WEALTH OF IDEAS

They recently opened a used bookstore in the Country Plaza Mall in Carmichael, right where Gottschalks is located (my reason for visiting the mall). The first time I browsed in the bookstore I didn't find anything likable, but I prices looked good, 99 cents for most paperbacks and $1.99 for hard covers. This is even better than Goodwill. So I went back to the bookstore today, and, what do you know, I found Before the Birth of the Moon by V.Y. Mudimbe, a paperback, so you know what I paid. I have known Mudimbe as a historian, philosopher, critic, but not as a novelist. But he has written more than four novels in French. Sometimes when we talk about African literature, those of us from Anglophone Africa tend to think only of African lit in English, forgetting that we have works that were published in French at the same time Things Fall Apart came out. Anyway, I now know Mudimbe is a novelist and a poet too. According to the blurb, Before the Birth of the Moon is a story of romance...

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice," reads the first sentence of my winter read, One Hundred Years of Solitude . Those of you who have read this novel once, twice, thrice, etc, already know what's in store for me and you might be wondering why I am just reading it for the first time ever. It's amazing how I went through college literature courses on two continents and still never saw this book on the syllabi. I discovered the writer through references made to him by people who had read him, and I might have read an excerpt or two of some of his works, but I certainly knew through the comparative critical work that referred to One Hundred that this was a great book, so great that I dreaded it, would not buy it even if I saw it on the bargain table. But yesterday, while making one of my Goodwill treasure hunts, I found the book, alongside Kazuo Ishigu...

Mbeu yevanhu vosvika muno yati siyanei neyedu patakasvika. Isu taivinga chikoro, kana kuzotora twumakosi twekutiwanisa mabasa ane musoro, toshanda kwemakore, tichironga kuzodzokera kumusha takagukuchira upfumi. As ava vouya ava, huwi-i, mabasa chaiwo. Pane mukomana akasvika mwedzi wapfuura. Hameno kwazvakanhongana nemukadzi weChirungu anenge ane dzakadambuka dzose. Mungadai mavaona nhasi pavasvika pano kuzopemberera Zimbabwean Independence Day nesu, chikara chichizvidhonza haikona, hanzi ndine wangu, isu tikati, “Tamuona!” Ndamutarisa mukomana uyu ndikanzwa misodzi yoda kudonha. Nhai shiye zvayo, mwana akakurira kuruzevha, kunozvuviwa nechembere zvayo. Anga ashayei kumusha? Chero mumaruzevha zvamuzere vasikana vanogona kutsvoda wani. Read More...

This is downtown Bindura. I remember a few weeks before I left Zimbabwe in 1996, I spent a lot of time in Bindura. I bought US dollars at a Standard Chartered Bank here(yes, back then the Zim dollar could buy US dollars at an exchange rate of Z$9 is to $1). I was in Bindura because....well, I think I was visiting some friends. No, I was in Bindura for a writers's workshop at Chipindura High School, where one of my friends was a teacher of English Literature. The workshop was sponsored by BWAZ and was designed to benefit the students and the Bindura BWAZ members. Below is a photo of the the workshop: . The workshop facilitator in the middle is Memory Chirere! Below is a photo of Chipindura High School, where we held the workshop in April 1996: . Yet another Chipindura photo: . Below are some of the workshop participants, who had travelled from Harare (after one of them had spent several days travelling from Chimanimani): From left to right: Maxwell Mabhiza, Dudziro Nhe...

Two of my poems are featured in this journal published annually by the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada (Las Vegas). Impressive Contents below: "With this issue, we revive, in different form, the feature for which Witness is perhaps best known: the special issue. Beginning in 1987 with Volume 1, “Writings from Prison,” Witness has published nineteen special issues on topics ranging from exile to autobiography. Many of these issues have been used as classroom texts in colleges, universities, and libraries, and some were released as university press anthologies. Because Witness is presently only published annually, however, and because we continue to receive outstanding work that, while resonant with several themes, doesn’t conform to the rigid needs of a special issue, we have elected to continue our topical focus as a portfolio rather than an entire volume. Our goal is to echo some of the themes evolving from Black Mountain Institute’s public programming while ...

