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Writing Lives
Writing Lives
Writing Lives
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Writing Lives

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Writing Lives, a collection of short stories, featuring Lawrence Hoba, Tendai Huchu, Tendai Machingaidze, Nevanji Madanhire, Daniel Mandishona, Christopher Mlalazi, Blessing Musariri, Chiedza Musengezi, Sekai Nzenza, Fungisayi Sasa and Emmanuel Sigauke. Writing Lives is the seventh of Weaver's anthologies of short stories following Writing Still, Writing Now, Laughing Now, Women Writing Zimbabwe, Mazambuko and Writing Free. As with the other anthologies, this vibrant collection reflects the lives and experiences of Zimbabweans as filtered through the lens of each author's perceptions. Writing Lives gives us stories that will make us laugh and bring tears to our eyes as it provides a focus on the past, the present and even the future.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherWeaver Press
Release dateOct 14, 2013
ISBN9781779222565
Writing Lives

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Rating: 3.3076923076923075 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

13 ratings21 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book caught me by surprise by how much I enjoyed it. I'm no "writer". I have no craft and don't claim any or expect to gain any in the future. I feared that the slender volume might either be: (A) a tediously boring how-to book, filled with rules, like "Always have fresh typewriter ribbon" or "Use only #3 pencils", or (B) mind-numbingly esoteric and touchy-feely in reaching writing nirvana. Amazingly and beautifully so, it was neither. One could argue that the book is not so much a treatise on writing but a collection of essays, but it felt very, very connected to me. Early sections could be described as a bit "how-to", or more precisely, how-it-is, to write, that is, seriously write, and, if the author is to be believed, it's quite painful. But then, later sections belie that impression in remarkably vivid ways. I was especially impressed by a story the author relates about being told a story by another writer, involving rowing a boat in waters in which I have actually kayaked in myself. Touching on something I was so familiar with helped draw me in, but the point made by the story was 100% spot on for making its point. This slim work is very much worth the time for anyone who thrives on good writing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    My experience with NaNoWriMo this year reminded me of high school and, oddly enough, reading The Writing Life reminded me of NaNoWriMo. It's not mutual, however; this book only reminded me of high school in the sense that I could imagine being required to read and analyze it on a high school level. Maybe it's because Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and An American Childhood are both reading list titles here (though I was never required to read them), but I still found myself picking out phrases here and there that in my brain sounded like the clanking and clinking of doing dishes. Those were the sort of wincing noises I hear now while reading phrases and excerpts that "discussion" questions would have been based on. (They were never really discussion questions, were they? You could answer them quite simply in 2-3 sentences and being that they had right or wrong answers, there wasn't much to discuss once someone got them right.)NaNoWriMo reminded me of high school primarily because of this excerpt on pages 70-71:Hemingway studied, as models, the novels of Knut Hamsun and Ivan Turgenev. Isaac Bashevis Singer, as it happened, also chose Hansun and Turgenev as models. Ralph Ellison studied Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. Thoreau loved Homer; Eudora Welty loved Chekhov. Faulkner described his debt to Sherwood Anderson and Joyce; E. M. Forster, his debt to Jane Austen and Proust. By contrast, if you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, "Nobody's." In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat. Rembrandt and Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Gauguin, possessed, I believe, powerful hearts, not powerful wills. They loved the range of materials they used. The work's possibilities excited them; the field's complexities fired their imaginations. The caring suggested the tasks; the tasks suggested the schedules. They learned their fields and then loved them. They worked, respectfully, out of their love and knowledge, and they produced complex bodies of work that endure. Then, and only then, the world flapped at them some sort of hat, which, if they were still living, they ignored as well as they could, to keep at their tasks.It's not that I don't think anyone at NaNoWriMo is a real writer; it's more that the majority of the people I conversed with during my time at the forums weren't. This was their first foray into writing and they believed themselves to be absolutely brilliant. Had they read anything in the past year? No, just magazine articles on pop celebrities. It's the idea that people only write to wear "the hat," to take the role, to call themselves "an author" after they've spit out a load of filler material to make a certain word count. It's that people think writing a novel within a month is enough, that they'll get published immediately even sometimes without editing. Falling in love with the first draft never gets anyone anywhere. Most final drafts only slightly resemble first drafts. That's how it should be, but the "twenty-one-year-old poet" who likes "Nobody's" poetry ruined the whole experience for me. That's not to say that I discourage people from writing for the first time, nor do I discourage anyone from striving to make a great work of writing even if it's their first time. This is why I've fallen in love with NaNoWriMo: because even if you have no experience with it, the community strives to encourage you to reach your goal. Some people might get high-hatted believing only in their brilliance and their certain success, but the world outside of NaNoWriMo is full of people who think they're more important than they are. It's one of those "double-edged swords" that people talk about, like the argument that Oprah's book club is awful in the mind of a reader of literature, because no one would have read One Hundred Years of Solitude were it not for her choice. However, at the same time, it's so wonderful that the book is getting exposure, that it's being read, because (supposedly) it's a wonderful book! It's the people who have that Tshirt that says "I listen to bands that don't exist yet." People who, for some reason, feel that these things are personally theirs and belong to their group; they are threatened when "outsiders"* take