FeedIt's a "Menage a trois" for Sugar Girls and Seamen
Henry Trotter, a student of African history at Yale University, gets involved in a threesome this week for his research into South African port culture – and more especially its shady side, as chronicled in his book Sugar Girls and Seamen.
The first two in the trio are definite carrots, one from Chris Dunton and the other from Lin Sampson – both of whom place Sugar Girls and Seamen on their recommended list. Samspon makes note of the Trotter’s ability to combine “adamantine research with thoughtful analysis” while Dunton writes about the book’s accessibility, which results, he says, from the “short sections and fluid style.”
Lastly, we are presented with an interview between real-life Sugar Girl, Sarah Beaton, and, again, Lin Sampson. It is a harrowing account of Beaton’s life, with a redemptive theme. “Man, I’ve been looking forward to this day,” is one of her concluding remarks, which brings one to the importance of the work Trotter has done with Sugar Girls and Seamen beyond its literary value:
While researching for a doctoral thesis on South Africa’s port culture, over a 15-month period Henry Trotter, who is from a maritime background, interviewed some 90 prostitutes and sailors in Durban and Cape Town.
Sugar Girls and Seamen is one outcome of this project, and if its linkage to an academic dissertation suggests it might be a dry and earnest read, think again.
Henry Trotter’s book Sugar Girls & Seamen combines adamantine research with thoughtful analysis of dockland prostitution in South Africa.
Trotter coined the word “sugar girl” for prostitutes after the District Six argot for brothels, suikerhuisies. The dockland sugar houses were replaced by clubs, run mostly by Greeks, where seamen and prostitutes would meet. Ten years ago, there were eight clubs; now, there are two.
I’m sitting in a Waterfront restaurant with Sarah Beaton. Sarah has been a whore, a drug addict, a drug pedlar, a pickpocket, a thief, a shoplifter, a hustler, a seller of crack pipes. She has been homeless, living in doorways and stairwells through the cold Cape winters.
She casts her eyes across the gentrified docklands with its sparkling water and paved shopping malls and recalls the time when it was a working dock, when each boat represented a load of money as it tipped out sailors ready to be ripped off by Sarah with her lithe beauty.
Book Details
- Sugar Girls and Seamen by Henry Trotter
EAN: 9781770095755
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Aug
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