In which I am given an opportunity to be the female Dambudzo Marechera

Now here is news. An Elegy for Easterly has been longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. I hope that I make it to the short list, and then to the podium, if only because I want to emulate, and possibly better, Dambudzo Marechera's plate throwing antics from 1979. Those of you who know your Marechera will know that he was the first, and to date only, Zimbabwean to win this incredible award, back in 1979, when it was called the Guardian Fiction Award and Zimbabwe was but a glint in the eye of its progenitors. Legend has it that when he got to the podium, he started throwing plates and things at the chandelier in the posh London restaurant at which the ceremony was held. And instead of deducting the cost of the plates from his winner's cheque, this mayhem apparently confirmed to those who attended that they were in the presence of a genius of unparalleled geniusness.

But seriously ...

I have a friend who lives in Canada, a rather intense poet from an African country most famous for its writers who complains all the time about how these "foreign" prizes build an external canon when we as Africans should be building our own canon. A compelling argument at first sight, expect that it assumes rather a lot. In the case of Dambudzo, if the "foreign" Heinemann African Writers Series had not published him, and if he had not won the "foreign" Guardian Fiction Award as it then was, he might well never have found the path he travelled to be the most influential Zimbabwean writer my country has seen. Is he any less Zimbabwean, any less our own because he was first celebrated outside our borders? There was no Zimbabwean publishing industry to publish and honour him because there was not even a nation called Zimbabwe to publish him. He found honour in his country because he found it first outside.

And what about Tsitsi Dangarembnga, who tried to publish her novel in the new Zimbabwe? She submitted her first novel, Nervous Conditions to the Zimbabwe Publishing House in the mid-eighties, only to be told that it was "too feminist" to be published in Zimbabwe. She was then published by the "foreign" Women's Press, she was awarded a "foreign" Commonwealth Writers Prize, her book was subsequently picked up by the same Zimbabwe Publishing House that had initially rejected her, and we cannot now talk of Zimbabwean literature without her.

So yes, the evil West building our canon externally argument is attractive because it appeals to that deep and emotional and nationalist tigritude in us, but in the case of two of the most influential Zimbabwean writers to whom succeeding generations will owe everything, it does not hold up.

As for me, I say bring on all awards, foreign and local as long as they get people talking about books, buying books and reading books. Especially my book!

Phillip Chidavaenzi on Charles Mungoshi's "Ndiko Kupindana Kwamazuva".

I am writing this in fabulous Melbourne, where I am one of the writers at the beyond superlatives Melbourne Writers Festival. I have just met Alice Pung, and I am stealing glances at someone who could possibly be Wells Tower. The thing about writers is that they are real people, not just moody images on the covers of their books, so it is sometimes really hard to recognise them in all their dimensions. And this is what I love most about these festivals, meeting writers, buying books, discovering new books and talents: before I am anything else, I am a reader.

And as a reader, there is nothing I love more than talking and arguing about the books I love. I have asked a number of Zimbabwean writers to give me contributions on the Zimbabwean book that shook them the most, or did something to them that no book had done until then. I am kicking off the series with Phillip Chidavaenzi, who writes about Ndiko Kupindana Kwamazuva, by Charles Mungoshi, who also happens to be my favourite Zimbabwean writer.

Enjoy.

________________


Since started getting absorbed in the beautiful rhythm of African literature, particularly Zimbabwean writers in high school, Shona literature did not really grab me. The pastoral romanticism that was so prevalent in the Shona novel just didn’t cut it with me. I wanted something from a higher shelf, something extraordinary, at the cutting edge.

Then I came across Charles Mungoshi’s ‘Ndiko Kupindana Kwamazuva’ for the first time when I was doing Form 6 in 1999. It shook me like no other book — by a local or foreign writer — had done, perhaps besides Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s ‘Petals of Blood’, which I can safely slot at a distant second in my scale.