interest in their things. *"Outsiders" being housewives, new writers, younger generations, whatever. It's not something that is easily explained away. I don't know why people do this. I don't know why "I knew about them before you did" is such an important statement to make. I don't know why it bothers me that people who complete a NaNoWriMo novel then feel like they can walk around calling themselves authors, saying that their brilliant work is going to get published immediately because it embodies perfection. And I can't say whether it bugs me more that they haven't read a book for pleasure in their life, or that they are trying to take something that I've worked very hard for.USA Today's review on the back of this book says that "You want to copy out what it says, tape it to your typewriter, fix it with a heavy magnet to your fridge. Her words give courage." It is that courage that makes this book remind me of NaNoWriMo. The positives. I've moved away from the loop of wondering why something I seek to encourage bothers me. Pages 78-79:One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice, in the handwriting of his old age: "Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time."This should be the slogan over at Nanowrimo.org. Everyone should have this in mind when they write. NaNoWriMo is about getting the words out, letting the ideas hit the paper (or screen, as it were), about pushing yourself to write that masterpiece you've been putting off because of "lack of time" or "slim motivation." Annie Dillard encourages the same thing. Make a schedule and get it all out. You'll have to breathe, you'll have to eat and sleep and maybe take walks, but when you're not doing those things, let the words go.It's uninspiring to me to read books detailing a "writer's life." Usually they involve agents, publishers, problems with copyeditors and book cover designers. I find it uninteresting because it doesn't apply to my life. Annie Dillard's Writing Life, however, doesn't include much if any of that. It's about what keeps her going, what things have inspired her, what are the frustrations and distractions that all writers face. It's inspiring to me because there is a whole chapter dedicated to watching an airplane pilot spin circles in the air and finding the beauty in the lines that he creates; there is nothing about the life of an already published author. It's universal.I would like to acquire two copies of this book so I can snip passages from the pages and stick them around my apartment. I might end up with the whole book on my walls.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A book that makes me think and smile on every page. My first read from this author that has me searching for more. Language that inspires thought and words that inspire action. Delightful! I'll be back!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Anecdotal journey of a writer's career. Introspective and illuminates some of the biggest difficulties a dedicated writer has to overcome. Good insights to think about for beginning or struggling writers.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I remember loving this, but I have absolutely no memory of it except something about staring at a brick wall.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This is a group of short essays more or less about life while writing (well, except for the last chapter, which is entirely about a stunt pilot). While I usually find books around writing inspiring and informative, this slim volume did nothing for me. The author spends a lot of time describing the agony and tedium of writing right after saying that the amount of work put into a book is irrelevant to its quality. Some of the language was kind of pretty, but in general it felt disjointed and self-serving, like reading an amatuer's blog.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    My experience with NaNoWriMo this year reminded me of high school and, oddly enough, reading The Writing Life reminded me of NaNoWriMo. It's not mutual, however; this book only reminded me of high school in the sense that I could imagine being required to read and analyze it on a high school level. Maybe it's because Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and An American Childhood are both reading list titles here (though I was never required to read them), but I still found myself picking out phrases here and there that in my brain sounded like the clanking and clinking of doing dishes. Those were the sort of wincing noises I hear now while reading phrases and excerpts that "discussion" questions would have been based on. (They were never really discussion questions, were they? You could answer them quite simply in 2-3 sentences and being that they had right or wrong answers, there wasn't much to discuss once someone got them right.)NaNoWriMo reminded me of high school primarily because of this excerpt on pages 70-71:Hemingway studied, as models, the novels of Knut Hamsun and Ivan Turgenev. Isaac Bashevis Singer, as it happened, also chose Hansun and Turgenev as models. Ralph Ellison studied Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. Thoreau loved Homer; Eudora Welty loved Chekhov. Faulkner described his debt to Sherwood Anderson and Joyce; E. M. Forster, his debt to Jane Austen and Proust. By contrast, if you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, "Nobody's." In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat. Rembrandt and Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Gauguin, possessed, I believe, powerful hearts, not powerful wills. They loved the range of materials they used. The work's possibilities excited them; the field's complexities fired their imaginations. The caring suggested the tasks; the tasks suggested the schedules. They learned their fields and then loved them. They worked, respectfully, out of their love and knowledge, and they produced complex bodies of work that endure. Then, and only then, the world flapped at them some sort of hat, which, if they were still living, they ignored as well as they could, to keep at their tasks.It's not that I don't think anyone at NaNoWriMo is a real writer; it's more that the majority of the people I conversed with during my time at the forums weren't. This was their first foray into writing and they believed themselves to be absolutely brilliant. Had they read anything in the past year? No, just magazine articles on pop celebrities. It's the idea that people only write to wear "the hat," to take the role, to call themselves "an author" after they've spit out a load of filler material to make a certain word count. It's that people think writing a novel within a month is enough, that they'll get published immediately even sometimes without editing. Falling in love with the first draft