Blogging about African literature, with a focus on Zim

When I started this blog, I used to say many things about Zimbabwean literature, about African writers, about everything to do with writing. I loved predictions: I would see a new name and predict it would be the biggest name in African or world literature. Then I would do book reviews, write musings, and even type some poetry on this blog. I was having fun, I was using this space as a wealth of ideas harvested from cybespace, from the world of African literature, from interacting with poets in Sacramento, from reading old and new books. But I loved the idea of following new developments in literature, especially African literature. I wanted this to be a voice for the literature, an outlet for the energy I felt, the confidence I had in the literature, a voice crying on behalf of the literature, to tell the world that a literature was booming, a literature was doing its thing, this literature needed to be read, to be noticed, to be available in U.S. bookstores.

Then something happened. The literature started to appear where it had never appeared before; then we started to win awards; then I watched writers who had started small becoming big. This blog started to slow down, now the things I had hoped for were a reality, and there was no need anymore to be the literature's town-crier. Things got too practical, now these books invaded all spaces, especially the internet spaces. And works I had only heard of came within reach, and I got too busy reading them, catching up, watching, experiencing.

The blog entered an identity crisis. It avoid making noise about the obvious. It went through a hiatus. It started to publish announcement. It activated Adsense, because of all the visitors. Then sometimes I forgot about it altother, because the action was on Facebook. I tried to call on others to contribute articles, at one time even offered to pay minimal fees for "accepted" work, but then realized, remembered, I was not a company, I was just a blogger, and I put my energies on the Munyori project, saw success there, got briefly overwhelmed, came back to blog, but the things I wanted to write about, to speculate, to predict, were already obvious, routine. What was I going to say? "African literature rocks"...well, that's already obvious: say something new. "African writing is expanding." ..of course, it is. How about interviewing the writers who are making the news? well, they were already being interviewed by CNN, BBC...why waste their time? So what then? Lie low, watch and learn...

Until now. I want to cheer lead African literature again. Return to the source. Do as I used to do. write about writing. reflect. share.

This blog is back...and what's interesting, it never went anywhere.

And Africn literature continues to do wonders. As for Zimbabwean, the locus, it's ablaze with energy. Blog that.