WINZ Newsletter, Issue No 19

Welcome to our bubbly nineteenth issue, hoping that you had an inspirational Easter holiday. We are still excited about the new partnership with the Global Arts Trust, which has enabled us to constitutionally launch our manuscript assessment programme with the objective to identify publishable manuscripts and assist the authors to get their works published. It is wonderful working with Tinashe Muchuri, Global Arts Trust Programme Officer who is also our Regular Writer columnist. Win-Zimbabwe is glad with its own pace, not fast, not slow, but moving onward. If you are in Zimbabwe, don’t look further, the answer has been found so that you write for publication. Enjoy!

 FLASHBACK!

Cynthia "Flow-chyld" Marangwanda, one of Zimbabwe's female hip-hop poets on the rise, 

performing at Win-Zimbabwe's Literary Treats event at the 2010 ZIBF

Let the children play: School children at the Literary Treats events

THE REGULAR WRITER

With

 

Tinashe “Mutumwapavi” Muchuri

Another Female Voice Born

On the evening of April 14 2011 Harare writers came together at the popular Book Café for a book launch that announced yet another voice into the literary zone.

The African Tea Cosy, written under the pseudonym Violet Masilo and published by Zimbabwe Women Writers (ZWW), is a book that will speak for the voiceless women in Zimbabwe and the world at large. 

University of Zimbabwe lecturer and author, Memory Chirere, who was also the director of ceremony, said, “I was lucky to be the first person to read the book. It is a thriller, fast paced, erotic and well written.” 

Masilo, the author, said she used a pseudonym for various reasons. 

“I have gone out of the box. I have done things deemed taboo in a woman’s day-to-day life. Zimbabwean women are not yet free to express themselves about issues concerning them. Many of you know me with other names. I have many names. I took my elder sister’s first name Violet, and my paternal grandmother’s name as a tribute to the two’s tireless work in teaching me the vowels (a.e.i.o.u). When I enrolled for my first grade I only learnt for two weeks and was put in the next grade,” she said.

Masilo said The African Tea Cosy is a book that she wrote slowly since she is a busy mother, with five (5) children including Chenai who read from the book at this launch. She thanked the Zimbabwe Women Writers for the guidance and encouragement.

Present at the launch was Win-Zimbabwe’s Board Chairperson Josephine Muganiwa, who is also a lecturer at the UZ and another Win-Zimbabwe Board member and UZ lecturer Edwin Mhandu. 

Commenting on The African Tea Cosy, Muganiwa said, “I enjoyed the ending and the way Masilo handled her characters in the book.  When I was reading the book I thought the writer would lose some of her characters along the way but she didn’t.”

Edwin Mhandu, a crime story lover said, “The book captures topical issues and sex is one of them. It talks of ‘sex women’ who have various needs which they want men to provide. Each man is needed for a different purpose. These are not prostitutes, but are women in control of their lives. Apart from its capacity to capture human nature, the writing is intense. This is a book that also deals with crime in Zimbabwe. I found it hard to put it down.’

In her vote of thanks Chairperson of the Board of Directors of ZWW, Mrs. Mtshiya, told the ZWW story spanning 20 years. She said, funds permitting, ZWW aims to publish more women writers.

ZWW, an arts and culture organisation that promotes and publishes women writing, has to date published more than fifteen books by women, including the NAMA award winning Women in Prison: The Tragedy of Lives and Totanga Patsva.

Meanwhile, there is a blog created for The African Tea Cosy and here is the link: http://africanteacosy.blogspot.com/2011/03/african-tea-cosy.html.

POETRY

What shall we bring the children?

By Abel Ndebvu

What shall we bring the children back home,
who skip about like goats, like kittens, naughty than monkeys?

Then when night draws nigh,
Dust-masked, clay-made goblins-
At once remembering their bellies were empty since morning,
what shall we bring the children back home,

Who in slumber they are dead, un-clad little voodoo dolls,
Muttering words, children who deep in their sleep

Replay an exciting dream of the hide and seek game?

What shall we bring our boys and girls back home?
Insane tiny minds imps intoxicated,
solely driving bricks and wire-made cars,
sneaking into neighbours’ yards to steal fruits!
What shall we bring to the obsessed little princesses,
cooking mud in jam-tins with sticks, a feast to Shrek?
Princesses who mimic mothers sitting on the dressing tables

 Applying make-up
adorably dressed, as their dear dolls laugh at them?

What shall we bring our children back home?
Now that we miss listening to their amusing conversations,
like lunatic tales of fools in a raucous beer hall-
Involved, answering their own endless questions!!
What shall we bring?
What shall we bring?
To our sweet angels with unborn teeth,
(With decayed ones spitted and buried).
Still beautiful smiles, when they stick their tongues out from the gap a-front.

What shall we bring?

When we are far and yet close?

(25 year old Abel Ndebvu is currently in South Africa where he is studying for a degree. He did his Advanced Level at Rimuka High in Kadoma. Ndebvu loves writing poetry, and reading too.)