FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2009
Much humbling came upon reading this compilation, which I picked up with my own preconceptions, owing to the fact that the writer has lived overseas for so long and happens to be a very learned Lawyer ( I expected to read this compilation clutching a dictionary- if there is one thing African Intellectuals are famous for, it's throwing about the weight of their 'intellect'- slapping the ordinary person with their extraordinary Thesaurus-size English words and leaving him applauding insults which he does not understand are meant for him- (a little joke:-).
Petina Gappah is in touch with Zimbabwe and the ordinary Zimbabwean, and impressively so. Her straightforward story telling style which not only highlights the truly disastrous effects of the power struggle ravaging our country, but also pierces the hearts of her characters, is decorated with colourful dialogue bubbling with frothy home-brew language and Shona wording, all to come up with a great and very Zimbabwean effect.
The thirteen stories in this compilation, all using something or other about the Zimbabwean situation as a back drop, comprise of very tangible and interesting characters- take the 'mad' Emily in the mental wing at Parirenyatwa Hospital in 'The Annexe Shuffle', for example- I think her madness is a very interesting angle, given the many spirit breaking ordeals the people in my country have had to face, and their stamina while doing so. What I enjoyed in this compilation is what I would call the 'Zimbabwean In-house Effect', stark passages and terminologies which as I read hit home as being very Zimbabwean.
Take my favourite story for example, 'The Mupandawana Dancing Champion'. This energetic and humorous tale tells the story of Mdhara Vitalis Mukaro, who is forced into early retirement due to foreign currency shortages and is given three pairs of boots as 'pension' for his thirty years' service to the company. The story takes place in 'Mupandawana, full name 'Gutu-Mupandawana Growth Point'. It is during the 'Mupandawana Dancing Competition that Mdhara Vitalis gets the opportunity to show off his agility on the dance floor. Now, we all know that a Growth Point is the 'city' of the villages, the 'happening place', where the cattle boys and young girls slink off to and get down to some energetic music with a calabash in hand. Music is a vital aspect of a culture, it is through song and dance that many a tale is told. In 'The Mupandawana Dancing Champion' song, dance and the short story come together to form a magnetic coalition of mesmerizing story telling. Here, Petina Gappah's pen flirts with the page. Here, the pen does marvellous things, it executes some complicated dance moves on paper to come up with a scene that leaps out of the page. The author is reeling off the names of some great and popular Zimbabwean singers, and already you can hear the tinkles of those lively guitar strings for which Shona music is so popular. As the author goes on to tell of the energetic dancing that went on, you can just picture those 'Growth Pointers' doing some heavy getting down. As you read, you are tempted to click your fingers and whistle and shout ' Tshova George!' (Tshova George is a term used to rally the dance on- a sign of enjoyment). Another memorable line is 'The security guard's Borrowdale became a Mbaresdale'. Borrowdale is a very posh suburb in Harare, Capital City of Zimbabwe. There is also the 'Borrowdale Dance' which was invented by Zimbabwean Singer Alick Macheso. Mbare is a township in Harare. So upon the entrance of Mdhara Vitalis, the security guard's dance was relegated from posh Borrowdale to township 'Mbaresdale'- Zimbabweans would understand this upon first reading (hence the stark Zim Flavour in this tale). 'The Mupandawana Dancing Champion' comes to a humorous and original end as Mdhara Vitalis dances himself to a memorable death.
'He got down to the ground, rolled and shook. We crowded around him, relishing this new dance that we had not seen before. He twitched to the right and to the left. The music was loud as we egged him on. He convulsed in response to our cheering. His face shone, and he looked at us as if to say, 'Clap Harder'. And we did.
It was only when the song ended and we gave him a rousing ovation and still he did not get up that we realised that he would never get up, and that he had not been dancing, but dying.'
