The Los Angeles Reading: Book Selections

Posted on July 26, 2010 | Leave a comment

Forever Let Me Go contains a taste of my poetry and Speaking for the Generations (AWP 2010) contains an excerpt from my short story “A Long Night”, set in Glen View 2, Harare.

The Los Angeles Event with Christopher Mlalazi is only one week, I know time will fly, so I thought I should start to prepare myself for the event. I have already selected the published works that I will carry, although I will take along some works in progress, like my selections from short story manuscripts. But here are the books I am carrying, from which I will read: Forever Let Me Go (poetry), African Roar (short stories), State of the Nation: Contemporary Zimbabwean Poetry, Speaking for the Generations (short stories), and Charles Mungoshi’s The Setting Sun and the Rolling World.

African Roar (StoryTime 2010), State of the Nation (Conversation 2009), and The Setting Sun (Beacon Press 1989).

Chris and I will be reading our works and launching StoryTime’s African Roar at an event coordinated by Villa Aurora Los Angeles and Eso Won Bookstore. A band will be performing as well. Below are more details about the event.

Villa Aurora & Eso Won Bookstore present

an evening of stories, poetry, book launch of African Roar & music with
2010 Feuchtwanger Fellow Christopher Mlalazi, Zimbabwe
fellow Zimbabwean writer and editor Emmanuel Sigauke
& Judicanti Responsura
7PM on Saturday, July 31, 2010 at Eso Won Bookstore
4331 Degnan Boulevard, Los Angeles 90008

Villa Aurora’s 2010 Feuchtwanger Fellow, Zimbabwean writer Christopher Mlalazi’s two books, Dancing with Life (2008, amaBooks), a collection of short stories, Many Rivers (2009, Lion Press, Ltd., UK), a novel, and his latest play Election Day (2010), deal with the social and political disintegration of his native Zimbabwe. In 2008 he was co-awarded the OXFAM NOVIP PEN Freedom of Expression Award at the Hague, which he received with Raisedon Baya for their play The Crocodile of Zambezi. The Crocodile of Zambezi (2008), a satire of the Mugabe regime set in a fictional country along the Zambezi River, was officially banned and members of its cast and crew were harassed and beaten by state agents. Christopher Mlalazi’s work has received numerous honors and awards, including the ‘2009 Best First Published Creative Work, National Arts Merit Award in Zimbabwe’ for Dancing with Life: Tales from the Township, which also received the NOMA Award Honorable Mention(UK) in 2009; Many Rivers was shortlisted for the 2010 National Merit Award for Most Outstanding Book of Fiction. He has also published poetry in several international anthologies. Mr. Mlalazi has completed a new novel while in residence at Villa Aurora.

Emmanuel Sigauke grew up in Zimbabwe where his interest in writing began at the age of thirteen. He studied English, Shona, and Linguistics and graduated with a BA. From 1993 to 1996 he was the National Secretary of the Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe (BWAZ), an organization that has helped groom many contemporary Zimbabwean writers. Sigauke moved to California in 1996 and studied English at California State University Sacramento. He teaches composition, literature and creative writing at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento, is a board member of the Sacramento Poetry Center, where he hosts poetry readings every second Monday, is the book review editor of the organization’s bi-monthly publication, Poetry Now, and is also the co-editor of the recently published African Roar: An Eclectic Collection of African Authors. Sigauke has also taught fiction workshops for the UC Davis Extension and in the Hart Senior Center Annual Writing Conference. His collection of poetry, Forever Let Me Go, appeared in 2008, and he has since published poetry in State of the Nation: Contemporary Zimbabwean Poetry and in journals like Witness, One Ghana, One Voice, and others. His fiction has been published in online and print journals. He is currently working on a collection of short stories and a novel.

JUDICANTI RESPONSURA is a Los Angeles based chamber music ensemble formed in 1984 by tubaist William Roper and percussionist Joseph Mitchell. They perform their own compositions and generate new works from area composers. They specialize in works incorporating Euro-Classical and African-American improvisational traditions. Judicanti’s repertoire ranges from purely musical compositions to multi-media, multi-disciplinary works. The group is represented on recordings released by the Asian Improv, Tomato Sage Consortium and Heliotrope Dreams labels. As individual artists they have worked with “The Lion of Zimbabwe” Thomas Mapfumo, the L.A. Philharmonic, L.A. Opera, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Elton John, Yusef Lateef, Anthony Braxton and many others.

African Roar: An Eclectic Anthology of African Authors is a fiction anthology drawn from the very best stories published from 2007-2009, in the StoryTime weekly literary ezine dedicated to publishing African writers. Between these covers you will find eleven stories that stand as a testament to the upsurge of talented African writers boldly utilizing the cutting edge of technology and the writing craft to be read globally. Spanning Africa and the African Diaspora in past, present and future, each story has a fresh and diverse vision that opens up new vistas of experience. From the lucid terrors of domestic violence through the eyes of a child, and the anguish of those left behind by a fleeing Diaspora, to a full circle, when the prey becomes the hunter and has the opportunity for revenge, and a dryly humorous look at what it’s like to lose a quarter of your brain, to name just a few of the treasures that lie within. Edited by Emmanuel Sigauke & Ivor W. Hartmann.

Villa Aurora, with its unique émigré history, is an artist residence and historic landmark located in the former home of exiled German-Jewish writer Lion Feuchtwanger. To promote and foster German-American cultural exchange and to remember the European exiles that settled in Southern California, Villa Aurora offers a variety of salon style arts and cultural programs, including public lectures, concerts, screenings and performances. Villa Aurora and the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library at USC jointly provide the Feuchtwanger Fellowship to writers, like Christopher Mlalazi who face persecution in their native countries.

ESO Won Books is more than a warehouse of reading materials. It is your personal gateway to inspiration, adventure, laughter, healthy living, social etiquette, history, and so much more. At Eso Won, you can count on friendly, down to earth personalized service. An Essential Los Angeles destination in the heart of historic Leimert Park, Eso Won has played host to a variety of authors from Presidents Obama and Clinton, intellectuals Michael Eric Dyson and Cornell West, to comedian Bill Cosby. Eso Won (African for “water over rocks”) is a living proverb as it provides fluid, safe, stirring opportunities that flow to a reservoir of knowledge for both the African and African American experience as well as any other topic you may wish to find.

Eso Won Bookstore (323-290-1048) is located
in the historic Leimerk Park neighborhood at:

4331 Degnan Boulevard, Los Angeles 90008west of Leimert Boulevard, east of Crenshaw Boulevard south of West 43rd Street & north of Leimert Plaza Park on West 43rd Place.

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An Evening of Stories, Poetry & Music in Los Angeles with Christopher Mlalazi

Posted on July 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

Chris Mlalazi

Villa Aurora & Eso Won Bookstore present

an evening of stories, poetry & music with
2010 Feuchtwanger Fellow Christopher Mlalazi, fellow Zimbabwean writer and editor Emmanuel Sigauke, and Judicanti Responsura
7PM on Saturday, July 31, 2010 at Eso Won Bookstore
4331 Degnan Boulevard, Los Angeles 90008

Villa Aurora’s 2010 Feuchtwanger Fellow, Zimbabwean writer Christopher Mlalazi’s novel Many Rivers (2009, Lion Press, Ltd., UK), Dancing with Life (2008, amaBooks), a collection of short stories, and play Election Day (2010), deal with the social disintegration of his native Zimbabwe, where he also contributes light entertainment articles for its major newspapers—a contrast that underscores a practice of self-censorship acknowledged by the 2008 OXFAM NOVIP PEN Freedom of Expression Award at the Hague, which he received with Raisedon Baya for their play The Crocodile of Zambezi. The Crocodile of Zambezi (2008), a satire of the Mugabe regime set in a fictional country along the Zambezi River, was officially banned and members of its cast and crew were harassed and beaten by state agents. Christopher Mlalazi’s work has received numerous honors and awards, including the ‘2009 Best First Published Creative Work, National Arts Merit Award in Zimbabwe’ for Dancing with Life: Tales from the Township, which also received NOMA Award Honorable Mention in 2009; Many Rivers was shortlisted for the 2010 National Merit Award for Most Outstanding Book of Fiction. Mr. Mlalazi has just completed a new novel about pre-election violence under a dictatorship.

