ruby-Sachs was trying to support women through the creation of this novel.

This novel is successful in it’s attempts at pushing narratives forward towards intersectionality. This novel allows us to witness successful single women of colour, who are both leaders within their community, independent and financially self-sufficient. Zembe and Nomsulwa are strong-willed with great depth of character. Readers empathize with these women. These characters invite us to think about the life experiences of others, experiences that differ from our own. Moreover, Zembe and Nomsulwa represent progressive diversity in the world of literature. However it is important to remain critical about representation and who is creating and perpetuating the representation. I can appreciate Ruby-Sachs’ efforts to diversify contemporary fiction, proving that a novel about independent women (who do not need a man to save them or ‘assist’ them) can be compelling and gripping, no matter their race or sexuality. However I acknowledge that no amount of research can substitute one's own experiences. Women are strong full persons, and literature should recognize that more often.

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