never gets anyone anywhere. Most final drafts only slightly resemble first drafts. That's how it should be, but the "twenty-one-year-old poet" who likes "Nobody's" poetry ruined the whole experience for me. That's not to say that I discourage people from writing for the first time, nor do I discourage anyone from striving to make a great work of writing even if it's their first time. This is why I've fallen in love with NaNoWriMo: because even if you have no experience with it, the community strives to encourage you to reach your goal. Some people might get high-hatted believing only in their brilliance and their certain success, but the world outside of NaNoWriMo is full of people who think they're more important than they are. It's one of those "double-edged swords" that people talk about, like the argument that Oprah's book club is awful in the mind of a reader of literature, because no one would have read One Hundred Years of Solitude were it not for her choice. However, at the same time, it's so wonderful that the book is getting exposure, that it's being read, because (supposedly) it's a wonderful book! It's the people who have that Tshirt that says "I listen to bands that don't exist yet." People who, for some reason, feel that these things are personally theirs and belong to their group; they are threatened when "outsiders"* take interest in their things. *"Outsiders" being housewives, new writers, younger generations, whatever. It's not something that is easily explained away. I don't know why people do this. I don't know why "I knew about them before you did" is such an important statement to make. I don't know why it bothers me that people who complete a NaNoWriMo novel then feel like they can walk around calling themselves authors, saying that their brilliant work is going to get published immediately because it embodies perfection. And I can't say whether it bugs me more that they haven't read a book for pleasure in their life, or that they are trying to take something that I've worked very hard for.USA Today's review on the back of this book says that "You want to copy out what it says, tape it to your typewriter, fix it with a heavy magnet to your fridge. Her words give courage." It is that courage that makes this book remind me of NaNoWriMo. The positives. I've moved away from the loop of wondering why something I seek to encourage bothers me. Pages 78-79:One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice, in the handwriting of his old age: "Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time."This should be the slogan over at Nanowrimo.org. Everyone should have this in mind when they write. NaNoWriMo is about getting the words out, letting the ideas hit the paper (or screen, as it were), about pushing yourself to write that masterpiece you've been putting off because of "lack of time" or "slim motivation." Annie Dillard encourages the same thing. Make a schedule and get it all out. You'll have to breathe, you'll have to eat and sleep and maybe take walks, but when you're not doing those things, let the words go.It's uninspiring to me to read books detailing a "writer's life." Usually they involve agents, publishers, problems with copyeditors and book cover designers. I find it uninteresting because it doesn't apply to my life. Annie Dillard's Writing Life, however, doesn't include much if any of that. It's about what keeps her going, what things have inspired her, what are the frustrations and distractions that all writers face. It's inspiring to me because there is a whole chapter dedicated to watching an airplane pilot spin circles in the air and finding the beauty in the lines that he creates; there is nothing about the life of an already published author. It's universal.I would like to acquire two copies of this book so I can snip passages from the pages and stick them around my apartment. I might end up with the whole book on my walls.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Annie Dillard does not glamorise the writing life. She tells it as it is - mostly hard work, occasional high flying. Many of the metaphors and little stories she tells to describe the life of a writer are amusing, but hit hard at any romantic notions about writing. The cameo story she tells of an inchworm climbing one blade of grass after another, searching frantically for the next step at the top of each blade, resonated with me. Hammering together lines of words, probing ideas, keeping the whole thing together never gets easier. We just keep blindly on, climbing the blade, searching for the next, leaping into the void in faith. So often we write into the dark. Even long-published, feted writers like Annie Dillard, fear that no one reads them, except maybe nerds, academics, or other writers in the same field. Once, after publishing a long and complex essay partly concerning a moth and a candle, she thought that no one but an academic critic had understood it, or even read it. Some little boys came to the door as she was despairing about her wasted life. One of the children noticed a picture of a candle and asked if that was the one that the moth had flown into. Annie was bowled over. A child had heard the story and understood it well enough to tell it back. Such incidents lighten the solitude of writing and make the grind worthwhile. I highly recommend this small book to any writer or aspiring writer. It is full of pearls of wisdom and Annie Dillard parables. It encourages even as it sweeps the rose-coloured glasses onto the floor.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I thought this was dreadful, 110 pages of navel watching, embellished with self indulgent poetic musings. Others have found it spiritual, sensitive and lucid. I thought it was a real yawn.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I'm not a writer, so I couldn't really identify with anything in here. I also did not have the desire to become a writer after reading this book! Dillard makes it sound completely non-glamorous - spending time in places that offer the best sensory deprivation (i.e. a blah room with no view) and continuously poisoning the body with loads of caffeine and cigarettes. I have never read any of her other work, but I guess she writes a lot about nature? I was surprised to find, then, that she does not do her work while in nature. Also, there is a scene in the book where she tells an acquaintance that she hates what she does! I have to say that I wouldn't have minded a little more encouragement to pick up writing from this book. Maybe I will find another writer's writing on writing which is a bit more positive and enthusiastic on the topic. Not that I was expecting that from this book; I went into this one with a blank slate; it's just that this book has now prompted me to want to find a contrasting book.