Emmanuel Sigauke grew up in Zimbabwe where his interest in writing began at the age of thirteen. He studied English, Shona, and Linguistics and graduated with a BA. From 1993 to 1996 he was the National Secretary of the Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe (BWAZ), an organization that has helped groom many contemporary Zimbabwean writers. Sigauke moved to California in 1996 and studied English at California State University Sacramento. He teaches composition, literature and creative writing at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento, is a board member of the Sacramento Poetry Center, where he hosts poetry readings every second Monday, is the book review editor of the organization’s bi-monthly publication, Poetry Now,. and is also the co-editor of the recently published African Roar: An Eclectic Collection of African Authors. Sigauke has also taught fiction workshops for the UC Davis Extension and in the Hart Senior Center Annual Writing Conference. His collection of poetry, Forever Let Me Go, appeared in 2008, and he has since published poetry in State of the Nation: Contemporary Zimbabwean Poetry and in journals like Witness, One Ghana, One Voice, and others. His fiction has been published online and in print journals. He is currently working on a collection of short stories and a novel. He blogs at Wealth of Ideas.

JUDICANTI RESPONSURA is a Los Angeles based chamber music ensemble formed in 1984 by tubaist William Roper and percussionist Joseph Mitchell. They perform their own compositions and generate new works from area composers. They specialize in works incorporating Euro-Classical and African-American improvisational traditions. Judicanti’s repertoire ranges from purely musical compositions to multi-media, multi-disciplinary works. The group is represented on recordings released by the Asian Improv, Tomato Sage Consortium and Heliotrope Dreams labels. As individual artists they have worked with the L.A. Philharmonic, L.A. Opera, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Elton John, Yusef Lateef, Anthony Braxton and many others. http://roperarts.com/judi.html

Villa Aurora, with its unique émigré history, is an artist residence and historic landmark located in the former home of exiled German-Jewish writer Lion Feuchtwanger. To promote and foster German-American cultural exchange and to remember the European exiles that settled in Southern California, Villa Aurora offers a variety of salon style arts and cultural programs, including public lectures, concerts, screenings and performances. Villa Aurora and the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library at USC jointly provide the Feuchtwanger Fellowship to writers, like Christopher Mlalazi, who face persecution in their native countries.

ESO Won Books is more than a warehouse of reading materials. It is your personal gateway to inspiration, adventure, laughter, healthy living, social etiquette, history, and so much more. At Eso Won, you can count on friendly, down to earth personalized service. An Essential Los Angeles destination in the heart of historic Leimert Park, Eso Won has played host to a variety of authors from Presidents Obama and Clinton, intellectuals Michael Eric Dyson and Cornell West, to comedian Bill Cosby. Eso Won (African for “water over rocks”) is a living proverb as it provides fluid, safe, stirring opportunities that flow to a reservoir of knowledge for both the African and African American experience as well as any other topic you may wish to find.

Eso Won Bookstore (323-290-1048) is located in the historic Leimerk Park neighborhood at:

4331 Degnan Boulevard, Los Angeles 90008
west of Leimert Boulevard, east of Crenshaw Boulevard
south of West 43rd Street & north of Leimert Plaza Park
on West 43rd Place.

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Posted in African literature, African literature; african editors, New Zimbabwean Writing, world literature

Tolu Ogunlessi on the 21st Century Nigerian Literary Scene

Posted on May 26, 2010 | 1 Comment

Tolu Ogunlessi discusses the Nigerian literary scene since 2000 in this rich article entitled “Things Fall Together: Nigeria’s literary scene in the 21st century”, which is so good I think Tolu should consider making literary profiles for other African regions. I have the feeling that in all African regions, there has been an increase in literary production, but what would be interesting is to find out what the reading trends on the continent have been. Below is an excerpt of Tolu’s article.

Interestingly, another arena that has seen significant change, and provides evidence of an impressive cultural renaissance in Nigeria, is the one in which Adichie herself occupies a vantage spot: the literary arts. On a recent Saturday afternoon, the Silverbird Lifestyle Store in Victoria Island, was cramped with guests attending the 4th edition of the monthly BookJam reading series; featuring Adichie, Kenyan’s Binyavanga Wainaina, and UK-based Nigerians Chuma Nwokolo and Sade Adeniran.

Lagos is suddenly a hot new destination for writers from all over the world – courtesy of the exploits and efforts of writers like Adichie. Her four-year-old annual Creative Writing workshop, sponsored by Nigeria’s oldest and biggest beer company (which before now appeared to be more at home with sponsoring music festivals and talent hunts) has brought Jason Cowley, Nathan Englander, Binyavanga Wainaina, Jackie Kay, Doreen Baingana and Dave Eggers to Lagos, to facilitate writing sessions. This year Ama Ata Aidoo, Niq Mhlongo and Chika Unigwe are the guest writers.

To read the rest of this brilliant article, go to 3 Quarks Daily, which I now follow with a passion. What a rich website.

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Book Review: YOUNG ZIMBABWEAN WOMEN POETS BREAK SILENCE

Posted on May 26, 2010 | 3 Comments

Title: Sunflowers in Your Eyes – Four Zimbabwean Poets

Editor: Menna Elfyn

Publisher: Cinnamon Press

ISBN: 978-1-907090-13-4

Year: 2010

Reviewed by Tinashe Mushakavanhu 

Zimbabwean poetry has been largely a choir of male voices. The absence of women is too visible in KZ Muchemwa’s Zimbabwean Poetry in English (1978), Musaemura Zimunya and Mudereri Kadhani’s And Now the Poets Speak (1982), Flora Veit-Wild’s Patterns of Poetry in Zimbabwean Poetry (1988) and more recently Jane Morris’ Intwasa Poetry (2008). The agenda of this book is to give women their voices as the editor Menna Elfyn outlines in her preface, ‘this book goes some way in redressing this imbalance.’ 

I read the book with so much relish. It is an empowering book in many ways. In poetry as well as in the other artistic fields, the Zimbabwean woman is often restricted to a subordinate role as a muse, confidant and comforter. This book brings a refreshing insight as the four poets – Ethel Kabwato, Fungai Machirori, Joice Shereni and Blessing Musariri reach out to many dreams.

 While, it is easy to get lost in the maze of implications concerning gender, these poets write without shouting WOMEN even though sometimes it is a legitimate claim for dignity and equal opportunities. The book is rich in the variety of expression drawing on different styles. The themes are very much wide-ranging and incisive. 

 What is remarkably interesting about the poetry is the autobiographical element, which is often central to women’s poetry as it allows them to express the sufferings, the pain and the deferred dreams of their personas.  However, in Sunflowers in Your Eyes, the poetry is celebrating a life that despite its hardships and injustice is often happy. It is an expression of injustice but also a celebratory expression of life.

