Reading 2010: Memory Chirere (Zimbabwe): "Do Not Forget to Read the World"

Today I feature a writer I think is an important force in Zimbabwean literature. We discuss books and writing frequently by email or over the phone, and it is a great honor that he agreed to share his reading list and to talk about his process here. Memory Chirere teaches literature and creative writing a the University of Zimbabwe. He has worked with young writers through workshops and literary events. He enjoys reading and writing short stories and some of his are published in Nomore Plastic Balls (1999), A Roof to Repair (2000), Writing Still (2003) and Creatures Graet and Small (2005). He has published short story books: Somewhere in This Country (2006), Tudikidiki (2007)and Toriro and His Goats (2010).Together with Prof Maurice Vambe, he compiled and edited (so far the only full volume critical text on Mungoshi called) Charles Mungoshi: A Critical Reader. He blogs at Kwachirere.

Memory Chirere's Reading List


1. ‘Mambo Press Book of Verse’ compiled and edited by Colin and Ian Style
2. a rerading of: ‘Blind Man's Kiss’, poetry anthology by Menna Elfyn.
3. ‘Death at Intervals’, a novel by Jose Saramago
4. ‘The Fading Sun’, a novel by David Mungoshi
5. ‘A Fine Madness’, a novel by Mashingaidze Gomo.
6. ‘Shaggy the man’, a children's book by Ignatius Mabasa
7. a rereading of 'Something out there' by Nadine Gordimer
8. 'Highway Queen', a novel by Virginia Phiri
9. a reareading of 'Tsanga Yembeu', a translation Ngugi's 'A Grain of Wheat' by Charles Mungoshi
10.a rereading of 'Old Man and the Sea', a novella by Earnest Hemmingway
11. 'Minus The Morning', a biography by by Jennifer Armstrong
12. 'The Hairdresser of Harare', a novel by Huchu
13. 'The Pit', a collection of short stories by Doris Lessing.
14. 'Snow', a novel by Orhan Pamuk
15.'White Gods: Black Demons', a collection of short stories by Daniel Mandishona.
16. 'Intwasa', poetry by various Zimbabwean poets
17. 'Dancing with Life', a collection of short stories by Chris Mlalazi
18. a rereading of 'Luanda', short stories by Viera
19. 'At Night the Cats', poetry anthology by Antonio Cisneros
20. 'All Fires the Fire', short stories by Julio Cortazar
22. 'Iraqi Short Stories', compiled by Yassen Taha Hafidh and Lutfiyah Al-Dilimu


An Interview with Memory Chirere


1. As a major reviewer of contemporary Zimbabwean writing, what direction do you think the literature is taking?

I do not think I am a major reviewer in Zim. We have no major reviewers. In fact book reviewing in Zim is disappointing. We don’t have in literature what Winter Irving was to sculpture. Zim literature is growing in all directions. Recently we were celebrating Mashingaidze Gomo’s ‘A Fine Madness’ which is a thinker’s book. David Mungoshi’s ‘The Fading Sun’ is a very ‘careful’ folk-historic novel. Chris Mlalazi writes to thrill, to shock like what Hamutyinei did with his Shona novels. Then there are various politically oriented novels and poetry collections which a country like Zimbabwe can inspire. Gradually, more important literature is coming from writers away from home. It is the advantage of distance and the company of more serious publishers.

2. What can be done to nurture a rich culture of reading/reviewing? Do you think the books published in the Diaspora are getting the Zimbabwean readership they deserve?

Maybe I am being harsh. Maybe the culture of reading and reviewing books in Zimbabwe will grow gradually and organically. Look at a wide variety of views you had in the Zimbabwean media about the foreign coach who could not get a work permit. And about Macheso and his newly found love. It took a long time for football and music reports to mature. Books in the diaspora can actually become a hit in Zimbabwe if proper arrangements are made. Chikwava and Gappah’s recent publications (which were published from out of Zimbabwe) are more available in Harare than some locally published books! Copies of Mashingaidze Gomo’s book (which was published in the UK by Ayebia Clarke) were all over the place during the Harare launch and boy, people from the army, the adjacent House of Hunger Slam, the UZ and the townships were buying the copies like hot cakes. It is about keeping your eyes on the ball and creating useful synergies!

3. Do you read for pleasure, or always as a writer or a critic?

It is called ‘eating what you have, when you can’. I have always been reading. It is reading that brought me to writing then to criticism. I do not read in order to write but it does not mean what I read does not influence my writing. I read because I like it. Reading may also mean ‘re-reading’. I found myself revisiting the ‘Mambo Press Book of Verse’. It is the most wonderful and comprehensive book of poems to come out of our country so far, I think. The range: from Fairbridge, Gouldsbury, the inimitable Mutsvairo, Mhlabi, Nondo, Hodza, Zimunya, Chinodya, Chingono and others. I almost fainted when I come across Kingsley Fairbridge’s ‘Bongwi’ after nearly 25 years of separation. I also read his ‘Burial’ and it means a lot more now than when I first read it. Talking about re-reading, ‘Oldman and The Sea’ is also amazing. It has a certain ‘lack of pace’. It leaves you with a creepy and uncanny feeling similar to the one you have when you listen to a story being told by a very sick fellow by the fireside. Now he is on, now he is almost off with his voice coming from down under. The novella appeals to all my senses. And I have been revisiting it every year since 1998. I am glad that Tinashe Muchuri is attempting to translate that great booklet into Shona.