Mungoshi's character Rindai still haunts my imagination to this day; the way she loves, gives so much of herself even without recognition, her endurance, strength and resilience as well as her beauty are the stuff of which dream characters in literature are made.

Having read that book from the school archives, I was to pleasantly surprised when I came across it years later in a Harare bookshop (the bookshops still throbbed with life back then) and I quickly grabbed a copy to add to my valued collection.

‘Ndiko Kupindana Kwamazuva’ — published by Mambo Press in 1978 — is a book that pulsates with life, realism and something that I can’t even find the words to describe. I find it hard to say which exactly is the master stroke in this book — the characterisation or stylistic devices, particularly the way the third person narrative is effortlessly mingled with internal monologue to create a hybrid of a style. And the manner in which Mungoshi did it, seamlessly and flowing, speaks of a genius.

I found this experimentation with form and style to be out of this world, done as it is in such a way that I was able to connect with the characters’, their struggles, emotions and aspirations. To hear the author speak about a character’s emotions is totally different from getting an insight into their mind through the stream of consciousness.

Although elements of pastoral romanticism are found in the book, there is much more on offer, because Mungoshi’s refuses to rubber stamp the status quo in Zimbabwe literary discourse of innocence in the rustic settings.

Through the depiction of Rindai’s struggles and the way she wrestles with her personal demons in the rural setting—far from the madding crowds of the metropolises—enables Mungoshi to shatter the illusion that the rural area offers a safe harbour. Rindai has to contain the backbiting, finger–pointing and gossiping that is a bane of a woman ‘deserted and elbowed’ to the rural hospital while her husbands leads his own life in the city. Then there are the poignant and painful questions from the children about their ‘absent and long–lost’ father.

This story is very real. Rindai and Rex have a very strong foundation for their marriage, which ought to be a harbinger for a promising future. But Mungoshi, as a social critic, refuses to be fooled. Fairy tales and real life are miles apart. Somewhere along the line Rex loses the plot and decides to have an affair with Rindai’s best friend and confidante, Maggie.

This is one development I found gut–wrenching and I tried to understand it. Could it be that Rindai was too good, so much that Rex wanted a less saintly woman? Or was it the fact that Rindai’s virtues significantly magnified Rex’s own vices?

Mungoshi was able, in this book, to trace the real life experiences of couples (especially the male side) who start off on a beautiful note and, as the ‘midlife crisis’ sets in, become disillusioned and start seeking contentment elsewhere —in alcohol, other women etc.

Another beauty about this book is its timeless nature. The economic and socio–cultural issues that Mungoshi set out to address, at least in as far as family set–ups are concerned, still resonate with contemporary Zimbabwe.

I have no trace of doubt in my mind that ‘Ndiko Kupindana Kwamazuva’ is a deeply felt book. I can imagine Mungoshi writing it, wrestling with issues, wrestling with his own personal demons and trying to humanise his space.

This is a world in itself, and you can get lost in the plot as Mungoshi carries you along with the story, sharing the dreams, aspirations and agonies of his believable characters.

Those scenes in the rural setting really came alive, and as I was reading the book, I could actually picture myself in my rural home of Mt. Darwin. In fact, the book gave me rare opportunities of reliving moments I spent in the rural areas, particularly curing the school holidays during my childhood.

I really salute Mungoshi for this majestic piece of literature, which is as powerful and poignant as it was perhaps during the era in which it was published. It is an inspiring book.

First they want an education, now this. This, right here, is exactly why women should remain poor and illiterate.

The irony of this story, pinched in its entirety from the BBC news website, is that the woman inveighing against "intellectuals" in this story will never appreciate the irony of that last sentence.

_____________

Tens of thousands of people in Mali's capital, Bamako, have been protesting against a new law which gives women equal rights in marriage.

The law, passed earlier this month, also strengthens inheritance rights for women and children born out of wedlock.

The head of a Muslim women's association says only a minority of Malian women - "the intellectuals" as she put it - supports the law.

Several other protests have taken place in other parts of the country.