 Ethel Kabwato is the most political in the book as she tackles the difficult subjects that have come to define what has been dubbed the Zimbabwe crisis, subjects of land, violence, patriotism through an intelligent employ of irony and wit. Despite being the youngest, Fungai Machirori’s poetry is of yearning, of self-exploration, of seeking answers to questions relating to her identity as a born free, ‘a composition ‘of many things. Joice Shereni writes more about personal relationships and relationships with the larger society. Blessing Musariri’s ‘assured poems’ are of resilience, of journeying away because as she asks in Holding on, ‘Everybody has moved on/What (are) you doing standing still?’ Hers is a more daring poetry that challenges us to alter our perceptions and our minds.

The four young women have proven beyond doubt that Zimbabwean women can write poetry.  Sunflowers in Your Eyes will considerably increase the depth and breadth of our knowledge of ourselves and a constant reminder of the redefining of those selves.  It is a very personal and yet political collection.

 

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“Baobab Prize is pushing the literary giants of the next generation into the limelight”: Deborah Ahenkorah

Posted on January 7, 2010 | 1 Comment

Deborah Ahenkorah is the co-founder of the fast-growing Baobab Prize, which is now in its second year. The inaugural award drew participation from nine African countries. The winners were Lauri Kubuitsile from Botswana with “Lorato and her Wire Car”, the best story written for readers aged 8-11 years; Ivor W. Hartmann from Zimbabwe with “Mr. Goop”, the best story written for readers aged 12-15 years and Aisha Kibwana from Kenya, the most promising young writer with “Strange Visitors that took her Life Away”. Based on what Debbie says in this interview, this award will revolutionize African writing and reading.

1.What can you tell us about yourself?

My name is Deborah Ahenkorah and I’m Ghanaian. Lately, I have come to be given the name ‘Debbie from Ghana!’ Now let me tell you that story:
My South African friend Ntshadi, before I met her, once stopped to eat in a restaurant at a random location somewhere in mid-USA. When the waitress discovered she was from South Africa, she (the waitress) gushed and drawled: “Well I neva! You are really from Africa, aren’t you. Goodness me. You must know my friend, Debbie, from Ghana!”

It was a funny-ha-ha-are-you-kidding-me moment. I am certain I do not know this waitress and she does not know me. But I am and will always remain, yours truly, ‘Debbie from Ghana!’

2.What’s the source of your interest in promoting African reading and education? How successful have your book and education drive been?

I believe that deep-rooted change comes through education and so in my freshman year of college, I founded an organization, Project Educate In Africa (PEIA), to organize book drives and fund raising events in support of educational initiatives in Africa.
Building on my work with PEIA, I co-founded the Baobab Prize to encourage the writing of African literature for young readers.

The successes of these two initiatives continue to astound me. In PEIA’s two years of existence, we have shipped close to 8,000 books to more than 35 African countries. We have also raised over $ 7,000 through craft sales on the Bryn Mawr College campus and currently we are hoping to fund the building of a pre-school in Northern Ghana.

The Baobab Prize, now in its second year, has also been incredibly successful. We are now partnering with two major international organizations and a number of top name African publishers.

3.How early were you exposed to reading, and what kinds of books did you read as a child? At what age did you read books by African authors?

I am the last-but-one child of a huge family, so growing up there was a lot of pressure to be as cool as my older siblings. At the time when I was most impressionable, the cool thing to do in my family was to read. The more you read, the cooler you were. So I read. I read my heart out.

My first chapter book was an Enid Blyton from her ‘Famous Five’ series. I will never forget the ecstasy I felt at discovering the ‘joy of reading’- that through a book I could go anywhere, be anyone, do anything. It was glorious!

Unfortunately, I never got around to reading African authors while I was young. I felt at that time that the few African stories I came by were all cut from the same moral-laden folk tale genre. My love affair with African literature started in high school with Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah. My copy of this book is tattered and worn, read over and over.


4.I admire your work in the Baobab Fiction Prize. What can you tell us about this award of African literature?

The Baobab Prize is an African literary award that has grown out of a dream that my co-founder, Rama Shagaya and I conceived, to encourage the writing of African literature for young readers. The award was inaugurated in 2008-2009 as an annual contest open to all African citizens, inviting submissions of African-themed children stories. The stories we receive fall in the categories: for readers aged 8-11 years; for readers aged 12 – 15 years. As well, we recognize a ‘Promising Young Writer’ under age 18. We award a cash prize and connect the stories we receive with interested publishers.

5. Why have you focused on young readers?

The focus on young readers is because we have identified young people below the age of fifteen to be African Literature’s most neglected audience. African children’s literature is just coming into its own and my co-founder Rama Shagaya and I are convinced that a crop of young readers who appreciate African literature will develop to become the readers and writers of African works in the future.


6.What is the future of the award? Who funds it?

The Baobab Prize is pushing the literary giants of the next generation into the limelight and producing classic stories that will be appreciated for many years. The Baobab Prize 2010 is funded by the Global Fund for Children, The African Library Project as well as friends and supporters of the initiative. We are proud to be associated with Bryn Mawr College (the alma-mater of Rama and I) that has believed in this idea from the inception.


7.Are there plans to publish prize-related anthologies?

Yes! Give us ten years and you will find African children’s books selling wildly in international bookstores all over the world. And all these hot-selling African children’s books will have one thing in common, a golden stamp on the front cover that reads: The Baobab Prize.

8.Based on your experience reading contemporary African writers, what can you say is the state of African literature?

African writers need to not feel burdened to tell of the ‘authentic African experience.’ What is that anyway? The wider the variety of work we produce, the bigger the audiences we can reach, like the African music industry. With the diverse genres our music industry is embracing and entering, we are amassing an incredible global followership. Rock, Jazz and Reggae fans all over the world for instance, can now find distinctively African music that appeals to the tastes of their genres.

9.Of late, there have been debates about the need for African writers to embrace genre or popular writing. What’s your position on this issue?
YES PLEASE, more diversity (of genre, style, theme, content) in our writing. What will it hurt?

You can imagine how happy we were to see lots of variety in the submissions we received for the Baobab Prize’s first year. The stories came from nine African countries and among them were comic tales, magical fantasies, tragedies, and futuristic sci-fis. More diversity we say!


10.What do you see as the role of social networking sites like Facebook in the promotion of writing and reading? What do you think needs more promotion, writing or reading?

Social Networking sites have changed the face of marketing, advertising and information accessing. Millions of people spend time on these sites looking for information. Writers can benefit greatly by milking this eager audience. I would encourage upcoming writers to utilize these media to sell their work for free. Yes, free. Income will come once you establish an audience base that recognizes and appreciates your work. People WILL pay for what they want.
The Baobab prize has benefited from the free publicity available through social networking sites. We appreciate the support of our Facebook friends and Twitter followers and we always have room for more. Join us in our quest to revolutionize African literature!

For 2010 guidelines visit the Baobab Prize website, and for more infomation, contact Deborah Ahenkorah at baobabprize[AT]gmail.com

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New Collaboration for Indian and Zimbabwean Writers

Posted on August 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

This post was created by Sunil Sharma, an Indian scholar and writer with whom I am planning to compile an anthology of Indian-Zimbabwean short stories. An Indian publisher has expressed interest in taking up this project, but before we make a call for submissions, here is a short writing on the project.