The new edition of the European Association of American Studies (EAAS) newsletter has just been published online . It contains the call for papers for its next biannual conference, taking place in Dublin, Ireland, 26-29 March 2010. The conference topic will be: "Forever Young? The Changing Images of America." The deadline for submission of workshop proposals for this conference is 31 January 2009. For further details, please consult the EAAS newsletter. With all best wishes, Marietta Messmer -- Dr. Marietta Messmer Assistant Professor of American Studies University of Groningen P.O. Box 716 9700 AS Groningen The Netherlands FAX: +31-50-363-5821 FON: +31-50-363-8439

Indigo Moor Poet and Author of Tap Root and Jeanne Wagner, Prize Winning Poet Reading at Time Tested Books 1114 21st St. in Sacramento , CA December 29, 2008 @ 7:30 pm

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Elizabeth Alexander, a professor of African-American studies at Yale University, "will become just the fourth poet to appear at an inauguration ceremony when she recites one of her poems immediately following Mr. Obama’s inaugural address on January 20, according to the order of events released today by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies." Ms. Alexander won the Jackson Poetry Prize last year, and was also a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2005. Robert Frost was the first poet to recite at an inauguration, reading “The Gift Outright” at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961 at age 86. Maya Angelou and Miller Williams appeared at Bill Clinton’s first and second inaugurations, respectively. Other performances at the ceremony include musical selections by Aretha Franklin, Yo-Yo Ma, and Itzhak Perlman, as well as an invocation by Pastor Rick Warren and a benediction by the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery. —Reeves Wiede...

Brian Brian Chikwava's new novel Harare North, published by Random House, will be out in February, 2009. Here is picture of the cover: Here is a blurb for the novel from Random House: When he lands in Harare North, our unnamed protagonist carries nothing but a cardboard suitcase full of memories and an email address for his childhood friend, Shingi.Finessing his way through immigration, he spends a few restless weeks as the very unwelcome guest in his cousin’s home before tracking down Shingi in a Brixton squat. In this astonishing, revelatory original debut, Caine Prize winner Brian Chikwava tackles head-on the realities of life as a refugee.This is the story of a stranger in a strange land – one of the thousands of illegal Zimbabwean immigrants seeking a better life in England - with a past he is determined to hide.From the first line the language fizzes with energy, humour and not a little menace.As he struggles to make his life in London (the ‘Harare North’ of the title) and ba...

Perhaps there is something happening in Zimbabwean literature that can be called an event. This sentence echoes Jacques Derrida's first sentence of "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences", which I have read quite a few times and enjoyed. Since Derrida raised the application of the word "event" to be understood as a rupture , a "redoubling", I use it here to apply to the unstoppable expansion, explosion, if you will, of Zimbabwean literature. Notice that it is easy not to realize that this is happening, because the world's eyes are focusing on the more urgent matters, the cholera, the rotting politics, but the literary EVENT (made up of many developments we can call events) is happening. I use the word to show how much I enjoy talking about this growth, this rich promise of a literature finally breaking free and freeing, recentering and decentering (a positive thing) itself. But on a more serious note, there are many good t...

This is the cover of my copy of Roland Masvi's Flowers of Yesterday, a collection I reviewed in 1996 for The Herald. I was going through my old stuff when I saw this book in my old collection.  As I was flipping through the pages, I saw the cut-out for the original review, which in part reads: "This is a collection of highly esoteric poetry..., which can be charged of what Afrocentric scholars have described as 'piles of esoterica and ostentatious erudition'... The language is to the ordinary reader opaque, the imagery is inaccessible and the symbolism is surprisingly unusual but invitingly novel...real food for scholars."   The review just reminds me of the Chinweizu days, when we, as university students, had rediscovered African literature and its theory. Talking about Afrocentricity had a certain appeal, and we were looking at a lot of writing through the lenses of this newly-discovered Afrocentricity. Looking back, perhaps there was more in Mhasvi's poe...

