Why I Read: Mzana Mthimkhulu

As an eight year old, my hero was the swashbuckling picture magazine jungle man – Samson the Lion Heart.  I believed that when I grew up, like my hero, I was going to be: ‘strong as an elephant, brave as a lion and fast as a striking mamba.’

So, whilst waiting to grow up, I read and studied everything my hero did. The two weeks I had to wait for the next instalment of True Africa magazine was too long. I filled in the time with other comic magazines – Dandy, Beano and The Archies. Today I often cringe with embarrassment when I read the lofty names of the writers read by other writers in their youth. Not a single classic writer features in my early reading list.

One day after glancing at the first picture of a story in Dandy I made a painful decision – it was time I stopped reading comics. The moment I saw the picture I closed my eyes and recited the whole story. I had read it ten years earlier and still recalled it. The Dandy writers must have believed that the kids who had read the earlier story were no longer reading comics and so it was safe to reprint it. Like Samson after defeating a villain, it was time I moved to the next adventure.

Fortunately by then I had broadened my reading diet. From Njube Library, I borrowed books by the Drum generation of the fifties. I now was reading books by Ezekiel Mphahlele, Can Themba, Bloke Modisane and Lewis Nkosi. These writers spoke to my experience as a boy growing up in the townships. I notice that the writers are now sometimes described as ‘classic.’ May I therefore raise my pedigree as a writer?

For old time sake, I once went  back to Njube Library. I perused and read a few books. A ten year old stared at me in awesome wonder. ‘Look,’ he said to a friend, ‘an adult in the library.’

Recently I renewed my membership at the British Council Library. ‘So, when did you first join the library?’ the librarian asked me.  ‘We may still have your details.’

‘I first joined in 1983 in Harare, and then transferred to Bulawayo library in 1989.’

‘Oh, then you have to give us your details again. I was born in 1996.’

I wonder why I’m taking so long to state why I read. I read because for me it is the greatest source of entertainment and information. Books are my best friend. I laugh, cry, smile and curse in the world of books. Further, writing is a profession in which you are forever an apprentice. I read so that I know what and how others are writing. I then try to adapt the best and avoid the bad.

Mzana Mthimkhulu.  11 December 2018 

Mzana Mthimkhulu was born on Martin Luther King’s twenty-fifth birthday and was educated at Matshayisikhova and Kuredza Primaries, Inyathi Secondary, Edinburgh College and the then Polytechnic of North London. His short stories have appeared in the amaBooks anthologies Short Writings from Bulawayo I, II and III, Long Time Coming, Where to Now?, Siqondephi Manje? and Moving On, and his short stories and poems have appeared in other anthologies, newspapers and magazines in Southern Africa, United Kingdom and online. An enthusiastic culture activist, Mzana is also a newspaper columnist and a playwright.

Mzana and his wife Naume have three biological children and several other traditional ones. 

Mzana Mthimkhulu has a blog ourevolvingculture.home.blog  

    

    

Why Read? by Lauri Kubuitsile

    Serendipity. We have been running a series on our blog, 'Why I Read' and, today, we read Lauri Kubuitsile's column 'It's All Write' in Mmegi, where she asks other writers 'Why Read?'. Lauri kindly agreed for us to post the column here.

In interviews and when I’m on panels at literary festivals I’m often asked about the importance of reading, especially for writers. For me it seems crazy that a person would choose not to read, especially fiction. From as soon as I learned to read I knew that books held thousands and thousands of lives that I could step into just by opening the covers. I’ve never understood a person who would choose to live a single life when they could live hundreds of different lives. And as for a writer who doesn’t read—or me that’s a person who can’t be taken seriously. Books are your school. You can attend as many writing workshops and MFA programmes as you like, but if you don’t read, your writing will show it. It makes no sense to me.

            I decided to ask some of my writing friends the question: “Why read?” Below are their beautiful answers.

“To develop a critical skeleton. As someone who struggles to read recreationally — preferring theory or critical opinion driven writing — I read because it keeps me thinking of multiple approaches to subjects. However, when I do sit with a casual book, it also adds to my conception of self and my library of imagery, metaphors, and expressions. It gives me the opportunity to discover how other people express things that I have felt or experienced but never had the words to use. That's why, for me, reading is necessary.” - Katlego K Kol-Kes, poet, performer, and writer

“Reading is mind-food, and the only key to the encyclopaedia of life. One must read, the same way one eats nutrients. Without a nutritious diet, malnutrition sets in, and so it is with the mind; it deteriorates for lack of feeding. Today’s healthy & successful lifestyle is in the written word; that’s our life manual for raising children, successful relationships, wellbeing, wealth creation etc.