Sunil Sharma is currently Vice-principal and Reader in the English department of Model College, which is affiliated to the University of Mumbai—MIDC, Dombivli (East), in District Thane,state of Maharashtra, India. He is a bilingual critic, poet, literary interviewer, editor, translator, essayist and fiction writer. Some of
his short stories and poems have already appeared in journals like New Woman (Mumbai), Creative Saplings, Muse India (both of them e-zines), Munyori Literary Journal, the Seva Bharati Journal of English Studies (West Bengal), Indian Literature (of Sahitya Akademy, New Delhi), Indian Literary Panorama (Mumbai), Contemporary Vibes (Chandigarh), The Plebian Rag (USA), and Indian Journal of Post-colonial Literatures (Kerala),Kritya (online). Besides that, he is a freelance journalist in English. His book on the Philosophy of the Novel—A Marxist Critique is already published. His debut novel—Minotaurch—is forthcoming from Jaipur (India).

Tentative Title: Nations on the Move: A Salad of Indo-Zimbabwean Contemporary Short Fiction in English

Have you ever visited the sun-kissed Africa?

No, not the Dark Continent of the imperialist imagination but the bright, multi-splendoured Africa from where the first Eve emerged. An Africa that all of us carry in our DNA; home to not AIDS but to ancient civilizations. An Africa seen from an adoring son’s or daughter’s eyes, warts and all.

I have not visited this fascinating landmass of great contrasts. A land ruled by the West-educated corpulent dictators in two-piece suits and red ties who want to crush the indomitable spirit of the toiling masses. They can physically intimidate or kill a large number of silent people but can not crush the rising tidal waves of the popular resistance.

I am talking of this struggling Africa, the Africa of common person’s dreams and the cherished Muse of an exiled poet in London or Paris. True peoples’ land and their global aspirations: very much like my own India with same aspirations, dreams and struggles, despite the persisting bane of the constant threat of the terrorists, militant regionalism and deeply-entrenched casteism. Chances of going to this vast continent are remote also for a middle-class teacher like me who wants to travel around the whole world— Africa included— but does not have the kind of extra dough needed for such a long and eventful journey.

I am not a brutal Henderson trying to journey to an Africa for finding redemption. Nor, the salvation seeking Harry. The Snows of Kilimanjaro are not for me. The Great Columbus was also not my great-great-great- grand father. I do not have such an illustrated pedigree! Marco Polo and Vasco da Gamma are the difficult foreign names encountered first in the history books written/ taught so badly to the poor primary-level kids that they still curse these bold explorers of the yore for making their tiny lives miserable for them. One man’s joy, as they say, is another man’s poison! So, it is clear that the travelling gene is not in my blood. Discoveries are not for folks like Mr. J Alfred Prufrock or Joe Six-pack.

So, I am stuck up permanently in a 24/7 world of repeating sickening news, recessionary gloom, senseless killings and murders, violent rapes, devastating wars, ethnic cleansing, cruel racial attacks, food and celeb-chasing and what not on the idiot box. This wide-screen nonsense can drive anybody crazy. If aliens were watching, they will sure run away in their flying saucers thinking that the lonely planet is the most dangerous place in the entire Milky Way. That is why they come, see and safely retreat to their red Mars or the ringed Jupiter in their super- fast vehicles. The antennae-studded aliens with the glowing oval eyes are right in their spot assessment of the terra firma. Spielberg could not persuade even a single green-bodied creature to stay on the earth for long among the divided humans. Well. Well.

So, how to be upbeat on a bad hair day when every Murphy principle comes true for the poor you? Dining out is so passé and predictable (and costly) these days. You pay exorbitant prices for eating the same exotic stuff in various overpriced hotels that taste the same everywhere and are served by the same white-uniformed bored men with plastic smile and a robotic thank-you. What to do next? How to beat the tedium of a dull routinised existence? Eating out is not a very appealing option for a friendless soul in a crowded city. So, on a stormy night, feeling wretched and lost in a walk-in apartment in London/New York/Mumbai, with TV turned down to avoid further dumbing down in an already dumbed-down commercial culture, what should one do to remain sane, healthy, human and non-suicidal? To break the monotony of a standardized life decided by the cartel of the MNCs for us? To escape from the MacDonald-type of identical worlds of greedy consumption? Or, how to break out of the highly-regulated and highly-regimented everyday reality decided by the transnational capital?

Or, how to recover the colours, the wide-eyed romance, the joy of the first rainbow seen from tiny eyes, when the everyday blasé was a novel mystery for all of us?

In other words, how can I stage my own Truman’s Show and come out of it a better person?

Answer to these fundamental questions is very simple. If I want to make mental journeys during lonely moments, I pick up a writer of my choice. Latin America. OK. Here we are. Yes, Marquez will do, as your companion on the solitary nights…to comfort you. Africa? Hmmm. Contemporary? Well, Ben Okri. Turkey? Well, Orhan Pamuk. Egypt? Naquib Mahfouz. Afghanistan? Khaled Hosseini. India? Salman Rushdie. The list goes on. These gentlemen (feminists, please excuse) pop up from behind the pages of their fat books and become R-E-A-L for you in your bedroom! In this process of reading, you become a citizen of a new land, a new Atlantis of spirit and imagination. You visit these airy realms and feel a strange lightness of being, thus neutralizing the accumulated and deadening toxicity of everyday reality that eats into the finer sinews of your soul.

These writings reclaim a space from the colonial West. Africa no longer is a dark continent but a place where men and women struggle to make sense of their liberated lives under a different kind of tyranny. Bellow’s or Conrad’s Africa gets inverted by Okri and others. These writers tell the tale in reverse gear. The native speaks and speaks in English, but in their English. They sound familiar to the readers waking up, after a long time, in a free world. Caliban is forging his new identity through the former master’s language and appropriates their cultural references as well. This dualism helps. A global language but local contexts. The dubbed films catch this mood , this restlessness the best. In the process, new worlds are opened up like little castle casements on the windy seashores for the curious and the willing. Okri takes you where you can not go alone. You are on a conducted tour.

That is the magic of good writing. It helps you connect with common experiences that sound more or less like yours, yet are rooted in a culture light years away from your grim reality. Basically, all writing is middle-class and reflects the same ideology also. The beauty lies in the presentation of the local scenes; different, yet the same, at the core. For a global reader, new realities bring old shadows where you are self-shocked to see the same truths repeated but in a different idiom and milieu. Like the exotic cuisines that are cooked in standard bases or the international cuisines made in five mother sauces throughout the cooking world.

So, you turn to a book and through empathy and vicarious pleasure, get transported to a reality different from yours in vast degrees but that basically remains human and qualitatively the same. It tells via Faulkner that man can never be down for long and will prevail, or, through Hemingway that he can never be destroyed. This essential humanistic-liberal transcending vision is uplifting for a struggling person or a collective pitted against the economic forces.

Through writing, nations move and come to you very close in the form of a fluid text. So far, English anthologies have been Euro-centric or Euro-African or –Latin American. This anthology is, for a change, Indo-Zimbabwean! Two nations, two post-colonial economies, collide in a common literary space and produce a unique creative synergy. Indians are winning the Booker for long now. The Zimbabwean cousins are equally strong and writing very well. Their experiences of a post-colonial society are more or less the same but the flavours and seasonings are different. The language is English but spoken by two non-native communities/ nations. Through pucca English, dispersed in different cultural contexts (Zimbabwean- Americans, Indian-Americans), these voices bring a refreshingly new vision to the realities of the day for the post-modern/post-colonial English speaking readers for the first time. They open up tiny windows on their individual colourful cultures and invite us to be a participant in this enriching aesthetic experience of feeling a remote culture, first hand. That is the beauty of serious art!

