Hottentot Venus
For this book report, I choose the book written by Barbara Chase-Riboud called Hottentot Venus. This book is about a real female from the KhoeKhoe nation and her tragic life. This Young Khoisan, Ssehura, is an orphan in South Africa around the 1700s. After becoming a slave by a Dutch Afrikaner, her name changed to Saartjie (means Little Sarah in Dutch.) As the story goes on, it explains more of Saartjie’s culture, which includes the grooming to be more desirable for marriage. In Khoisan’s culture, female massage their buttocks with special ointment so they will swell, and their genitalia are also stretched. Because of this, Saartjie becomes a physical curiosity and sexual fetish to her white master. Later on, the white master is persuaded by an Englishman to send her to London to become a sideshow sensation. There, along with other “things-that-never-should-never-have-been-born,” she becomes known as “Hottentot Venus.” The story moved on until the end where Saartjie......
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