short-story-writers-from-zimbabwe

"How can words be made still [in writing], without turning into silence? Silence is more to be feared than the agitation of voices."

"Nehanda came out of me like a dream. It has the feeling of a dream when I look at it now. And that suited it, because it concerned a myth, a legend. It was a story of spirituality, of ancestors, a mystic consciousness and a history ... so it was much better to write it almost intuitively, out of my consciousness of being an African, as though I were myself a spirit medium, and I was just transferring or conveying the feelings, symbols and images of that. I wrote it at a time when I could write it, the way one might write a folk-song... I wrote it from remembrance, as a witness to my own spiritual history."

"What were our lives compared to the survival of the earth on which we stood?"

"I always need to be anchored in such a way that I am inside a character."

"Our people know the power of words. It is because of this that they desire to have words continuously spoken and kept alive. We do not believe that words can become independent of the speech that bore them, of the humans who controlled and gave birth to them. [... ] The paper is the stranger’s own peculiar custom. Among ourselves, speech is not like the rock. Words cannot be taken from the people who create them. People are their words."

"I must be in touch with the earth. I can never mistake the source of inspiration and energy to be gender, it is something we all share. It is true, however, that one best writes on themes, feelings, and sentiments one is more closely connected with. In this regard I like to think that I am writing. I am a woman. I am writing."

"needed to enter [Nehanda's] mythic consciousness to really be part of it, to share it and to claim it as my own history and my own identity"

"When I am not writing, which is most of the time… it is as though I am fasting. I am preparing myself. In other words, I no longer know what it is not to be consumed by writing. I anticipate sitting down with a story the way certain women anticipate lovers—with my breath held still, my knees shaking, a tidy room, a clean petticoat, and with no idea how the evening will turn out—in this case the book"

"Fumbatha could never be the beginning or end of all her yearning."

"I wanted to write beyond the photograph, you know, that frozen image, beyond the date, beyond the fact of her dying. If anything in my book she doesn't die, she departs."

"Nehanda holds her silence all day, offering it with the palm of her hand as though it were something solid. She shouts.... closed out the earthly sounds that try to penetrate and disturb her silence."

"The dare was a large clearing in the center of the village. Those who were admitted to the dare knew the power of words. The midwife was also among the shapers of wisdom, who determined the future of the village."

"My tales are tragic, rather than sad, meaning they have a catastrophic force"

"The land cannot be owned. We cannot give him any land because the land does not belong to the living."

"An empty box of matches. A single leather shoe with laces still attached… An inkstand says London. A magnificent metal spoon with a dove embossed on it. Selborne Hotel is written along the broken handle of a ceramic pot"

"I will have had enough intimacies to acquire a general sketch, a thrill, and a confidence. It is the same with books as it is with lovers. If you cannot feel your whole body move towards a book, then you are mostly doodling, or being quite separate from the act of writing. I spend many months between books fasting. I am meditative and spend many hours on my own, with my hunger growing. I love writing; it is a feast for my senses. I write to share this feast with a reader"

"Our forefathers crafted a language that made it difficult to address these contentious issues. In African culture, for example, to talk to my father, I bow. If I am announcing that somebody has died, I use a particular language, a particular tone… so as to convey the message. But for subjects like incest and rape… you are not allowed to mention it. Even to your mother, who must pantomime the news if she tells your aunt"

"The books I write try to undo the silent posture African women have endured over so many decades"

"The work is not their own: it is summoned. The time is not theirs: it is seized. The ordeal is their own."

"If not freedom then rhythm."

"carrying the current of a roar that reminds them of who they have been in the past, but it is also the comforting voice of a woman, of their mothers whom they trust. Her voice throws them into the future."

"I would love to be remembered as a writer who had no fear for words and who had an intense love for her nation"

"I am against silence"

"If speaking is still difficult to negotiate, then writing has created a free space for most women -much freer than speech. The book is bound, circulated, read. It retains its autonomy much more than a woman is allowed in the oral situation."

"Time is as necessary for remembering as it is for forgetting. Even the smallest embrace of pain needs time larger than a pause; the greatest pause requires an eternity, the greatest hurt a lifetime. A lifetime is longer than eternity: an eternity can exist without human presence."