In a previous post I shared what search engine terms people used to get to my literary blog Moments in Literature , the terms that drive traffic. Usually, some of them are random terms that have to do with literature, Africa, Zimbabwe, and so on. Once in a while, though, the terms are really interesting; for instance, the ones from yesterday, December 14. I will list them here: charles chirikure türkiye poetry reading memory chirere the rise of petina gappah definition of poetry by different poets Two of the above attracted my attention: someone was looking for Memory Chirere (and they better!) and then someone was thinking of the "rise of Petina Gappah" (you know she is rising). I was prompted to make a search for this rise and here, in part, is what I found: Petina Gappah | Contributors | GrantaApr 22, 2008 ... Granta 103: The Rise of the British Jihad was published in Autumn ... Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean writer and lawyer who lives in Geneva. ... www.granta.com/Contri...

This diagram is the Freytag Pyramid, which has been used in writing classes and discussions to represent the structure of a story. The 19th Century German novelist Gustav Freytag saw common patterns in the plots of stories and developed this type of diagram to analyze them. Of course, over time, there have been variations to the structure, where sometimes a story may start with the climax, then thrashes its way out to incorporate the other stages, and sometimes the conflict will appear towards the end of the story--it is the anticipation of such conflict that may draw the reader to follow along all the way close to the end. But anyway, my point here is not to discuss the structure of stories, but to talk about the writer who first introduced the concept to me, Vitalis Nyawaranda. I studied Nyawaranda's novel at A-Level and liked it so much that I contacted Nyawaranda, who was teaching at the UZ. We met somewhere in town, and I showed him one of my Shona manuscripts, which he said ...

In December 1997, I called a friend in Gweru and asked him how things were, how the country was doing, anything that I wasn't watching on BBC or reading online already. He said he would give me an update about something I had heard or read about: the pension gratuity payouts given to Zimbabwe War Veterans by the government to stop the riots that had gripped the country. I had read about it online, had heard that the veterans had received compensation in the tune of fifty thousand dollars or more (the Zim dollar was still doing okay then). My friend went on to tell me that he was planning to make some extra money that weekend. "How are you going to do that?" "There is a vet in Mkoba." "Yes?" "He has put an ad in the paper asking interested people to come make some money." "But how?" "It's an early bird special, of course." "What is?" "He will line up people, and for a minimum of $50.00, he will slap each ...

Brother said to sit by the fire where goat meat roast, saying, "Eat big pieces," taking a sizzling piece himself and throwing it in the air because it was too hot and catching it before it fell on the ground. "Eat big pieces," he added, taking a bite of the meat which was still sizzling with fat and burning his mouth. He let the piece dance on his tongue as he sucked in some air, saying, "This is our goat. Eat all the big pieces before anyone come to the fire." We were at a village trial in Chishamba, where the chief lived. [ continues on local computer drive ]

Over the years I have had the perception that Dambudzo Marechera is an unknown author in North America, particularly in the United States, but every now and then I run into someone who mentions the author, or tells me that he or she wrote a paper, a thesis or dissertation on him. I am calling on all Marechera scholars, enthusiasts, maniacs, etc who get to read this message to reveal themselves. Send an email to manu@munyori.com or leave a comment here. As the previous post indicated University of Oxford is setting aside (notice the exageration here) three days in May 2009 to celebrate the life and works of Marechera. This is a good example of what American University like Brown, Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Yale, etc should consider doing... So again, Marechera scholars based in North America, get in touch (manu@munyori.com).

In May 2009 Oxford University, which expelled Marechera in 1976, will be hosting Dambudzo Marechera: A Celebration , which its organizers describe as a" multi-media festival to recuperate the memory of the author in Oxford... Marechera's experimental interpretation of the colonial and postcolonial experience has been recognized as a significant instance of African modernism and postmodernism that links him with such writers as Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo and J. M. Coetzee and demands new retellings of African literary history. His post-nationalist vision, an alternative to cultural nationalism long before its currency in postcolonial theory, is highly relevant to the concerns of postcolonial studies today, as the continued critical interest in the writer indicates." This event brings together important Marechera scholars and friends, some of whom are listed below: Jennifer Armstrong (University of Western Australia) "Marechera's shamanistic approach to read...

Recently we read about a very successful Cover to Cover children's short story competition held in Zimbabwe. The range of talent in the writings led one judge, Ruby Magosvongwe, to label Zimbabwe a short story country. Well, those stories have been edited into an anthology entitled Children Writing Zimbabwe, which is to be launched on Monday, December 15. The competition and book are moderated by The Standard newspaper, and sponsored in part by agencies like the British Council and others. The editors of the book are Memory Chirere, Ruby Magosvongwe, and Jerry Zondo. When your project has the approval stamp of these three scholars, you know you are up to something big. Congratulations, young Zimbabwean writers!