Another hilarious and great twist is that the title 'Mupandawana Dancing Competition' has the letters of the name of the opposition party in Zimbabwe, Movement for Democratic Change- MDC. This point, another ingenious construction by the author, is illustrated in a passage where the Governor summons the Member of Parliament for the District to point out this anomaly. The Governor asks, 'What business does a ruling MP have in promoting the opposition, the puppets, those led by tea boys, the detractors who do not understand that the land is the economy and the economy is the land and that the country will never be a colony again, those who seek to reverse the consolidation of the gains of our liberation struggle'. This passage is reminiscent of the many tired speeches laced with obsessive paranoia that one hears from the Ruling Party in Zimbabwe, usually broadcast on the sole National Television Station, Ztv aka Zanu tv.
'The Mupandawana Dancing Champion' is an absolute original. There are many other memorable lines in these pages that coax many memories; as I read one passage or another, I am able to link some characters to someone I know, something I've heard, seen. The different types of maids reeled off in 'The Maid from Lalapanzi' brought to mind my own childhood maids, in particular one who used to come and pick me up from primary school wearing my mother's clothes (it was my first year in primary school at the time and I never used to notice the clothes- until the time my mother came home early and caught her!) As for the Diaspora, almost every Zimbabwean has a relative cultivating those greener Diaspora pastures. A memorable character is Rambanai in 'My Cousin-Sister Rambanai', who has come home for her father's funeral and, due to fraudulent papers and money constraints, is not able to immediately return to America. She is reminiscent of some of those relatives who come home for a visit with too-good-to-be-true-tales, who show off at every turn and spend money like it is their last day on earth (that was possible during the inflated exchange rates on the black market when the Zim dollar was still in use in the country- now we use the rand and the US dollar mostly so prices are stabilzing), taking cabs everywhere and eating in those restaurants that the Zimbabweans at home could no longer afford. The one thing most 'Diasporans' always find difficult is leaving home, and so they always make sure to gulp down as much of it as they can. The writer's accuracy in capturing the lives and traits of Zimbabweans is indeed commendable- it makes these tales all the more precious.
I read this book when I was at home, in Zimbabwe (where I currently am) and have since passed it on to a couple of people to read. The first comments were 'What an unusual cover', 'What an unusual title', 'Oh, there is a Zimbabwean writer called Petina Gappah?' The ordinary man on the street (and most other people actually, actually most people who are not writers or somehow connected to the writing industry) is not aware of the current stories being told re Zimbabwe. He will readily smile when you mention Dambudzo Marechera, Yvonne Vera and Tsitsi Dangarembga, but he will falter when you mention any of the fresh Zim writers. You cannot really blame him, in a country brought to its knees and where not much is done to publicize literature to its people, where the book shops are half empty and where most of its population would consider purchasing a novel a luxury, one can hardly be surprised. The Bulawayo Public Library boasts of a wide collection of Western Fiction and only a cabinet of African Literature, very little, if any of it current. Which is a shame, as stories such as those in 'An Elegy for Easterly' need to filter to the ordinary man on the street, who although does not purchase books, does visit the local library. My little sample of readers like the tales told in this compilation; they feel that the stories speak about them and they like that, they enjoy the humour within the tragedies. One comment that stuck was 'These are Untold Stories'. This, I believe, is what makes this book precious.
Faber and Faber is a big publisher with a large audience, therefore it is to be much appreciated that, in catering for their world wide audience, they have managed to retain the stark Zimbabweaness in Petina Gappah's tales. This means that those who do read, both at home and elsewhere, will get an accurate and humorous view of the things that do happen in our country; perhaps this was not the author's intention but in writing fiction she has given a nice, touching and much valued account of the things Zimbabweans have to deal with, their ingenious methods of dealing with these impossible situations and the strength with which they have done so. The stories are more than just about struggles and glimpses of the elite, they are about lives and certain aspects of a culture and the squabbles that go on, these things that human beings get up to. I'd like to get my hands on the French Version of the book (my French is passable, I'm sure with a dictionary and a copy of the English Version I could labour through). I'm curious as to how they managed the 'Zimbabwean Flavour' in the other languages. Did they keep the Shona, for example? And how did they manage terms like 'Mbaresdale'?
