WEALTH OF IDEAS

When March began, I lined up books, novels mostly, which centered on women. I was going to read them in honor of Women's History Month. I was going to be one of the presenters at a college event focusing of women characters in literature. It so happened that someone had given me a copy of a novel entitled A Short History of Women , and I had just received a review copy of The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson . Things were falling into place as finding characters was looking easy and interesting. There were three of us at the event, each talking about their favorite female characters, and reading from their own work. For some reason I showed up without any of my works, but I brought Paradise by Toni Morrison, Stone Virgins by Yvonne Vera, and Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga. I was going to talk about how these books had influenced my own writing, then I would discuss some features relating to their main characters. This part worked well, worked so well that I ran out of ...

Toni Morrison's Paradise , a haunting book. I am always reading, and it seems books can't leave me alone. I am talking about old books, new books, soon-to-be-new books--lots of books, but I am not complaining. Now I am thinking of doing themed readings for each month, certain books can be read in February, then others in March, April and so on. This idea is not new, really, but the difference is that I will make a conscious effort to set aside certain books for specific months. In March I am participating in a Women History Month panel, where we will be discussing women characters in poetry and fiction. When I was approached to participate, I agreed without a clear idea of what my contribution would be, but I remembered that the last time I participated in a Women's History month event, I told a story, honoring all the women who told me stories when I was growing up in Mototi, Mazvihwa, Zvishavane, Zimbabwe, Africa. It was while I was telling a story in front of a big crow...

Looking at the search engine terms people use to find my blog Moments in Literature , I can see that a lot of searches feature the phrase "famous characters in literature". We know them: Ishmael, Ahab (in Melville), the Old Man in Charles Mungoshi, Benjie, Quentin, Caddie (in William Faulkner), Tambudzai in Tsitsi Dangarembga, and many others. Last year I attempted a Google Knol on Famous Characters in African Literature and even began discussing Tambudzai, but then I got too busy and shelved the idea. If search engine terms show that there are people looking for famous characters in literature, there is an opportunities for bloggers! Just take one character at a time and cast him or her as a famous character in literature, some type of mini-biographies for the characters in the literature we love.