Your mind has limitless growth for success when you read, but when deprived of such feeding, it only grows into a vegetable. Reading is an acquired excellent habit that is easy to develop; start slowly and watch your interest grow.  -Andrew Sesinyi, writer

 "I read stories to widen my ears to the lives I've never lived. Because a person is only given one lifetime, but that does not stop us from living  through the eye's of others." - Tiah Beautement, writer

 “I've been to France under Louis the XVI; the Carribean in the late 19th Century; India in the glory days of the Maharajas; America as it was "discovered" and Botswana before it was a Protectorate of the British Crown. I have also been to the future. And yet I was born in 1976. 

Why read? 

Because reading carries you to lands unknown in the past and worlds not yet seen in the future. In the present though, reading takes you to countries you may not be able to afford to go to and then you realize how we all love, laugh, hurt and ache. Reading shows you that the other may just not so much be another but a lot like you. That someone somewhere has experienced the struggles you have which you assume are unique to you. I read because I seek to understand.”- Zukiswa Wanner, writer

“Reading is especially imperative for writers for the simple reason that you can’t write if you don’t read. Writers must be readers and they must do so intensely… and extensively!”- Barolong Seboni, poet and writer

“Reading is an escape that allows me to travel anywhere in the world and intimately know a people, culture, food and walk with the locals. It is a great workout for the brain, entertaining and greatly increases knowledge”. - Caiphus Mangenela, writer

“Read to understand yourself and others, to investigate human nature, to experience the full spectrum of human emotion, to develop empathy and compassion, to see different perspectives, to learn new things, to explore new places and to stay sane in an insane world.” -Cheryl Ntumy, writer

 Lauri Kubuitsile is an award-winning writer living in Botswana. She has numerous published books for both kids and adults, across various genres, and her short stories have been published around the world. She has won the Pan-African prize for Children's Writing, The Golden Baobab (twice), the Bessie Head Literature Award for short story, the 2007 AngloPlatinum Short Story Contest, and the Botswana's Department of Arts and Culture, 2007 Botswerere Award for Creative Writing. Lauri was shortlisted for the 2011 Caine Prize. 

Her blog is Blog: http://thoughtsfrombotswana.blogspot.com/

Why I Read: Thabisani Ndlovu

I read because of two main reasons – the little pamphlets of short stories in IsiNdebele that used to be distributed at our primary school, and love for my Grade Six teacher. The first reason is perfectly safe to write about, but the second needs clearing from the Mrs. I hope to obtain “ethical” clearance sometime today.

When I went to Manyewu Primary School in Bulawayo, between Grades 3 and 4, there was a company that used to distribute little newsprint pamphlets of folktales, written in IsiNdebele. Perhaps some were in English, but I doubt. Anyhow, the illustration, as far as I recall, was great because you could follow the story by merely looking at the pictures.  Then either the teacher or some great readers in class would read out a folktale, normally when we were outside the classroom, awaiting our turn to go inside a classroom occupied by another grade. This system was called “hot sitting” and designed to share not only classroom space but books as well. In short, it meant going through the syllabus in half the required time as students alternated attending school in the morning and the afternoon. There was a waiting period to go inside the classroom and it was this moment when stories of hare and baboon, the man and the leopard, the chameleon and the gecko and many others were read out loud. I was hooked. I read and re-read each one of these stories on my own and started my own library. The booklets were affordable, something like five cents I think. I sacrificed some of my “break” money to buy these. I do not remember volunteering to read or being asked to by my teachers. I was too quiet and probably looked stupid as one teacher once said. But I had read all of those booklets and had started experimenting with reading longer writings.

But those pamphlets come a distant second to my Grade Six teacher. She was called Miss Ndebele. I loved Miss Ndebele because she was beautiful and smelt great. She also wore high-heeled shoes and had a smile to outshine the brightest summer sun. She is the very first woman that I fell in love with not only for her looks but also because she noticed my love for reading and encouraged it. So I loved her desperately like any Grade Six boy would – not really knowing what that meant and completely clueless what I would do with her if she had said, “Here I am, love me.”  We had by then, at Ntabeni Primary School, a “Corner Library” – a small bookshelf really – packed full of abridged English “classics” and other writings. Most of these were under the Ladybird Series. It was Miss Ndebele who noticed that I was a good reader of English and an even better writer of compositions in the language. The more I read out loud in class, the more I practised in private – both silently and loudly. I could not disappoint Miss Ndebele. Then my compositions started being paraded in our class, in other classes and ultimately taken to the Headmaster! And Miss Ndebele said she was very proud of me. Then she started directing my reading. Had I read Treasure Island? How about The Black Tulip? Around the World in Eighty Days was another fine book, she once said. Whatever she recommended I read, until there was no book I had not read in that Corner Library.