This is indeed a precious compilation that has left me greatly looking forward to the author's upcoming debut novel 'The Book of Memory'.
Petina Gappah is in touch with Zimbabwe and the ordinary Zimbabwean, and impressively so. Her straightforward story telling style which not only highlights the truly disastrous effects of the power struggle ravaging our country, but also pierces the hearts of her characters, is decorated with colourful dialogue bubbling with frothy home-brew language and Shona wording, all to come up with a great and very Zimbabwean effect.
The thirteen stories in this compilation, all using something or other about the Zimbabwean situation as a back drop, comprise of very tangible and interesting characters- take the 'mad' Emily in the mental wing at Parirenyatwa Hospital in 'The Annexe Shuffle', for example- I think her madness is a very interesting angle, given the many spirit breaking ordeals the people in my country have had to face, and their stamina while doing so. What I enjoyed in this compilation is what I would call the 'Zimbabwean In-house Effect', stark passages and terminologies which as I read hit home as being very Zimbabwean.
Take my favourite story for example, 'The Mupandawana Dancing Champion'. This energetic and humorous tale tells the story of Mdhara Vitalis Mukaro, who is forced into early retirement due to foreign currency shortages and is given three pairs of boots as 'pension' for his thirty years' service to the company. The story takes place in 'Mupandawana, full name 'Gutu-Mupandawana Growth Point'. It is during the 'Mupandawana Dancing Competition that Mdhara Vitalis gets the opportunity to show off his agility on the dance floor. Now, we all know that a Growth Point is the 'city' of the villages, the 'happening place', where the cattle boys and young girls slink off to and get down to some energetic music with a calabash in hand. Music is a vital aspect of a culture, it is through song and dance that many a tale is told. In 'The Mupandawana Dancing Champion' song, dance and the short story come together to form a magnetic coalition of mesmerizing story telling. Here, Petina Gappah's pen flirts with the page. Here, the pen does marvellous things, it executes some complicated dance moves on paper to come up with a scene that leaps out of the page. The author is reeling off the names of some great and popular Zimbabwean singers, and already you can hear the tinkles of those lively guitar strings for which Shona music is so popular. As the author goes on to tell of the energetic dancing that went on, you can just picture those 'Growth Pointers' doing some heavy getting down. As you read, you are tempted to click your fingers and whistle and shout ' Tshova George!' (Tshova George is a term used to rally the dance on- a sign of enjoyment). Another memorable line is 'The security guard's Borrowdale became a Mbaresdale'. Borrowdale is a very posh suburb in Harare, Capital City of Zimbabwe. There is also the 'Borrowdale Dance' which was invented by Zimbabwean Singer Alick Macheso. Mbare is a township in Harare. So upon the entrance of Mdhara Vitalis, the security guard's dance was relegated from posh Borrowdale to township 'Mbaresdale'- Zimbabweans would understand this upon first reading (hence the stark Zim Flavour in this tale). 'The Mupandawana Dancing Champion' comes to a humorous and original end as Mdhara Vitalis dances himself to a memorable death.
'He got down to the ground, rolled and shook. We crowded around him, relishing this new dance that we had not seen before. He twitched to the right and to the left. The music was loud as we egged him on. He convulsed in response to our cheering. His face shone, and he looked at us as if to say, 'Clap Harder'. And we did.
It was only when the song ended and we gave him a rousing ovation and still he did not get up that we realised that he would never get up, and that he had not been dancing, but dying.'
Another hilarious and great twist is that the title 'Mupandawana Dancing Competition' has the letters of the name of the opposition party in Zimbabwe, Movement for Democratic Change- MDC. This point, another ingenious construction by the author, is illustrated in a passage where the Governor summons the Member of Parliament for the District to point out this anomaly. The Governor asks, 'What business does a ruling MP have in promoting the opposition, the puppets, those led by tea boys, the detractors who do not understand that the land is the economy and the economy is the land and that the country will never be a colony again, those who seek to reverse the consolidation of the gains of our liberation struggle'. This passage is reminiscent of the many tired speeches laced with obsessive paranoia that one hears from the Ruling Party in Zimbabwe, usually broadcast on the sole National Television Station, Ztv aka Zanu tv.