Want to be part of the project? As a writer, you are welcome. Send two shorts, with the bio, to the following editors for this anthology. Let us begin the story. A fiction that tells the truth and brings your country to me in a moving narrative of struggle and human hope…Let us get going N-O-W.

Once there was a wonderful fictionist who brought his nation alive in few pages.

Good luck!

Email stories to: drsharma.sunil@gmail.com and manu@munyori.com

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Ignatius Mabasa US Tour: San Francisco

Posted on July 28, 2009 | Leave a comment

Ignatius Mabasa at the Western Addition Libray in downtown San Francisco.

This has got to be one of the best poetry events in the United States, its magnitude and the display of international talent. Listening to the poets read in their languages, you could tell that they had to be some of the best in their countries.
Syrian poet Maram al-Massri who read with Mabasa.

Of course, there was one of Zimbabwe’s best poets, Ignatius Mabasa, who read in Shona. I caught him in action at an event that featured him and the Syrian poet Maram al-Massri. It was a wonderful reading. Each poem was read twice, first in Shona, then in English.

Mabasa was paired with San Francisco poet Michael Warr, who read the English versions of the poems. Of course, I sat there laughing long before anyone else in the room understood what was happening. It felt like an honor for my family to be the only people in the audience who understood what the poet was saying in Shona; then I laughed again (there is humor in the poetry), with others, when the poems were read in English, but by then I knew what everyone had missed out on because in translation, the poems had lost a lot, yet they had also gained so much.

Old friends meet again:Mabasa neni outside the Westen Addition Library

It is beautiful, this thing that San Francisco did, of allowing the poets to read in their own languages, and, at the main stage, the Palace for the Arts, there was a screen projecting an English translation behind the poets. Many languages were represented: Spanish, Vietnamese, Arabic, Russian, Italian, Swedish,Hebrew, Shona and others.

the poets pose together for a photo shoot at the end of Palace of the Arts readings last night.

I enjoyed every reading at the Palace for the Arts. Jack Hirshman, the host poet, was great as always, but I particularly liked Ferruccio Brugnaro (from Italy), Taslima Nasrin (Bangladesh), Al Young (former California poet laureate), Ziba Karbassi (Iran), Agneta Falk (Sweden), and my friend Carla Badillo Coronado (Ecuador).

Carla Badillo Coronado showing her artwork and talking about her poetry after last night’s reading

These poets dealt with real issues affecting their people, and by the end of each reading you realized that the issues they dealt with were your issues too. The context helped, that they the poets were from different countries, united by the language of life.

Nigerian poet Cletus Nelson Nwadike.

An event of this magnitude gives exposure not only to the poets but to the literature of their countries. Mabasa’s participation also was an opportunity to expose some of the anthologies of Zimbabwean contemporary writing.

Long Time Coming at the SFIPF.

The books, ordered by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, were available for sale. I brought Long Time Coming, a book I have been waiting for since 2008, when it came out. But there were other books too, Intwasa Poetry and Writing Still.

Copies of Writing Now (Weaver Press) and Intwasa Poetry (‘amaBooks).

It was great to see Mabasa after a very long time. He has contributed significantly to Zimbabwean literature, from our BWAZ poetry performances days, to his two award-winning novels, his story telling in Illinois in 1999 (when he came here as a Fulbright scholar), his Crossing the Borders coordination, to his gospel poetry. He plans to set up a story-telling center in Harare which will provide a stage for story tellers and will function as a story-telling academy.

one of the drums Mabasa used during his performances. There was no way I was going to let him take those drums back to Zimbabwe, so the next time I perform my poetry, there be some drumming, and more drumming.

the drums, now in the company of my books

From San Francisco, Mabasa will be travelling to Santa Fe where he is scheduled to read at several venues. He will conclude his United States tour with a visit to Tuscon, Arizona, the beautiful college town of Zimbabwean scholar Praise Zenenga.

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BREAKING NEWS from Lion Press

Posted on April 9, 2009 | Leave a comment

Lion Press ( London ) and artsinitiates-zimbabwe are calling for entries in a short story competition running from May 1 till June 30 2009.

The stories selected will be published in an anthology expected to be out by December 2009.

Ten entries will win prizes. Monetary prizes will be given to the best five stories while material prizes will also be given to the other five winners.

First prize winner will get US$200, second prize is US$100, third prize US$70, fourth prize is US$50 and fifth prize is US$25.

Mobile phones will be given to the other five winners in the ten-winner group.

The stories can be on any topic, must be not less than a 1000 words long and be in English.

Lion Press Ltd is a publishing company founded by Zimbabwean writers in the Diaspora, to cater for the publication needs of Zimbabwean and Southern African writers.

It also offers services ranging from assisting with story-line development, editing, proofreading, illustrations, typesetting and cover design.

The company also translates books or documents from Shona/ Ndebele to English, and vice-versa. In addition, the company sells books in Shona and Ndebele in selected bookshops in Southern Africa and the UK .

To date, Lion Press has published the award-winning writer Christopher Mlalazi, music researcher Joyce Jenje-Makwenda, Sarudzayi Chifamba-Barnes and is working on works by renowned authors such as Alexander Kanengoni and Ignatius Mabasa.

The Lion Press Ltd is run and managed by a team of seasoned Zimbabwean authors and illustrators.

It owns an online store for selling a range of Shona and Ndebele books published by other companies.

Artsinitiates-zimbabwe is the country’s premier arts and culture online media that runs news items, poems as well as short stories.

It was founded in 2008 as part of the Imagine Afrika initiative that seeks to expand and promote the arts and culture sector by engaging people involved in the industry.

Interested writers can send their stories to wonderguchu@yahoo.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck: A Brief Review

Posted on March 23, 2009 | Comments Off

The new book by Chimamanda Ngozie Achidie, The Thing Around Your Neck,  is rich with references to history, culture and literature.  In this short review, I focus on two stories whose events recall Chinua Achebe and Tsitsi Dangarembga. In  “Tomorrow is Too Far”, Adichie creates a protagonist that reminds of Tambu in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions. There is the theme of sibling rivalry caused by forces beyond the children’s control. The girl resents her brother, Nsono whom everyone treats better; the mother is happier putting him to bed than she does when she is in the daughter’s room. And the girl notices that the mother’s care for her children is really geared towards comforts for the boy than for the girl.

 Back in Nigeria, where the children spend their vacations, the grandmother treats Nsono like a prince, cooking food that only he should enjoy, telling the girl that she should see this as an example of how to take care of a man.  The girl always feels ignored and this is not good for the boy.

As in Nervous Conditions, the brother dies, a death the sister accidentally causes but blames on the grandmother. Like Tambu, she at first is not sorry that her brother dies because the family’s attention shifts to her, although the mother is never the same again, and the girl will not see the grandmother again until she goes to back to Nigeria, eighteen years later, to pay her last respects.  This story is Adichie’s stinging critique of the patriarchal society and its effects on both Nigerian and American values.  Adichie looks at the negative and positive aspects of these values, honestly depicting the circumstances her characters find themselves in. 