    One thing I could identify with the most was the questioning of living a life of the mind. It's something I constantly struggle with. I love to read and learn and study, and I'm always asking myself why am I doing so much thinking/imagining but hardly ever actually *doing* anything with my life? I can't say that Dillard really gave a satisfying resolution to this question, but I appreciated the attention given to the issue.

    The book held my interest enough and didn't provoke many negative feelings in me, so 3 stars.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    You know that oh-so expressive word, "meh"? Well, that was kind of my reaction to Annie Dillard's slim volume, THE WRITING LIFE. I didn't find it all that exciting or enlightening. In fact there seemed to me to be a bit of ostentatious navel-gazing; maybe even a bit of intellectual 'showing off.' While there were a few semi-interesting bits here and there, like her descriptions of where she has written - a primitive cabin on an island in Puget Sound, a cinder block room in a college library, a well-equipped 'shed' on Cape Cod, etc. - there are no real revelations here about the writing life per se. Her description of her flight with a geologist-stunt pilot was interesting, and ... Ah, what the hell, maybe I just didn't 'get' what she was trying to do here. To my mind, William Zinsser's books on writing are more useful, and certainly a lot more interesting. They are: ON WRITING WELL; WRITING ABOUT YOUR LIFE; and WRITING PLACES. Try those books. You'll be getting a lot more bang for your buck. Sorry, Annie. I loved AN AMERICAN CHILDHOOD, but this one? Meh.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Annie Dillard is a brilliant writer, but this book -- a collection of meditations on writing -- meanders around her writing career, sometimes stopping for a minute or two to kick at the dirt.