'The Mupandawana Dancing Champion' is an absolute original. There are many other memorable lines in these pages that coax many memories; as I read one passage or another, I am able to link some characters to someone I know, something I've heard, seen. The different types of maids reeled off in 'The Maid from Lalapanzi' brought to mind my own childhood maids, in particular one who used to come and pick me up from primary school wearing my mother's clothes (it was my first year in primary school at the time and I never used to notice the clothes- until the time my mother came home early and caught her!) As for the Diaspora, almost every Zimbabwean has a relative cultivating those greener Diaspora pastures. A memorable character is Rambanai in 'My Cousin-Sister Rambanai', who has come home for her father's funeral and, due to fraudulent papers and money constraints, is not able to immediately return to America. She is reminiscent of some of those relatives who come home for a visit with too-good-to-be-true-tales, who show off at every turn and spend money like it is their last day on earth (that was possible during the inflated exchange rates on the black market when the Zim dollar was still in use in the country- now we use the rand and the US dollar mostly so prices are stabilzing), taking cabs everywhere and eating in those restaurants that the Zimbabweans at home could no longer afford. The one thing most 'Diasporans' always find difficult is leaving home, and so they always make sure to gulp down as much of it as they can. The writer's accuracy in capturing the lives and traits of Zimbabweans is indeed commendable- it makes these tales all the more precious.
I read this book when I was at home, in Zimbabwe (where I currently am) and have since passed it on to a couple of people to read. The first comments were 'What an unusual cover', 'What an unusual title', 'Oh, there is a Zimbabwean writer called Petina Gappah?' The ordinary man on the street (and most other people actually, actually most people who are not writers or somehow connected to the writing industry) is not aware of the current stories being told re Zimbabwe. He will readily smile when you mention Dambudzo Marechera, Yvonne Vera and Tsitsi Dangarembga, but he will falter when you mention any of the fresh Zim writers. You cannot really blame him, in a country brought to its knees and where not much is done to publicize literature to its people, where the book shops are half empty and where most of its population would consider purchasing a novel a luxury, one can hardly be surprised. The Bulawayo Public Library boasts of a wide collection of Western Fiction and only a cabinet of African Literature, very little, if any of it current. Which is a shame, as stories such as those in 'An Elegy for Easterly' need to filter to the ordinary man on the street, who although does not purchase books, does visit the local library. My little sample of readers like the tales told in this compilation; they feel that the stories speak about them and they like that, they enjoy the humour within the tragedies. One comment that stuck was 'These are Untold Stories'. This, I believe, is what makes this book precious.
Faber and Faber is a big publisher with a large audience, therefore it is to be much appreciated that, in catering for their world wide audience, they have managed to retain the stark Zimbabweaness in Petina Gappah's tales. This means that those who do read, both at home and elsewhere, will get an accurate and humorous view of the things that do happen in our country; perhaps this was not the author's intention but in writing fiction she has given a nice, touching and much valued account of the things Zimbabweans have to deal with, their ingenious methods of dealing with these impossible situations and the strength with which they have done so. The stories are more than just about struggles and glimpses of the elite, they are about lives and certain aspects of a culture and the squabbles that go on, these things that human beings get up to. I'd like to get my hands on the French Version of the book (my French is passable, I'm sure with a dictionary and a copy of the English Version I could labour through). I'm curious as to how they managed the 'Zimbabwean Flavour' in the other languages. Did they keep the Shona, for example? And how did they manage terms like 'Mbaresdale'?
This is indeed a precious compilation that has left me greatly looking forward to the author's upcoming debut novel 'The Book of Memory'.