In “The Headstrong Historian”, Adichie plays pastiche by taking characters straight out of Achebe and providing a new historical perspective. For a moment we are reminded of Umuofia when see the names Okonkwo and Obierika, and the time is the same as in Things Fall Apart–the coming of the white man, the conversion of the villagers to Christianity, the pacification of the tribes of the Niger Delta, Europe’s mission to civilize and to bring light to Africa; but this time we have a very practical woman, Nwamgba, playing a leading role in utilizing what’s useful from the white men, sending her son to school to learn English, because she has seen how much power the language has, but her dream is the demise of her values, as the son changes beyond what she has hoped.

Two cultures in contact and contest, two cultures not trusting each other, and this time both sides are presented as viewing the other as savage. There is nothing new in Adichie’s portrayal of Nigerian history, except that she gives a stronger voice to to her female characters; we see things from their point of view. And then we have a headstrong historian, rewriting the history of her people which has been blighted by European misrepresentation.

“The Headstrong Historian” could as well be a chapter in the Appendix of Things Fall Apart. Some of the questions Achebe raises at the end his novel are answered in this story. The connection is deliberate (Adichie has been labelled the literary daughter of Achebe) and she is showing showing what daughters can do, extend the legacy of their fathers. The daughter in the story, not to be confused with the author, of course, takes it upon herself to reconstruct her people’s history. Having been educated in the mission school system, she knows the whiteman’s religion, but chooses to rebel against it as she sees the contradictions it carries. So she reconnects, against her father’s wishes (he is a catechist), with he grandmother who had always known that she will play a special role in the spiritual future of the family. This is where Adichie takes the popular Umuofia story to new heights.

Remember Okonkwo always wished he had son who would take care of the family’s legacy, and when he saw that his youngest daughter had the wisdom he wanted to see in a man, he was proud but not satisfied; as a girls she could not play that role. But in Adichie’s story, which deals with an Onicha that needs its culture preserved and its story told correctly, the girl Afamefuna is the “headstrong historian” searching in every village for clues of his people’s past, traveling to museums in history to follow traces of that history, which were plandered as part of the civilizing mission. Where a British admnistrator a chapter entitled ”The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of Southern Nigeria”, Ifamefuna will write a book entitled Pacifying with Bullets: A Reclaimed History of Southern Nigeria.  And she will do this alone, even if it means later getting divorced from her husband in 1972.

The rest of the stories in The Thing Around Your Neck deal with contemporary issues of immigrant life, taking us from Nigeria to America and back, showing successfully that the dreams that drive us are sometimes our downfall, yet the desire for life, for happiness, will forever drive us.  Her thematic range extends from corruption in Nigeria (the stereotypes), to corruption in America (the usual stereotypes), but it is her balanced approach to life in these two places that leaves the reader satisfied. The basic message seems to be that wherever we are, wherever we go, we are the same problem-ridden people, manipulative, but vulnerable, ambitious but ambivalent.

As I read these stories, most of which are older than Adichie’s two novels we have all fallen in love with, I enjoyed the grace with which the stories are told; then there is the sensitivity or compassion, the honest and humble storytelling voice, showing that in Adichie we have a writer who will keep us asking for more.

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Ivor W. Hartmann: Rising Star of African Speculative Science Fiction

Posted on March 15, 2009 | Leave a comment

On the 14th March 2009, “Earth Rise” by Ivor W. Hartmann was nominated for the international Ursa Major Award in the Best Short Fiction category.

Ivor W. Hartmann is a Zimbabwean author, writing from economic exile in Johannesburg, South Africa. “Earth Rise” and its UMA nomination, represent a major step for African Literature. Firmly set in the genre of Speculative Science Fiction,it shines a welcoming light for African writers to expand from traditional genres, which seem to restrain African Literature.

In Ivor Hartmann’s words, “African genre fiction, which was a sleeping lion, is now changing. Already if you listen carefully, you can hear the start of our African Roar.”

As described by Jim Steel of The Fix (TTA Press, the publisher of Interzone, Black Static, Crimewave,):

“Ivor W. Hartmann’s “Earth Rise” starts with a man waking in his coffin. Obviously we must then travel back and explore his life. Everyone will end up here, but what, exactly, was Thomas Church’s path? He was a scientist in an unnamed African country, trying to develop nanotech wonders for a military dictator. So far he has failed, but there is a ready supply of test victims who keep being marched in to die from the results. His conscience plagues him, but he has to protect his loved ones. Agents, however, have targeted him and want to steal what he has developed. And what has he developed? The story spirals out, and the beginning is not the end, and to say more would be a sin against the author.”

The Ursa Major Awards, more formally known as the Annual Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Award, is presented annually for excellence in the anthropomorphic arts. It is intended as Anthropomorphic Fandom’s equivalent of the Hugo Award ® presented by the World Science Fiction Society, mystery fandom’s Anthony Award, horror fandom’s Bram Stoker Award, and so forth. The UMA is a global public award and anyone may nominate and vote for candidates for the Awards. These Awards are decided by the fans, not by a committee.

Voting for the UMA finalists is still underway, you too can cast your vote for Earth Rise here.

Congratulations to Ivor for this great nomination. He right in saying that African writing needs to diversify into other genres. I have always felt that we can easily have a Stephen King, a John Grisham, or a J.K. Rowling in Africa.

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A Moment in Gappah’s “The Annexe Shuffle”

Posted on February 20, 2009 | Leave a comment

Of the stories written by Petina Gappah that I have read, there are some whose narrator luxuriates in the musicality of language, introducing an ease in narration only exemplified in few instances in Zimbabwean literature. The few instances can be found in Charles Mungoshi, Memory Chirere, Yvonne Vera, and of course, now, Petina Gappah, who promises to take it to a new level. Here is a taste of the language play I am talking about, exemplified in “The Annexe Shuffle”, the Per Contra version:

They bring her to Dr. Chikara, Emily; the Dean of Students on one side, the Warden of Swinton Hostel on the other. Dr. Chikara is not who she expected. His office is an empty space with nothing on the walls. There are no books by Freud and Jung. There is no couch in sight. He does not talk about the id or the ego. Instead, from behind his government-issue desk, he directs her to a government-issue chair.

He smokes Kingsgate cigarettes, one after the other.

He writes down everything she says.

‘Canst thou minister to a mind diseased?’ she asks him. ‘Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow?’

He writes this down.

‘May I have a cigarette,’ she says, without a question mark.

‘Do you smoke?’ he asks, with a question mark.

‘I do now,’ she says as she lights one of his cigarettes. She coughs out smoke through teary eyes.

He writes that down too.

‘I am sending you to the Annexe,’ he says, ‘the mental wing at Parirenyatwa Hospital.’

The word mental and the word hospital combine to produce a loud clanging in her mind. ‘I am not mad,’ she says.

‘No, of course you are not mad’, he says. ‘Madness has nothing to do with it. You only need rest, all you need is rest.’ Read more in Per Contra.

There is something pleasurable about the style, and it makes me want to read more. Although I am yet to read the short story collection, I can safely say, based on the few anthologized stories of Gappah I have read, a new narrator is born in Zimbabwean literature.

Or did I state that  I have seen traces of this narrator in Toni Morrison, in Paradise, for instance? I have, but as you know, each individual is distinct. This narrator promises to make us laugh, cry, curse, but managing still to make us love her/him.

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Conversation with Petina Gappah

Posted on February 19, 2009 | 1 Comment

Petina Gappah is a rising star, and in this insighful interview, she talks about her writing career, her soon-to-be-released short story collection, Elegy for Easterly, and her views on Zimbabwean literature.