January at Gweru Teacher's College is exciting for the kitchen staff, the sekurus. As the students line up for their breakfast, they plant themselves where they can watch the students occupy the long dining tables. New students are easy to pick, especially those who have just come from Zaka, Gwanda, Gutu, Dande and Kezi , homes of students with the strongest rural backgrounds (SRBs). It’s the SRBs who give the sekurus a good laugh for the first two weeks of the school year. As the students sit to eat, the sekurus walk closer to the tables, pretending to be doing their work. They can tell precisely who the most rural of these SRBs is by how they handle their trays. Once they put the trays on the table, locate the cutlery, it is always time to watch a script unfolding…. A sekuru shuffles to a table in the back corner, pretending not to be looking, but his left hand beginning to signal the others to get ready to advance. He watches an SRB who is about to start eating. Doing fin...

Click on image. When I was little I was fascinated by mountain ranges, so my art always featured them. Mountains on a clear day, mountains in fog, mountains above which rain clouds were gathering. This piece, which I did in a dentist's office sometime in 1997 and has the title "Where we watch TV/Like We're in Town", resulted from my recollection of a time when some Zimbabwean villages were beginning to receive town-like amenities, powered by solar panels. One family (our rural neighbors) managed to get solar panels, bought a TV, and when I left the village, they were figuring out how to get a signal on that TV. But the bragging is all one remembers: this thing about "watching TV like we're in town."

This is going to be the second publication by the UK-based Lion Press Ltd. Jonathan Masere, a scientist based in Texas, is working on writes short stories, and is also working on a novel he has tentatively entitled The Fury of the Scorned Connecticut Yankee Aristocrat . You can read more about him here and here . I look forward to reading African Folktales for Children .

Beaven Tapureta, the Information Officer of the Zimbabwe Budding Writers Association, has made the following announcement on the association's blog: The British Council in partnership with the Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe Trust (BWAZ) is pleased to announce a project that seeks “to empower young people, develop and showcase creative skills, encourage a dynamic exchange of ideas and experience, explore contemporary issues, challenge assumptions and promote intercultural understanding” through writing and spoken word contests. The competitions, involving both the written and performance aspect will be run monthly as follows: November, December, January Spoken Word February, March, April Writing May, June and July Spoken Word Competition rules and Conditions for Spoken Word competitions: The competition is open to all registered BWAZ members and former Power in the Voice participants aged between 15 -25 years. Entries must be in Shona, Ndebele and English language Submitted...

The Sacramento Poetry Center even was held in the Alliance Francaise tonight, in a warm, cozy room. I had three poets read, Shevonna Blackshire, who is also a contributing editor of Munyori Poetry Journal, David Iribarne, who has published in Poetry Now, and Gabrielle White, Literature student at CRC, former student of mine. Great reading guys! The poet known as Lawrence treated us to some Christmas poetry. You can always count on Lawrence for open mic readings.

This is Ndakopa Market. All fresh fruits and vegetables could be found on these stalls. The sacks, don't underestimate them, carried the wealth of this area. Lorries from Mutare, Masvingo, Chipinge, Rusape were always seen here, groaning under the weight of bananas, mangoes, oranges. South of the market was a canning factory, which produced jam and other spreads. If you think the people are waiting for something, you are right. The place was a bus stop as well. At 4 am you could catch a bus to Mutare, but you had to be at the market by 2:30 am, in case the bus arrived earlier. So at night the thatched stalls served as shelter for people waiting for buses.

What I enjoy each time I read a story by Ben Okri is the extent to which he makes things possible in the stories, at once inviting the reader to read between the lines, to enjoy the story while working hard to make associations in the story that lead to a unified interpretation. In Okri's story, anything is possible, and if I were wearing one of my literary critic's hats, I would be throwing some long critical terms, but I am not going to do that now.... Okri's "In the Shadow of War" is a powerful story about the war in Biafra, or any war for that matter, how it causes serious damage to the lives of the civilians. It's a story about secret associations, spying and innocence, but despite its brevity (it would fit under a short short), it raises many questions: Who is the woman veiled in black? What role does the father of the narrator play in the war? What is his relationship between the soldiers and the father? Who is dying? Those corpses that look like logs ...

