More On Day One of the Indaba

REBUILDING THE BROKEN LITERARY SYNERGY

Winzim Online Media

Dr. Cheela Chilala from Zambia

The first two papers presented on July 29, 2019, at the Indaba, seemed to address both extrinsic and intrinsic features of the synergy that ought to exist between major stakeholders in the book industry. 

Monica Mpambawashe, a writer and journalist, chaired this insightful session.

In her articulation of how the book industry nosedived after the boom of the early days, Roseleine Torai Kumvekera (nee Mukwewa), a lecturer at Nyadire Teachers College, showed a number of factors behind the boom and what needs to be done to restore it in the contemporary times.

She decried the diminishing reading culture, a phenomenon she described as being caused by a ‘mutation and evolution’.

Kumvekera told of the story of how this mutation and evolution has happened. After Independence, the literacy level in Zimbabwe shot up, the ZIBF was launched, writers wrote and publishers published. Yet along the way, the literary sector took a downward route and Kumvekera attributed this to influences of the e-books and the TV, among other forces.

Today, the updated curriculum is calling for writers to produce material for the education system, which shows there is a demand for books. All this, she said, exposes the debt which authors have to pay the reader.

While the readers have always had diverse tastes, Kumvekera said authors must strive to meet the demand.

Her paper was based on a research she undertook with a colleague to see how the current broken relationship between the author and the reader can be resolved.

Readers and writers, she reasoned, owe each other certain things such as honesty, information, respect, adventure, platforms for conversation, loyalty.

“Today’s young people love adventure. As they are given adventure, they’re being taught life skills. Writers, therefore, owe readers escape routes, destination and adventure,” she said.

Publishers, on the other hand, need to be loyal to the writer. She said due to the absence of loyalty and respect for authorship, many authors are deciding to self-publish.

Furthermore, writers owe readers valuable information, yet ironically, it is the reader who also must provide the information for the writer to write.

According to her, the remedy lies in producing more books in various forms such as audio and e-books, in innovative bookselling and in having workshops for parents to educate them on legal purchase of books.

Dr. Cheela Chilala carefully examined the intrinsic power of the book versus the power which people try to exercise over the book. His paper was titled ‘Are Stories Innocent: An Evaluation of the Relationship between Books and People’.

What was interesting about this paper is that it subtly brought about the issue of ‘the politics of reading’ which has been discussed in fields of literary philosophy.

Dr. Chilala, who believes in the power of books, said, “Books are so powerful that they leave footprints on the sand of human history and development and these footprints are three dimensional.”

To illustrate this power existent in books, this power that leaves footprints in the lives of people, he talked about how the great African writer Chinua Achebe once reacted to a fiction text called Mr. Johnson written by a British writer.

The book Mr. Johnson had so much power that it affected Achebe and Dr. Chilala said this could have been the reason why Achebe decided to write one of his novels almost in response to way this book portrayed the African people, Nigerians in particular. 

After reading Mr. Johnson, Achebe had to say that there is actually such a thing as a “poisoned tale”, meaning that the writer has the power to actually arrange text in such a manner that its innocence becomes questionable. The book, according to Dr. Chilala’s presentation, evoked in Achebe his “childhood assumptions of the innocence of the stories”.

Even today, the Zambian lecturer added, people are still approaching a book with the view that it is objective and has an innocent story. This urges readers to invest greater scrutiny when reading.

About the power of people over books, Dr. Chilala showed the Indaba delegates the battle being fought now between the two powers he highlighted – people exerting power over the power of books. Book banning, author’s imprisonment or execution, are all forms of power which people try to exercise over a book.

He urged parents to scrutinize the content of what their children read or watch and stop the habit of assuming that the stories are innocent.

Looked at closely, Dr. Chilala’s paper provided insights into what he termed a “mutually beneficial triangular relationship” between the author, the book and the reader.

After the two presenters, the Indaba engaged in questions, comments and open discussion from which developed many ideas about how synergies can be created in the book industry.

NB: A look at the Keynote Speech and the afternoon session coming in the next post.

Thank you.