Then I joined Njube Library and spent most of my Saturdays immersed in books there. No wonder I made friends with two of the librarians who allowed me to borrow more than the two stipulated texts. Some of these were not even recorded but I returned all of them. In spite of, or because of, my love for Miss Ndebele, I regret to say that there were some books from the Corner Library that I borrowed permanently.  The redemption lies in that I lent these to friends. Together (we would call ourselves the Chopper Squad, after an Australian TV series that used to air on ZTV – go ahead and laugh), we delighted (note this very English word), in trying out the expressions we picked up from these books. Words and expressions like, “Oh dear!” (I know, but it was once quaint to me and the rest of Chopper Squad), “what the blue blazes”, “bamboozle”, “helter-skelter”, and “sixes and sevens.” These were good for composition writing and even better for public speaking. To add more muscle to our vocabulary, we obsessed over the Students’ Companion and learnt, for example, that instead of saying you visited someone, you could say you darkened that person’s door. And so, yes Ngugiites, I became thoroughly colonised, if of course, you forget or ignore that I was equally good in my mother language, IsiNdebele.

As I got older, what drove me to read more was my association with fellow bookworms. I remember James Mabhunu introducing me to James Hadley Chase. I read those greasy over read books and got titillated like hell. As if that was not enough, then entered the Pace Setters, with their fast pace and African setting. After these, special mention must be made of two writers, Ayi Kwei Armah and Charles Mangua for introducing me to soft porn. I think I became aware of these two via John Kantompeni or the late Rainous Sibanda, I am not so sure now. I challenge anyone who read Why Are we So Blest? at sixteen or so and did not return to the sex scenes, to raise his/her hand. Ah, Mangua’s Son of a Woman excited me beyond the love of words.  This marked my first “serious” attempts to write. As you might predict, the stories were steeped in “love” with sprinklings of erotica. My secondary school friends loved these.  It was mostly girls who loved my stories and, when they asked to keep them, I would pretend to think hard about it, before saying yes. I wrote so many of those and gave them away. Then I continued reading, in order to improve my writing and to wow my readers and, of course, to attract girls and to share with fellow avid readers from my high school days what I had read. There was nothing as good as listening to someone relate their special episode in a book. James Mabhunu and John Kantompeni were masters at this. It was like reading the whole story all over again, and sometimes even better because some of the expressions that had escaped me took on new significance. Talk of an effective revision strategy for our literature course, this was better than a study guide. So I read carefully, all the more to make a detailed contribution during these narration sessions.

My infatuation with reading blossomed into love and I became an English major, which is to say, I majored in English and did not turn into an English man (to some extent, this is true).  So, I had to read fiction at university in order to be certificated.  There, I got to know the late Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza, Memory Chirere, and others who would become fellow writers. These were the heady days of Zimbabwean writing and it was no surprise that we met at Chenjerai Hove’s sessions on creative writing. Those sessions opened up vast worlds of literature and it became fashionable for some of us to read beyond and deliberately outside the English Department syllabus as a form of rebellion against what we considered to be a lean and conservative reading list and way of criticising literature.  For some of us then, evening soirees in residences or at drinking places turned out to be animated discussions of literature fueled by cheap wine of the student variety like “Late Harvest”.  I did not want to look and sound like an idiot, so I read more, drank more cheap wine and talked more literature.

So, I read now because it is my job. I need to publish journal articles, present at conferences and teach literature. As a writer though, I read in search of that story that leaves me transfixed, in a special kind of “silence”.  The kind of story that sucks you in and when you read the last word, you seem to float in a twilight zone.  You wonder about many things, including how come there are so many splinters of yourself in a stranger’s story. You are also stunned by the story line and artistry. You think, how does (how dare, indeed) someone find those kinds of words and line them up like that to produce this? In many ways, such stories remind me of wordsmiths like my mother. When she is done telling a story, even a real-life one, there is always a moment of silence forcing her to ask, “Are you ok?” Sometimes I laugh as she is narrating a sad story and when she says, “There is nothing funny here, by the way”, I tell her it is how she finds the most expressive words that always leaves me in utter disbelief. Good writing is like that and I keep reading to have those moments that are like an addict’s proper “fix”.  I’ve had many such fixes but the latest one has to be reading Petina Gappah’s stories in Rotten Row (2016). Incredibly artistic without calling attention to their artifice, these stories leave me in that moment of silence.