The law was adopted by the Malian parliament at the beginning of August, and has yet to be signed into force by the president.

One of the most contentious issues in the new legislation is that women are no longer required to obey their husbands.

Hadja Sapiato Dembele of the National Union of Muslim Women's Associations said the law goes against Islamic principles.

"We have to stick to the Koran," Ms Dembele told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme. "A man must protect his wife, a wife must obey her husband."

"It's a tiny minority of women here that wants this new law - the intellectuals. The poor and illiterate women of this country - the real Muslims - are against it," she added.

At the Edinburgh International Book Festival with Brian Chikwava

I first met Harare North writer Brian Chikwava in 2006. I had just written my first story, and I was giddy and brimming with possibility. I was also hungry for affirmation. My friends and family were telling me good things, kind things, rooting for me, but I needed more, I needed the approbation of other people, strangers, writers. People who were called writers and who were writers.

And I was desperately lonely.

I needed to belong to something, to be part of a gang, I imagined a Bloomsbury Group of African writers seriously reading each other and engaging in loud arguments over clinking glasses of absinthe in a smoky atmosphere. So I sought them out, no doubt annoying a number of people with the stench of my neediness.

I sent Brian my story Something Nice from London, he generously wrote back to say it was hard to believe it was a first story, such polished prose, he wrote. Polished prose, I said to myself, polished prose, polished prose.

This was by first blurb.

We emailed after that, and then met, at the British Library, in the restaurant, where within ten minutes I had given him a synopsis of every book I wanted to write and in what order.

Poor Brian.

We got on immediately, I make a joke of everything and he laughs at everything. He is the most laid back person I know, too laid back I sometimes tell him. He is completely and totally without guile, he is who he presents himself as.

This last gig at the Edinburgh Book Festival was our first one, and it was really good. We should have done something together in London, and in Nairobi, but life got in the way. I had initially had some misgivings about the Zimbabwe focus in one conversation after the other, but Edinburgh proved my fears baseless, I really should just have focused on Brian, that I would be spending time with Brian, which makes any topic one you can turn on its head and look from another angle.

You do not need to tell me how fortunate I have been this year with my book and all that has happened around it, but here is where I tell you how lucky I am to have a friend from my country, a fellow writer, and one with a book so deserving of its success, a book so damn good and clever and funny it fills me with this heartbursting pride.

With Brian around, writing is a little less lonely, and it is a lot more fun.

Still in Edinburgh, a big big thank you to Ovo Adagha, Ayodele Morocco Clarke, Henrietta Rushwaya Hay and Kenneth Hay for the big heart-shaped welcome to Edinburgh. I also got to meet Sulaiman Addonia and his wife Lies, and Finias, left, the most adorable baby both sides of Brussels.

A few words on the Hay Storymoja Festival in Nairobi

The Nairobi Hay Storymoja Festival was an absolute blast. The writers and others there included Vikram Seth, Hanif Kureishi, Tony Kan, Kate Adie, Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, Francois Devenne, Monica Arac, Tolu Ogunlesi, Chika Unigwe, Lee Siegel, Doreen Baingana, Dayo Foster, Billy Kahora, Judy Kibinge, Yvonne Owuor, Parselelo Kantai, Wambui Mwangi and the inspirational and inspired Muthoni Garland, the force of nature behind the whole shebang. To the absolute surprise of not that many people, neither of the two Nobel laureates, Wole Soyinka and Wangari Mathaai turned up, they cancelled at the last minute, and so I did not get to ask Mr. Soyinka the burning question that I have been longing to ask, and which other people have , evidently, thought too trivial to trouble a Nobel mind: just how long does it take to get his hair looking like that every day?

