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...

Perhaps this is my new way of reviewing some of the books I have read but which I may not get time to review soon. I will share the things that stood out, things that come to mind when I think about the books. This post features three of the many books I read during the summer: The Stone Virgins by Yvonne Vera (FSG), Many Rivers by Christopher Mlalazi (Lion Press), and The Trial of Robert Mugabe by Chielo Zona Eze (Okri Books). Yvonne Vera's The Stone Virgins is a rich novel that demands several readings. Even the writer warned her readers in an interview with The Financial Gazette that they had to be patient and thorough. I get the sense that Vera was not just trying to be experimental, but that's the style her subject matter demanded. Each time I think of this book, I can't get over the image of Thandabantu store in Kezi where all the action was--it was the center of those entering or exiting Kezi, the connection of Kezi to the outside world, linked to Bulawayo by ...

The summer has been an opportunity for flexible reading. I decided to focus on the short story, and when the summer began, I was reading connected authors. I have since had a taste of the works of Frank O'Connor, Colm Toibin, Sean O'Faolain (since these are Irish, I had to throw in James Joyce's Dubliners in the mix). I also explored others: Anton Checkov, Alice Munro, Barbara Kingsolver, V.S. Naipaul, T.C. Boyle, Alice Walker...the list goes on. No day was enough for my reading, and I didn't stick with the same author for long, which explains why I was reading up to ten authors at once. This was easy to do because these were short stories. I could easily move from Frank O'Connor to Flannery O'Connor, Barbara Kingsolver to Joyce Carol Oates, Jorge Luis Borges to Doris Lessing and everything in between. I was swimming in short stories, pursuing some aspect of craft that makes this genre interesting. I can't say my pursuit has led to much of anything yet, but ...

Reading Chielozona Eze's The Trial of Robert Mugabe is sending me to Yvonne Vera again. Eze's novel commits its Part 2 to Gukurahundi, and the section is told by a character named Yvonne Vera, author of The Stone Virgins (FSG). You can tell Eze adores Vera the way I love Toni Morrison, and that's a good thing. I like a writer who challenges me to make connections among literary icons, and one of the strengths, basically a treat for literature lovers, is how The Trial of Robert Mugabe gets into the Derridean "structure and play" mode, invoking everyone from Yeats, Conrad, Achebe, Marechera, to Vera. Marechera is one of the judges listening to he testimonies against Mugabe, given by the victims of his regime. The witnesses' stories are given in Part 1; then Vera takes us through Part 2, by bringing to life the characters of The Stone Virgins , but you need to have read Vera's novel to follow Eze's story. Yes, Eze trusts the reader to be well-read, be...