    Sprinkled throughout are stories about other writers and adventurers, and while some sparkle, others feel forced, left to dangle.

    The Writing Life is not a how-to manual or a bulleted list of pointers for young writers (no one said it was) -- and it's clearly the kind of meditation that invites the writer to wander -- but while the prose is sometimes beautiful and the glimpses into her life are interesting, The Writing Life ultimately feels unfocused.

    It's a thin book and because it's written by Annie Dillard the prose is at times breathtaking, but it doesn't reach the level of a book that will find a permanent place on my shelf.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Dillard's little lightning storm of a book can be summarized so: the writing life isn't very romantic. Writing is a quiet act. The writer spends a lot of time alone, a unreliable imagination and half-realized characters the writer's only company; the diligent writer spends a lot of time obsessing about sentences, as well as obsessing about obsessions; the writer arranges the proper order of things in a useless imaginative world. Ultimately, no one cares about what the writer finally produces or publishes, except perhaps the writers's mother.

    And if you want to be of use to the world, become a teacher, fireman, minister. Become a ferry boat operator. Don't write.



  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book isn't about how to write, but rather it is about what the experience of writing, day in and day out, is like. It is part memoir, part meditation. It is written in such lush, beautiful prose that it is hard to believe Dillard when she confides how difficult writing is for her. Perhaps the best way to convey what this book is like is through a quote:"At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your back, your heart, your brain, but then - and only then - it is handed to you. From the corner of your eye you see motion. Something is moving through the air and headed your way. It is a parcel bound in ribbon and bows; it has two white wings. It flies directly at you; you can read you name on it. If it were a baseball, you would hit it out of the park. It is that one pitch in a thousand you see in slow motion; its wings beat slowly as a hawks." This is a slim volume in which each sentence does a yeoman's work.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The work of writing, examined in lyrical, sophisticated prose.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was in search of books on essays, not so much on how to write but how to go about writing. The approach, the discipline of writing. I have been a writer of technical material most of my life and I wanted to look at non-technical writing. This little book was not what I was looking for at the time, but it is definitely inspirational in unexpected ways.The book seemed to be unstructured, even though it is. The ideas within each chapter leads nicely into one another and it tells Annie Dillards story of what she fights with daily as a writer and what joys she finds in writing, the joys which continues to propel her onward at her craft. I enjoyed the book thoroughly even though I stumbled onto it by accident. Ms Dillard kind of gave me a "hang in there, I've been there too.." feeling, which is always comforting. She also uses some incredible writing to convey her experience. So you can look at the book on many levels, as a very nice work of writing, as an advice book, and as an enjoyable read.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    As a writer with only one published novel I am always looking to learn more about the writing life, looking to hone my skills, to improve. I had hoped to glean some rare look into how to write skilfully from Dillard's writing. This 111 page book took me three days to read (normally I would have finished in 30 minutes) however I wanted to absorb each gem of knowledge, and so kept reading intently, taking breaks hoping it would get better the next time I picked it up. Most writers seem to spend an inordinate amount of time doing anything to avoid writing Dillard seemed to spend most of her time avoiding writing about writing, and if that was not annoying enough - I wanted the good stuff - the time she did spend on the writing life was so depressing that if I was reading this book in hopes of becoming a writer I'd have probably gone a slit my wrists. What a complete waste of time this book was.