Literary festivals are forums for ideas, with people discussing how we should live, arrange and organize ourselves. My mind, thoughts and conversations in the last year have been preocupied with the question of justice in post-conflict countries. What is justice in the context of political compromise, who should deliver it, who should be subjected to it, and at what cost do we pursue or fail to pursue it? I therefore felt compelled to spend some time at the sobering and wrenching exhibition, Kenya Burning, devoted to the recent violence in Kenya that left more than a thousand people dead. There were many disturbing images in that claustrophobic space, but for me, the most chilling was one of a group of men fanning out across a hill, bows and arrows in their hands. It said it all. This was no spontaneous uprising, there was chilling premeditation, teams of hunters going after people identified as prey. I became deeply, deeply terrified for Kenya. If they fail to address this, I have dark visions of the future.

On a lighter note, I took great pleasure in connecting and reconnecting with so many friends and new, readers who have become friends, and the many sisters I met, powerful women doing their thing. I especially appreciated that my friend Tinashe Murapata spent so much time with me, and took so many cool photos, like the one above. I fell in love with Betty Muragori and her lovely kids, Betty is this freak of humanity who played both tennis and hockey for Kenya, and who is also the poet and writer Sitawa Namwalie. I have written on this blog that until I met her compatriot Shailja Patel, I was a bit iffy about performance poetry. But Shailja’s ferocious intelligence did it for me, and Betty/Sitawa confirmed it even further. Her work is fierce and tender, and brutally unsparing. I first read her at Kenyatta market as I was getting my hair done the day I arrived in Nairobi, then I saw a performance of her play Cut Off My Tonge which was uncomfortable, uplifting and deeply funny and disturbing in equal measure. Fantastic.

And I loved meeting my dearest Andrea again, who is the flip-side of me (or am I the flip side of her) a shoe freaky white chic who has chosen Africa as her home, while I, of course, am a shoe freaky black chick who has chosen Europe as my home. This always tickles me, when I am with her, such different choices, but so much in common that led us to those choices. She also introduced me, bless her a million times, to three of the most amazing men I have met in a very long time.

I love you, boys.

And I love Nairobi and can’t wait to go back in December.

Nanny State Suite: A poem written at Gatwick Airport

Caution

you are approaching the end

of the conveyor

Caution

you are approaching the end

of the conveyor

Push trolley now

Push trolley now

Push trolley now

Please stand clear of the doors

Please stand clear of the doors

Baggage trolleys

are allowed on the transit

Please hold on to the brake

Firmly

All liquids, gels and pastes not in plastic bags

will be conficated and destroyed

Attention

For your safety

Do not leave any baggage unattended

Any unattended baggage

will be removed from the terminal building

and destroyed

To remove trolley

Insert coin in slot on trolley

The chain will be released

Pull trolley

To return trolley

Insert coin in slot on trolley

Your coin will be returned

Lift the green lever to release brake

Children must not ride on trolleys

Attention

For your safety,

children must not ride on trolleys

Passengers

with heavy bags and trolleys

Please use lifts.

No containers of liquids, gels,

creams or pastes over

one hundred millilitres

No oversize hand baggage

No sharp items in hold baggage

Any liquids, any liquids

Gels, pastes, creams, any liquids

Any liquids, any liquids

Gels, pastes, creams, any liquids

Please have your boarding card ready

For inspection

Attention

This is a non-smoking environment

It is the middle of August, and I am back

I am back from my summer/winter travels. It was brilliant, I visited six cities in three weeks. I fell in love with Edinburgh, and with two outrageously entertaining and kind and funny gay men (one of them is a spaceship specialist, cough cough). I almost had a heart attack in Amsterdam, I hooked up with a lot of my cool, cool Facebook and blog friends everywhere I went. I met Tony Kan, the writer with one of the best book titles I have ever come across, Nights of the Creaking Bed, and one of the best first lines too: My mother was a kept woman. I met a lady who thought she was an octopus, I wrote a poem at Gatwick airport, and I was, shock of shocks, actually recognised by random strangers in random places. And someone hit on me after my CNN interview, actually hit on me! If this continues, I will be receiveing marriage proposals. My mum will be so pleased, she has wanted me to get married since forever. Please check back this week for these and other scintillating scintillations.