1. Congratulations on the publication of An Elegy for Easterly. What does this big step mean to you?

Thank you very much. It is a huge step. It means the fulfilment of a life’s dream. To be published by Faber, to be in the company of T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Siegfried Sassoon, William Golding, Orhan Pamuk, Owen Sheers , P.D. James, Kazuo Ishiguro and other writers I love is almost too good to be real.

2. How has your personal background contributed to your writing of Elegy for Easterly; for instance, are there traces of yourself in any of the characters in the stories?

I think of my writing as a compulsive form of theft. Every story I have written is based on at least one true thing. This could be something that happened to me, to someone in my family, to a friend, to someone in a friend’s family, or something I read. My Aunt Juliana’s Indian was inspired by my childhood memory of Muzorewa’s UANC campaigning in the townships of Salisbury in 1979 and 1980. My Cousin-sister Rambanai tells a story that is familiar to most Zimbabweans, the shedding of an old identity to assume a new one in the diaspora. The Maid from Lalapanzi was inspired by the memory of some of the domestic workers who assisted my mother when I was growing up. The Mupandawana Dancing Champion was inspired by a news report in The Herald. And so on. Stories sometimes come to me when I least expect them: I was walking at Victoria Station in London a year ago, and playing a private game that I call “Spot the Zimbabwean” – I have the finely-honed ability to spot a Zimbabwean in any crowd – and I saw two people who looked Zimbabwean. To prove this to myself, I moved closer to them, and heard one of them say: Ufunge, kubva musi waauya haana kana kumbotengawo kana nyama. I thought, Bingo, then I thought, Now there is a story there.

3. How long have you been writing fiction?

Almost every writer says, I have been writing since I was 3, or I began to write before I drew my first breath, or something like that. I was not such a prodigy, alas. I have been writing for as long as I have been aware of the power of stories to create a firmer reality than the present. Not that I would have put it in those terms then, I was just a kid who liked stories and thought I’d try to write a few of my own. I wrote my first “novel”, if you can call it that, when I was about 10. It was set on Mars and called Return to Planet Earth! I was also ballet-obsessed at the time, and my second (and self-illustrated!) novel plagiarised quite shamelessly the Drina books by Jean Estoril. To amuse my brother and sister, I also wrote nonsense poetry in imitation of Ogden Nash and Hillaire Beloc, whose poetry we loved. These literary gems were taken for rubbish by the man who helped in our garden, and he burned them with other trash.

My first published story, “Marooned on a Desert Island”, was published when I was in Form Two, in the St. Dominic’s school magazine, Santa Dee Blues. My first earnings from writing came when I was in Form 4, when I won an award of 100 dollars in the Randalls Essay Writing Competition. I then started writing really bad poetry like this: “The beggar in the street sang out to me/I hurried on, averting the sight/To look on such suffering must be/Avoided at all cost/And still his raucous voice haunted me/ His raucous voice still taunted me.”

It was grim. Happily, I very quickly got over that stage.
Then I went to university where I became consumed by my law studies, by being a Marxist-Leninist, and by falling in and out of love. I kept a journal through my university days, but wrote no fiction. I left Zimbabwe in 1995 for postgraduate studies, then I started working as a lawyer in Geneva in 1999. Although I sometimes contributed the occasional opinion piece to newspapers, I wrote very little but talked all the time about how I wanted to be a writer. Like an unfortunately large number of writers I have come to know, I wanted to be a writer without actually doing any writing! I really only started writing, and, this is a crucial distinction, finishing things, in 2006. My first short story, Something Nice from London was published that year. My second story, At the Sound of the Last Post did extremely well in the SA PEN contest, and the rest followed from there.

4. It’s been said that your book deal with Faber and FSG is a big step in Zimbabwean literature. Do you agree?

The book deal is one thing, whether the books are any good is the question that will determine whether this is a big step for Zimbabwean literature. And that, of course, is not for me to judge. But there is this: I have found that in publishing, it helps to have a precedent. So the fact that both Brian Chikwava and I are being published by top publishers may, depending on our success, make other publishers take a closer look at other Zimbabwean writers who are coming up.

5. I have often told people that you are a hardworking writer, have noticed that you are involved in many writing projects. You have participated in international writing contests, have won second place in the PEN/Africa Prize judged by J.M. Coetzee. But you have also been a columnist for media outlets like Zimbabwe Times, where your stinging criticism of poor governance in Zimbabwean politics has intrigued readers. You are also a satirist of the highest order, and you maintain a frequently updated, professional blog. On top of all this, you are a busy lawyer. How do you manage to do all this, and in what ways have you been able to balance fiction and non-fiction works in your writing career?

Thanks for those kind words. I believe it was Susan Sonntag who advised writers to engage with the world. Hemingway shot things, climbed mountains and wrote. Scott Turow writes thrillers, and runs a legal practice devoted to death penalty cases. P.D. James worked for the NHS, raised her children as a single mother, and gave us the wonderful Dalgliesh novels.

Lady James in particular is an inspiration, because she shows it is possible to have two lives: she had solid professional achievements before she turned to writing. I was a lawyer before I became a writer, I published academic papers on international trade law before I published fiction. I see no conflict at all between my professional life and my writing of fiction. If anything, the one feeds the other, and I am grateful to have both. I love my job and being a lawyer, and I love writing….

The full interview will appear in the March/April Issue of Munyori Literary Journal, which is also going to feature works by Valerie Tagwira, Naomi Benaron, Dike Okoro and others.

The Faber & Faber edition of Elegy for Easterly will be released in April, and you can read the first lines of all the stories on Petina’s author website.

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Christopher Mlalazi Wins the NAMA

Posted on February 14, 2009 | Leave a comment

Zimbabwe has ceased to make sense to most people. They have wondered how people could exist in a country where the perecentage of inflation is in the billions, and bread costs millions. Economists don’t even understand in what ways Zimbabwe is a useful case study anymore.

 But there is one place you can always count on to understand a people and the situation they are going through–that place is literature. Already there are signs that the world will be gripped by Zimbabwean literature, understanding for the first time the dynamics of a dire situation.

One writer who has arisen out of this situation is Chrisopher Mlalazi, whose stories catalogue Zimbabwe’s hard hours. His short story collection, “Dancing with Life and Other Stories”, published by aMabooks, has won the highest literary Award in Zimbabwe, the NAMA (National Arts Merit Award) for best first published book.

More developments are occuring in Zimbabwean literature. Faber (UK) and FSG (USA) gave a joint book deal to Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah, a lawayer based in Geneva, whose stories portray contemporary life in Zimbabwe. Another writer, Brian Chikwava, who is based in the UK, has published, with Random House, a novel entitled Harare North, which deals with the struggles of Zimbabwe in the UK.

There are more works too, works that openly are an indictment of failed governance, and others that celebrate life even where it seems impossible.

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Hard Times Have Freed Zimbabwean Literature

Posted on February 9, 2009 | 2 Comments

Zimbabwean literature in English has a short history, only having started in the 70’s with the writings of Charles Mungoshi and a few other writers. The literature started in war time, when the country was still under white minority rule, which meant that the writers had to exercise a degree of self-censorship in order not to get in trouble. So this early literature was mainly rooted in moralism and the troubles of domesticity. Some, especially that written in Shona and Ndebele, the dominant indegenous languages of the country, was state-controlled, since it was channeled through what was then the Rhodesia Literature Bureau. So the overal effect of the literature was that it was not a threat to the government.