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Fast-moving and graceful, this is worth reading for any writer or artist. Dillard's meditations on her own way of life, and on the choices involved with living as a writer, are so insightful as to push readers toward examining their own choices and paths. With her humor and honesty, the book ends up being full of revelations and humor.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Annie Dillard is a treasure and this book is doubly so.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I read this book ages ago, and its quiet simplicity makes it one I return to again and again. If you like reading and writing, this slim volume will surprise and please you to no end.Here is an example of Dillard’s delightful style: “Why would anyone read a book instead of watching big people move on a screen? Because a book can be literature. It is a subtle thing – a poor thing, but our own. In my view, the more literary the book -- the more purely verbal, crafted sentence by sentence, the more imaginative, reasoned, and deep – the more likely people are to read it. The people who read are the people who like literature, after all, whatever that might be. They like, or require, what books alone have” (19).You need this book. You need to sit down some quiet afternoon and read it. Then, keep it close by and read it again when the fancy strikes you! 5 stars--Jim, 11/24/09
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Writing Life is a series of reflections on, appropriately enough, the life of writing – the grueling, dreadful, dispiriting life of writing. Such a book will probably not be of much interest for those who don't experience this struggle on a daily basis, but for those who do, the book is about as good as they come: honest, brave, and poetic.Although there is scattered advice within its pages ("Aim for the chopping block"; "A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all"), this really is not a book about how to write. Rather, it is about what it is like to write ("This is your life. You are a Seminole alligator wrestler"), how it feels to write ("But how, if you are neither Zulu warrior nor Aztec maiden, do you prepare yourself, all alone, to enter an extraordinary state on an ordinary morning?").Which is to say: The Writing Life provides neither encouragement nor enlightenment. It does, however, provide companionship; and when living the life of writing, sometimes that's exactly what you need.

Book preview

Writing Lives - Weaver Press

Writing Lives

Writing Lives

edited by

Irene Staunton

Published by Weaver Press, Box A1922, Avondale, Harare. 2013

<www.weaverpresszimbabwe.com>

© Each individual story, the author.

© This collection, Weaver Press, 2013.

Photographs of the authors: Lawrence Hoba, Nevanji Madanhire, Daniel Mandishona, Chris Mlalazi, Chiedza Musengezi, Sekai Nzenza (Weaver Press), Tendai Machingaidze (Taku Machingaidze), Blessing Musariri (Fungaifoto), Fungisayi Sasa (Rumbidzai Sasa).

Cover Design: Design Duo, Harare.

Printed by: <print@rockingrat.com>

All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise – without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-77922-235-0

Contents

Notes about the Authors

Our Freedom by Lawrence Hoba

The Life After by Tendai Huchu

The Red Vienna is Back by Tendai Machingaidze

Her Books by Nevanji Madanhire

Better Build Boys than Repair Men by Daniel Mandishona

Tsano by Christopher Mlalazi

Like Datsun by Blessing Musariri

Trespassers by Chiedza Musengezi

My Grandmother by Sekai Nzenza

We’re All Comrades Now by Fungisayi Sasa

Battle by Emmanuel Sigauke

Notes about the Authors

Lawrence Hoba was born in 1983 in Masvingo. He is an entrepreneur, literacy promoter and author who studied Tourism and Hospitality Management at the University of Zimbabwe. Hoba’s short stories and poetry have appeared in a number of publications including Zimbablog, a journal of the Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe, the Warwick Review (2009), Writing Now (2005) and Laughing Now (2007). His anthology, The Trek and Other Stories (2009) was nominated for the NAMA, 2010 and went on to win the ZBPA award for Best Literature in English.