I knew I wanted to be a writer after I read Aaron Chiundura Moyo. I was in Grade 6 at Mototi Primary School, in Mazvihwa. That's also the time I visited Harare for the first time. In Harare I had seen one of Chiundura Moyo's plays being acted on TV (the first time I was seeing that magic box)and when I returned to Mazvihwa after the school holidays, I had so much to tell my classmates. I had learned a bit of Zezuru, a version of Shona kids in Mazvihwa reverred, so I began to volunteer to read in class all the time, at first to show that I could read in Zezuru, but also to be in touch with stories since I always remembered them best after reading them to the class. Then government introduced intershool drama and traditional dance competitions for all rural schools. I was in the drama club, and the stories we acted were by A C Moyo. By the time I started Grade 7, I had written my own novel, Sara Nepurezha . It all began this way. "I want to challenge you," I said to Mot...

Farafina Magazine Visual Arts & Literature Event Farafina magazine invites you to join them for their premiere Visual Arts & Literature event at Bambuddha Restaurant on the 13th of December, 2008 at 2p.m. There will be a photography exhibition (by Adolphus Opara), a film screening (selected clips from Molara Wood's interview with acclaimed writer, Ben Okri), spoken word performances, and readings by Nnedi Okorafor and Eghosa Imasuen. Ben Okri is one of my favorite authors; it would be great to find out where one can get this film screening of Molara Wood interviewing Ben Okri. Seriously. Talking of Ben Okri, here is the first paragraph of his short story "In the Shadow of War": That afternoon three soldiers came to the village. They scattered the goats and chickens. They went to the palm-frond bar and ordered a calabash of palm-wine. They drank amidst the flies. Now, don't you just feel like you should continue reading? And if you should, the story is part of...

Our office was on Kaguvi Street, opposite a hotel whose name I can't remember now. We were volunteers, so we only came to the office to work for three or four hours, or until we were hungry, which was the case most of the time. Remember too then that I was a student at the UZ, so by the time I got to the office, I would have already been up since 6 am, would have attended two or three lectures, and would have subsequently escaped to downtown Harare (like a lot of students did), would have walked from the Emergency Taxi Station, the one which was the final downtown stop for ETs from UZ, which was on (was that) Bank street, over by Queen Elizabeth Hotel, opposite the Mercedes Benze dealership, next to the City Council Building, right? We would arrive at the Book House (oh, that's where the office was), greet the receptionist, a guy who had many jokes, grin at the director of the Book Publishers Association (she was a promoter of writers, so it was always good to spend a minute or...

So I hear that Charles Johnson, author of The Middle Passage , opposes Toni Morrison's thematic focus on historical issues (especially those that deal with slavery and the African American experience). Apparently this rivalry started way back in the 90s, when Morrison won the Nobel. While Johnson respected the significance of Beloved, he thought that the novel didn't have much in "plot, structure, and character development". Really? Now I want to read the American Scholar article in which Johnson "invites fiction writers to consider leaving slavery and its long aftermath (group victimization) behind" (Poets & Writers, Nov/Dec 08). His rationale is that "slavery has lost its potency as a lens through which to view the black experience." Morrison is said to have found some valid arguments in Johnson's essay, but she told Kevin Nance (author of the P&W article) that: "slavery can never be axhausted as a narrative. Nor can the Holocaus...

So much has happened in Zimbabwe in the past ten years. Nowhere is this more evident than in the new writing coming out of the country, thanks to the hard work of the few publishers that have shown an unwavering commitment to continue publishing works by new and established writers. I have often wondered how they(amaBooks in Bulawayo, Weaver Press in Harare) do it--how they continue to publish new story collections in an inhibitive economic environment,but they are helping define the direction of the country's literature. And the writers too, their talent and hardwork contribute to the creation of some of the richest literature Africa is producing. Each time I buy a new book from Zimbabwe I talk about it with a great sense of pride, as if the success of the book is in the fact that it is out, a book from Zimbabwe (See, new from Zimbabwe, see?). A few of the books have been published in South Africa, and in some cases in Europe and the United States, but the Zimbabwe-based publisher...