In her novel, A Patch of Blue, Elizabeth Kata tells a story of Selina, an eighteen year old blind girl who meets and develops a relationship with Gordon, an older black man. Gordon helps Selina realize many hopes and dreams, though not without some drawbacks. One of the disadvantages of Selina and Gordon's relationship is that he is able to withhold telling her about the colour of his skin. Selina hates black people because the only colour that she can see is black, and she has grown to despise it. Rose-Ann and Ole Pa also don't like black people, and Selina has therefore grown up to believe that she too, should hate Negroes. For example, she meets a little girl named Pearl. Since Selina is blind, she has no way of knowing that Pearl is black. Ole Pa returns and tells Selina that Pearl was a black girl. Selina instantly thinks "Black! I hated Pearl. I had enough black in my life." Selina was elated to have met Gordon however in turn her home life was made more difficult as a result of this friendship. Every day before Ole Pa would leave for 'Mens' she would ask him to take her to the park. More often than not, he would get angry and say no leaving Selina to think up some conniving way to get him to say yes. Being with Gordon was slowly teaching her to speak her mind and state her opinions. Rose-Ann seemed to feel that Selina was just a commodity who shouldn't think or speak. Almost whenever Selina spoke Rose-Ann would cuff her for the 'rudeness.' This made Selina more and more bold and the consequences got tougher for her to handle. At one point, Selina is so terrified of Rose-Ann rage that she hides under the bed. Rose-Ann drags her out screaming "Oh you slut. Oh you slut!" Selina is no slut. There are several advantages of Selina and Gordon's friendship, the first being the many new experiences he gives her. Not all were positive experiences, but they were all exciting and new. Gordon gives her s...