Tendai Huchu is the author of The Hairdresser of Harare, which is now translated into German, French and Italian. In 2013 he was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship and a Sacatar Fellowship in Bahia. His short fiction has appeared in various journals and anthologies around the world. He is currently working on his next novel.

Tendai Machingaidze was born in Harare. She attended Syracuse University in New York, where she obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry, Magna cum Laude. She also holds an MA in Christian Education and a Master of Divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas. Her hobbies include dance, travel, and writing.

Nevanji Madanhire, born in 1961, has worked as a journalist since 1990. In 1996 he became Editor-in-Chief of what was then Zimbabwe’s only independent newspaper, The Financial Gazette. In 1998, he was part of the team that founded The Daily News. In 2002, he became the founding editor of The Business Tribune, which quickly grew its readership and circulation because of its fierce independence. It was banned in 2004. He then became the country editor of a London-based NGO, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. There, he built up a team of ten journalists, which gave the world fresh insights into the Zimbabwean crisis. Since January 2010, he has been editor of the weekly Sunday newspaper, The Standard. He has published two books, Goatsmell, (1993) and If the Wind Blew, (1995). He has published short stories in anthologies such as Writing Still (2003), All Creatures Great and Small (2006) and Mazambuko (2011). He hopes to become a full-time writer when circumstances allow.

Daniel Mandishona is an architect. He was born in Harare in 1959 and brought up by his maternal grandparents in Mbare (then known as Harari township). In 1976 he was expelled from Goromonzi Secondary School. He lived in London from 1977-92. He first studied Graphic Design, then Architecture at the Bartlett School, University College, London. He now has his own practice in Harare. His first short story, ‘A Wasted Land’ was published in Contemporary African Short Stories (1992). A collection of his short stories, White Gods Black Demons, was published in 2009.

Christopher Mlalazi is currently Guest Writer of the City of Hanover in Germany, the latest in a series of writing fellowships. In 2012, he was a fellow at the Iowa International Writing Program, USA; in 2011, he was Guest Writer at the Nordic Africa Institute in Sweden; and, in 2010, Guest Writer at Villa Aurora, in Los Angeles, USA. Prolific as a prose writer and playwright, in 2008 he was the co-winner of the Oxfam Novib PEN Freedom of Expression Award at the Hague for theatre. In 2009, he was given a NAMA award for his short story collection, Dancing With Life: Tales From the Township. He was nominated for another NAMA for his novel Many Rivers (2009). In 2010 he won a NAMA for his play Election Day. He is is currently working on a new novel, They Are Coming, which was longlisted for the 2013 Kwani Manuscript Project award.

Blessing Musariri wishes she could dance like the contestants on, ‘So You Think You Can Dance’, but she has no memory for routines. So, failing that, she hopes she writes even half as well as she wishes she could dance. It is her dream to write a multi-award-winning work of fiction that will be made into a major motion picture.

Chiedza Musengezi has co-edited compilations of women’s voices in: Women of Resilience (2000), Women Writing Africa: The Southern Region (2003) and A Tragedy of Lives: Women in Prison in Zimbabwe (2003). Her short stories and poetry have been anthologised locally and internationally. She taught in Ireland and she currently works for the Legal Resources Foundation in Harare. Chiedza was published in Writing Still (2003), Writing Now (2005) and Women Writing Zimbabwe (2008).

Sekai Nzenza is a writer and an international development consultant specialising in NGO accountability, health, microenterprise and human rights. She was born in rural Zimbabwe and trained as a nurse at Great Ormond Street in London. She holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her essays, fiction and short stories have been published in a number of newspapers and journals including The Guardian Weekly and The Herald. Her second novel, Songs to an African Sunset: A Zimbabwean Story (1997), presents stories of everyday life and the challenges of poverty in rural Zimbabwe.