"I doubt that the natives can listen to an old woman like her. What can she tell them? This society has no respect for women, whom they treat like children. A woman has nothing to say in the life of the natives. Nothing at all."

"I would not write if I weren’t in search of beauty, if I was doing it only to advance a cause. I care deeply about my subjects, but I want to be consumed by figures of beauty, by story and character. It must be about perfection. Like a basket-maker or a weaver or a hair-plaiter, you are aware of what you are trying to accomplish from the first sentence"

"She cried, and the women sang her back to sleep, willing a silence onto her. She defied them with her tiny speech-seeking voice and cried all day and all night until her mother fell asleep."

"I was asked by the publisher if I had more stories. I said 'yes' haphazardly, though I had none. He asked for them. Therefore I set out to write them"

"“I think the reason they are my relatives now is they are from my country too - it's like the country has become a real family since we are in America, which is not our country.”"

"“We're hungry but we're together and we're at home and everything is sweeter than dessert.”"

"“Now when the men talk, their voices burn in the air, making smoke all over the place. We hear about change, about new country, about democracy, about elections and what-what."

"“...and the women spread their ntsaroz and sit on one side, the men on the other, like they are two different rivers that are not supposed to meet.”"

"“If Messenger would be to open his mouth right now, his voice would be a terrible wound.”"

"“There are times, though, that no matter how much food I eat, I find the food does nothing for me, like I am hungry for my country and nothing is going to fix that.”"

"“The problem with English is this: You usually can't open your mouth and it comes out just like that--first you have to think what you want to say. Then you have to find the words. Then you have to carefully arrange those words in your head. Then you have to say the words quietly to yourself, to make sure you got them okay. And finally, the last step, which is to say the words out loud and have them sound just right.”"

"“Further and further we go, and the sun keeps ironing us and ironing us and ironing us.”"

"“I used to be very afraid of graveyards and death and such things, but not anymore. There is just no sense of being afraid when you live so near the graves; it would be like the tongue fearing the teeth.”"

"As for the coldness, I have never seen it like this. I mean, coldness that makes like it wants to kill you, like it's telling you, with its snow, that you should go back to where you came from."

"“When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky.”"

"“Aunt Fostalina says when she first came to America she went to school during the day and worked nights at Eliot’s hotels, cleaning hotel rooms together with people from countries like Senegal, Cameroon, Tibet, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and so on. It was like the damn United Nations there, she likes to say.”"

"I am starting to talk fast now, and I have to remember to slow down because when I get excited, I start to sound like myself and my American accent goes away."

"NoViolet Bulawayo has created a world that lives and breathes – and fights, kicks, screams, and scratches, too. She has clothed it in words and given it a voice at once dissonant and melodic, utterly distinct.""

"Look at the children of the land leaving in droves, leaving their own land with bleeding wounds on their bodies and shock on their faces and blood in their hearts and hunger in their stomachs and grief in their footsteps. Leaving their mothers and fathers and children behind, leaving their umbilical cords underneath the soil, leaving the bones of their ancestors in the earth, leaving everything that makes them who and what they are, leaving because it is no longer possible to stay. They will never be the same again because you cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same."

"I am immersed in culture and try to speak it into my Ndebele novels ... These are things that make you who you are, although, of course, modernity is working to erase that. Children are coming along when broader family structures have been broken by urban life and individualism. Our languages themselves are slowly disappearing. These days you may meet a child who cannot speak her mother tongue while also lacking a natural relationship with the English they want to be identified with."

"A loved elder of literature."

"One must find a way of not destroying the spirit in the process of trying to help"

"Even Africa has something to offer. We can offer love, and we can offer from the little we have, even as the story of the widow’s mite tells us, how she gave out of the abundance of her heart."

"Read! Write! Tomorrow's leader."

"It is still the same— Exactly the same. Take up arms and wage war Let your spear be education Let your shield be knowledge Let “truth at all times” be your motto Let your will be the determination to work hard For sisters illiterate still abound. Fight it to enlighten them Fight it by solidarity of purpose Without your participation Grandma fought it Mama fought it I still fight it You have to fight it Your daughters will have to fight it Fight on!"