Then came Dambudzo Marechera, a Zimbabwean writer who was based in England, who published his ground-breaking novella House of Hunger, which was a sting on the government of the day, as well as an advance indictment of the upcoming Zimbabwean majority government. It was his writing, in its avant-gardist nature, which introduced defiance and non-conformity to Zimbabwean literature, but for much of the early eighties, immediately after Zimbabwe got its independence, Marechera did not have many followers; in fact, many African readers dismissed him as irrelevant to issues African. To them ,he was not African enough in his writing, so he was not frequently mentioned in matters of African literature on the continent.

Then came the late eighties and all of the nineties, when Marechera had died, and Zimbabwe was going through many economic and political changes. By then he had a large following of young writers, most of whom belonged to one of the largest writers’ organization in the country, Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe (BWAZ). These writers had great promise and revered Marechera’s radicalism and courage in his writing, but not many publishers were willing to risk publishing these young dreamers. So many were discouraged, but a lot continued to work hard on their art.

Up to the mid-nineties, much of Zimbabwean literature had still not fully recovered from the euphoria of Zimbabwean independence, and was therefore still appealing to what had already been defined as the real Zimbabwean literature, state defined. This literature still lacked the courage to pierce the heart of socio-political problems; it was afraid of artistic risk. The promising young writers were receiving rejections, realizing then that to be published they had to present material that would suit the publishers’ needs. And the main market for the literature were students, who could only read “certain” kinds of literature, the “suitable” kind. A Marechera-type book was not suibale for secondary school, neither was a book that seemed not to follow rules, because were the schools not trying to teach the students to be leaders of tomorrow? So there were more years of mediocre literature produced for schools.

But now, when it has become clear to Zimbabwean citizens that the greatest betrayal can come from the leaders of the country, after they have watched overt actions by the government to restrict freedom of expression, the people have lost respect for the government, which has not been useful to them for a long time. The unbearable levels of hardship in the country have taught the people to fight hard for survival, to do whatever it takes to remain alive. Among these people are writers, most of whom are the formerly rejected budding writers who have now matured, with their non-conformist tendencies. Writers existing in the harshest of enviroments, driven by words that defy control. The writer in present Zimbabwe had no time to rest; plots rain from every direction as the country continues to shock the world with its drama.

The Zimbabwean situation has shifted the production of literature from semi-conformist to free and courageous art. First, there is more writing than ever before, with the internet working as an outlet for much of the writing. The large number of Zimbabweans in the diaspora has also led to the expansion of free writing, with much of the new works employing satire both to make people laugh, but also to make direct criticism of failing governance.

Writers like Petina Gappah, Brian Chikwava, and Chris Mlalazi are expert satirists, who write without restraint. Mlalazi’s writing, in particular, is openly political, but because he is a master craftsman, the writing also is at best literary. More Zimbabwean voices are represented in the anthologies published in the country, which show writers like Ignatius Mabasa, Wonder Guchu, Joyce Mutiti, and Nhamo Mhiripiri dealing with the hard times in the country. The writing portrays today’s Zimbabwe, capturing the craziness, but it also manages to show that even in a situation of total chaos, life still finds a way to go on, courageously. Even when everyone has to wonder where the next meal is coming from, literature is still being produced, literature that will define an era and set the trend for tomorrow.

The young writer Tinashe Mushakavanhu, who is based in the UK, speculated at the beginning of 2009 that his may be the year for Zimbabwean literature. This literature, a giant that’s been sleeping for many years is awakening, and, as another Zimbabwean writers, Ivor Hartman, has said, it’s “an African Roar”.

Here are some of the Zimbabwean writers who will open a wide window to the Zimbabwean experience this year: Petina Gappah (whose first short story collection compelled Faber & Faber (UK) to do a transatlantic joint book deal with FSG (New York), a first deal of its kind in the history of book deals. We are yet to see what these publishers saw in this book, but whatever it is, it certainly has begun to work because the book, by the time it comes out in April, would have been translated in numerous languages, including Dutch, Italian, and others. Wonder Guchu has been described as “a literary heavyweight” and he is. He edits one of the vibrant online journals in Zimbabwe, artsinitiates, which showcases the country’s writing today, and what it promises to be in the future. Chris Mlalazi, who is a master satirist and stylist, one of the most courageous writers of the times, whose gems are in a collection entitled Dancing With Life, published in 2008 has several of his short stories StoryTime, a magazine for new African writing, edited by Ivor Hartman, a Zimbabwean based in South Africa.

Not all the writers are polical, of course, but they are all courageous and risky, finally taking Zimbabwean literature to levels that Dambudzo Marechera and  Yvonne Vera would have wanted it to go. This new literature will portray Zimbabwe to the world in its deepest sense; it is a literature of witness, illuminating what William Faulkner described as humans’ tendency of not only enduring, but also prevailing.

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Ignatius Mabasa to Read Shona Poetry in San Francisco

Posted on February 5, 2009 | Leave a comment

photo by Fungai J.T.

Listen, I am too excited about this news to know where to begin, but let’s start with this announcement from the organizers of the Second San Francisco International Poetry Festival:

Second San Francisco International Poetry Festival will Ring through the City in July 23-27, 2009

Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, Mayor Gavin Newsom, Jack Hirschman and the San Francisco Public Library will present the second San Francisco International Poetry Festival, July 23-27, 2009. The festival will take place at the Palace of Fine Arts and various venues and libraries throughout San Francisco.

The Festival honors our City’s great legacy of hosting and encouraging cross cultural dialogue. In 2007, the three-day extravaganza drew thousands of people from the Bay Area for free and open-to-the-public poetry and music at both large and small venues throughout the City, including a street party in North Beach, youth events, book signings, translation workshops and more.

This year’s landmark event will be co-hosted by Poet-in-Residence for Friends of the SFPL, Jack Hirschman; United States Poet Laureate Kay Ryan; California Poet Laureate Carol Muske-Dukes and the San Francisco Poet Laureate (to be named). San Francisco Poet Laureate emeritus Lawrence Ferlinghetti will be presented with a special honor.

Fifteen poets from around the world will journey to the Festival, reading together with the leaders of San Francisco’s own highly regarded literary community. The truly international group of poets, from countries including Bangladesh, China, France, Greece, Haiti, Iraq, Israel, Sudan and Zimbabwe, represent a wide spectrum in the world of poetry, from recognized masters to emerging new talents, who are redefining the art in our evolving times.

Since the 2007 Festival, Friends of the SFPL has presented smaller poetry festivals in a variety of languages, such as the Iranian Literary Arts Festival, Vietnamese Poets of the Diaspora and Flor y Canto en el Barrio: A Celebration of Latino Poetry, in their ongoing effort to continue to build cultural bridges, celebrate the literary arts and foster international dialogue

Mabasa has informed me that he will be representing Zimbabwe at this festival, which will take place only one-and-half hours from where I live. He will be in good company, especially considering that Jack Hirshman (current San Francisco poet laureate) and Kay Ryan (United States poet laureate) will be part of the festival, not to mention the poets from fourteen other countries; they all will get a chance to watch a great performance from the inventor of gospoetry.

Mabasa’s presence may also be an opportunity for the Sacramento Poetry community to see this vibrant performer in action; perhaps I can ask someone to host a dual performance of Mabasa and I, like we did in the old days at UZ, in Mabvuku, in Norton…

Ignatius Mabasa is the award-winning poet and author of the novels Mapenzi and Ndafa Here. Labelled the Marechera of Shona literature by Musa Zimunya, he is also a friend of mine(I had to say this. Had to).

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