Sekai returned to Zimbabwe in 2010. Confronted with the consequences of HIV/AIDS, death and poverty in her village, she and the Village Women’s Burial Society formed the Simukai Development Project whose aim is to seek practical sustainable solutions to solving rural poverty.

Fungisayi Sasa lives in England. She has written a children’s book, The Search Head, and her work has appeared in Blue-Eyed Boybait, Spilt Milk magazine, Wordsetc and Writing Free (2011). Several of her poems have been published by Poetry International (Zimbabwe). She is currently working on a short story collection and a novel.

Emmanuel Sigauke grew up in Zimbabwe where he began writing at around age thirteen. He has attempted different genres and has published poetry and short fiction. He resides in Sacramento, California, where he teaches English at Cosumnes River College. He is the founding editor of Munyori Literary Journal and is involved in organisations such as the Sacramento Poetry Center and Writers International Network, Zimbabwe, and others. He has co-edited African Roar, an annual anthology of short fiction by African writers, a continent-wide initiative.

Our Freedom

Lawrence Hoba

‘It is only in celebrating death that

we can fully understand life.’

We trudged slowly along, bright early summer stars lighting our way. Meshack, who’d driven us a part of the way, could take us no further. We thanked him, knowing there was nothing more he could do. There was no fuel. We’d spent two hours with him trying to find the twenty litres needed to go kumusha and then come back to town; we’d only managed to find five, and these we’d had to drain from another car. It was a bad time to die, and our Freedom had chosen to do just that.

Dzika led us, sometimes stopping abruptly without saying why, sometimes trotting, sometimes shaking his head or murmuring, ‘saka Freedom hakuchina’. We all followed him, he knew the short cuts better than any of us. Later, he would recount how he’d led the way that day, and how we wouldn’t have made it to Freedom’s funeral without his help; he told the story with such fervour that one could think he’d been carrying us on his back. That was Dzika: but for all his boasting, we liked him and so we just responded, ‘zvakaoma shuwa’.

We didn’t speak much on the way. Freedom hadn’t spoken much either to give us memories of how sweet he’d been in his short life. But that night, carrying nothing but a few heads of cabbage and a packet of salt, and knowing that food was even scarcer where we were going, I began to think back over everything. Surely, it would have been better for us if Freedom had been stillborn – or shown some sign of weakness or deformity at birth. Then, we could have done something, anything, to ensure that Freedom survived. Things were still good for us at the time. And, as we say, nyoka dzanga dzichakavhurika. And my brother was still alive. They could have tried again.

Yet, no one knew or could have known that anything was wrong with him that early. How could we have suspected anything, when the elders, who saw him first, came back to us with nothing but admiration? Even the women, who saw him emerging from his mother’s womb, the placenta not quite off him yet, had gasped at his beauty. Gogo had insisted the baby would not be born in a ‘foreign’ hospital: that was what had caused the birth of ‘vakadzi vese ava and no man at all,’ she said. There were things she wanted to do. Things only she and other elders knew how to do. They would make Freedom a strong man who would outlive us all. We trusted them. Why wouldn’t we?

Because, when Freedom was born, he was everything we’d been waiting for. We called him ‘our Freedom’ because he arrived at a time when everyone said that freedom was dying. But, we claimed, that was their freedom, not ours. Ours was a beacon who would carry the family’s name and hopes into the future; the first boy of his generation to carry the clan’s name forward. He’d given us the freedom from our worries of extinction. What did it matter that all around us other freedoms were crumbling?

Our Freedom was born smiling. We were living in the army camp then, so we had no idea what the hell those freedom criers were grumbling about. We were used to night curfews, we always carried our IDs, we could not forget who we were and enjoy ourselves without being reminded of the Base Warrant Officer. We envied

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