Two Interviews Featuring Zimbabwean Writers
Sentinel Literary Quarterly (SLQ) has published a roundtable discussion featuring Christopher Mlalazi, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, and me. The editor writes, "Three Zimbabwean writers ... discuss the state of Zimbabwean literature, writing from the Diaspora, what is African literature among other literary issues. In this candid roundtable discussion, they question the direct nature of literature and its suitability in chronicling moments of unique political and social significance. In a country like Zimbabwe, which exists to the West as a flurry of news reports and political upheavals, literature attains an importance that it rarely enjoys in Britain or America: it becomes a necessary thing, essential to the survival of the self. A sobering set of first-hand accounts accompanied by revealing anecdotes about writing and reading experiences influenced by the three writers’ collusion with many cultures and worlds in their different journeys."
Below is a longer excerpt:
Question: Do you think living and writing away from home affects the way you write and perceive home?
Emmanuel Sigauke: It definitely does. Writing is my way of staying connected to home at a deeper level. Of course, I am always talking to people back home, but rarely do I enter the dialogue with home more deeply than I do when writing. Having been away for 14 years, I sometimes feel a disconnection, or worry that maybe the issues I am dealing with maybe out of sync with the reality on the ground; yet that too can be a good thing, to allow the imagination to work overtime. My initial point of reference when I write about home takes me back to the things I remember, the Zimbabwe of the mid-90s, when change was apparent, but not yet disastrous. I am then forced, once I have imagined the story, to make it portray things as they are now. That process feels superficial for the most part, until, with a little bit of research, and high regard of character emergence, I begin to approach a certain authenticity, which I think matters, not necessarily for mimetic reasons, but to enrich the story with relatable particularity. This is not an easy process, so in most of my stories I have noticed a drifting towards some elements of fantasy, creating worlds (mini Zimbabwes) that supply their own base of realism. There is always the fear, of course, of getting it wrong, or of feeling like it’s all wrong, because what do I know about standing in a bread line for five hours, but again what don’t I know? I have stood in long lines even here in the United States, DMV, immigration, and so on. So there is a distance from the experience, yet there is experience in the distance (whatever this means). In short, I just want to write, and to write well.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu: Sometimes, which is most of the times, I feel this new environment sucking up the energy in me to write. The mind is crowded with too many nibbling things. There is a sense of loss in one’s positioning in the world. The sad part is that I will never recover. I will never the same person, I will never perceive the same things, the same people the same. Distance makes you wear 3D glasses that allows you to magnify yourself inside out. But no matter where I go, Zimbabwe remains the vortex of my life and experiences. I write, and imagine from there. I migrate in there and from there.
Christopher Mlalazi: I would like to encourage serious writers, if it is within their means, or they are able to find a benefactor as in a fellowship or a grant, to try writing away from home at some point in time of their writing careers. Getting away from your subject once you have collected all the required material you need to construct your art piece has its merits as personally I have found that it enables me to view my subject from a distance, as through the lens of a pair of binoculars, and that detachment serves the task of putting everything in clear perspective, it gives you all the time to view the subject as one would also do a map one has drawn on a patch of soil like the hunters of yore did, and also follow all the threads with no immediate emotional attachment involved which would have blinded one in the first instance. Whilst writing in heat is greatly beneficial, a manuscript needs cooling off too if one is to polish it to that final gloss, just as the blacksmith will wait for his axe too cool from the hearth if he is too give the blade that final star catching gleam. And when one is away, one is not burdened with thoughts of the heavy hand of rogue censorship, of the secret police peeping through your window – the experience is uplifting and brings forth the best out of one.
Read the resr of the discussion on Sentine Literary Quarterly.
In another interview, published at the same time, Geosi Reads features Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, an award-winnning Zimbabwean writer based in South Africa. In the interview she reflects on the writing experience in general and her reading and writing processes in particular. Below is an excerpt:
Geosi Reads: Zimbabwe has some important writers like Doris Lessing, Shimmer Chinodya among others. Do you think Zimbabwe as a country has produced enough writers in your generation?
Novuyo Rosa Tshuma: I would say many Zimbabwean writers in my generation are in the process of being ‘produced’, as it were, not necessarily by Zimbabwe as a country, sometimes in other countries and other spaces. One cannot say enough, really, it is all a work in progress and the more the merrier, a jarring of many voices to offer us differing perspectives of the world and our circumstances in it. Anthologies such as Weaver Press’ Writing Still and Women Writing and ’amaBooks’ Long Time Coming and Echoes of Young Voices among others, provide the platform to interact with different Zimbabwean voices, some new voices, and from this one appreciates that it is a blooming industry of writers, as it were.
GR: What is the literary scene in Zimbabwe like? Do Zimbabweans read?
NRT: Zimbabweans read. There are establishments such as the Book Café which promote the literary scene, and book launches and the like. And then there have been projects such as the British Council’s Identity and Diversity project which involved young people and produced two anthologies, Echoes of Young Voices and Silent Cry. The problem is that the majority of Zimbabweans do not, generally, buy books. As one publisher put it, Zimbabweans seem to think that books should be given out for free. They may attend book launches and applaud a job well done, but purchasing a book is another matter. This was understandable when there were more pressing matters such as food and fuel shortages and inflation and what not, and people could not afford to buy books, but now things are improving somewhat in the country, people are able to afford things they could not afford before, and hence now it becomes a question of a culture of book buying, book appreciation. Again, this notion that Zimbabweans do not buy books is limited generally to the black Zimbabwean. White Zimbabweans are more prone to book buying; perhaps, besides the purchasing power, it is a question of a book culture, the ability to see the value in a book. It is now a matter of infusing a culture of appreciation for the book. If a book costs almost the same price as a pizza, and pizza parlours are always full, it can no longer be a matter of affordability; the question becomes, how much do Zimbabweans value their literature?
Read the full interview on Geosi Reads.
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