4. You characterize 'The Mambo Press Book of Verse' as “wonderful and comprehensive”. What did the editors do which is wonderful? And what makes it comprehensive? Is it the content or the diversity of authors? And you are saying no other anthology in Zimbabwe rivals it?

It is about the wide variety of poets from different cultural, racial, gender, linguistic, ideological and stylistic backgrounds of Zimbabwe conversing in that one book. It is a book that chases all the others out of town. But then, of course, you realize that much resources and lots of hard work and vision went into the production of such a book.

5. How important is the re-reading of books?

I still wake up in the middle of the night to search for certain specific passages (and thoroughly underlined too!) in some books and re-read. I go back to bed somehow anchored again. I am able to face the new day that way. It is not always about grazing the new books like a mad cow that is going to bring satisfaction to one. I read a recent interview in which Nadine Gordimer says she is re-reading all the old books that she has loved because that is the experience that she wants to take to the grave. Reading has something to do with the character of a reader.

6. You lecture in literature and creative writing. Does your 2010 reading list include books that were part of the curriculum?

Yes. I read nearly all the short story books with the creative writing class here. We wanted to get to the writers through their individual craft. For Cortazar, what really is a short story and how does his short story differ from say Viera’s? How do you know, even in the middle of nowhere, that what you have is a Doris Lessing short story? We read and write.

7. Were there instances when student writers would imitate the styles of these established writers? Or were they liberated enough to explore their own styles?

They do quite a lot because styles are infectious but all true writers go beyond that kind of apprenticeship.

8. What is the student reading culture like nowadays at the UZ ?

The students read beyond the book. The book is competing against various other texts much more than in the 1990’s when we were students here, and we need to accept that.

9. Are you re-defining reading here? What are these other various texts, and are they easily accessible?

No. I am only re-stating a fact. Our students are into film, music and theatre a great deal. The book is fast becoming only one of the texts. In my last creative writing class I had a lady who is a sculptor.

10. As a writer, what is your message to readers in Zimbabwe, Africa and those outside of the content?

Do not forget to read the world also. Books alone can also be very limiting.

11. Is the reading of the world similar to what you call reading other kinds of texts? Texts that are not books?

Look, how does it help a man or a woman to read all the books in the world and fail to find a road to his/her village? When we grew up there were certain very ‘educated’ men who became socially disoriented that they didn’t know how to ask a woman out! They were considered mad!

12. I see your list shows Jose Saramago and Orhan Pamuk.What do you think of this two writers? If you were to introduce readers to their works, which would you recommend first?

I read Saramago’s ‘Death at Intervals’ because of his ‘Gospel According to Christ’ and ‘Blindness’. It is Charles Mungoshi who showed me Blindness when he came across me with Gospel. Saramago experiments with language and form in such a way that has no equal in Literature in English I think. Gospel is the best book that I have ever read. It influences various stories in my ‘Somewhere In This Country’. But I do not think I liked his Death at Intervals. It was disappointing having to put aside a book by Saramago. Stanley Nyamfukudza introduced me to Pamuk. I think for the first time I appreciated a work that is decidedly religious. He is so confident in his religious stance in a way that makes you think: Who am I?

13. Your list always contains at least one Zimbabwean memoir. Do you think Zimbabwe if finally ready for memoir, biography, and autobiography writing?

It is. We have many prominent figures in Zimbabwe who should do memoirs and people are waiting. Edgar Tekere’s raised a lot of excitement a few years ago. So did the ones by Fay Chung and Simon Muzenda.

14. You are involved in a lot of writers' workshops. How does reading factor in these workshops? Do you get the sense that writers are reading? Or are we in a sitaution in which there is more writing than there is reading?

Workshops are a mixed bag. Some young writers are content on writing their one and only book and go away. They want to offload. They are not literary people. Some writers want to write like Marechera so that they go to sleep afterwards. Some want to pursue their craft and they read more than they write and they tend to do very well. I am glad that Lawrence Hoba who followed our workshops was possessed by Luis Honwana and now his short stories in his ‘The Trek and Other Stories’ go beyond his idol. Hoba is an extremely serious reader and writer and he moves from one tradition to the other at will.

15. Talk a little about Zimbabwean or African publishing.

It needs to be more serious. Publishing, just like writing should be a serious thing. Imagine a serious writer being published by a clumsy publisher or a serious publisher working with a clumsy writer! African writers and African publishers need to find each other.

16. How is your own writing?

I am working with Jerry Zondo on the Shona poems that I have written in the past twenty years. We want to do a parallel publication where the poem appears in both Shona and Ndebele on the same page. We hope to find a publisher who entertains that.