So, there it is. I clearly read for different reasons and these cannot be divorced from the earlier contexts or reasons for reading. I will never forget Miss Ndebele, that one is for sure. I will never forget my friends who shared smutty novels with me and I will always remember the nights of cheap wine and literary discussions and at times, “live” reading of segments from texts. Amazing what cheap wine and impassioned fellow university students can achieve. I am also appreciative of verbal artists like my mother who have made me read for beauty (overall effect and individual expression), and writers who create that moment of silence at the end of their story.

Thabisani Ndlovu is a senior lecturer of English and Cultural Studies at Walter Sisulu University. Before that, he was Deputy Director and lecturer at the International Human Rights Exchange at the University of the Witwatersrand. His short stories have appeared in various anthologies including Creatures Great and Small, Short Writings from Bulawayo III, Long Time Coming: Short Writings from Zimbabwe, The Caine Prize for African Writing 2009 and Where to Now? Short Stories from Zimbabwe. Other stories have appeared in online journals and magazines. His short story, 'When We Were Kings', will appear in Moving On and Other Zimbabwean Stories. Thabisani has also translated Where to Now? Short Stories from Zimbabwe into isiNdebele – Siqondephi Manje: Indatshana zaseZimbabwe. In 1992 he won first prize for isiNdebele poetry in the Budding Writers Association National Competition and, in 2005, the inaugural Intwasa koBulawayo Short Story Competition. If he is not writing fiction or poetry, Thabisani carries out humanist-inspired research. If not doing any of those things, he is likely to be thinking about the beautiful and terrible things in life, and trying to find words for them.

Why I Read by Philani A. Nyoni

Philani A. Nyoni. Photo by KB Mpofu

Okay, we can do this, shouldn't be too hard... it's only writing, we've been doing this since we discovered 'AH-AIR-EE-OH-OOH' wasn't some device devised to torture infants. Maybe we discovered that much later because we were in too deep: so in love with words we had to learn the science of language and autopsied languages alive while other childrens were calling corpses cadavers in medical campus.

And why do we keep referring to ourself in plural? Are we possessed?! Legion!

Oh dear, that wasn't very clear at all! You lack grace, no, panache... no... that's not it... what's the other fancy word I'm looking for? It's so cute I could pat it all day. What's it now? It's not lustre, it's something... yes... to do with texture... but... oh darn it! I had it yesterday, I should have written it down. Well yesterday I didn't know I would have to use its absence to ascertain why my writing is appalling today! Now which book did I read it in? My-my. I can't believe this... ah yes, the Rushdie. Which Rushdie? Dear god, look at the size of them! I'll never find a single word in there!

Maybe I should just settle into the task of writing instead of trying to describe a piece of writing that doesn't really exist. I mean, here I am, haranguing (fancy word, we should put it in the story by-any-means-necessary!)... raking my brain...is it raking or racking? This English of theirs. Let me find out but in the meantime, see what I did there? I went from harangue to rake. Because I am Ndebele you see, and we didn't have rakes in our white-man-free-utopia of dysentery and spear-chucking megalomaniacs, so when we finally got one on Amazon we called a rake a hara, etymology: harrow. Oh figured it out, it's racking, comes from some ancient torture device. Well we didn't have that either, why torture people when you can just stab them?

Who am I talking to? It sure made sense when we were using the plural...ah, it appears again; we are sane.

Maybe instead of trying to be all classy and shit, I should focus on that... idiosyncrasies. An African story in African English, not quite pidgin, not creole, more like a dialect and accent on paper... what the fuck am I saying?! I know what I mean anyhow; I'll break that English, be really black about it. It's important to be very black about things sometimes, and mispronounce croissants and Paris; it shows you are not an Uncle Tom. It's important not to be an 'Uncle Tom' (add to reading list, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'), peculiarity should be the province of characters, not authors. 

Best idea I've had all day! How we will break that English, wrap it in a cute ribbon and send it back to its queen in a coffin (like take that your Queeniness!)! We will use words like kaka in place of 'crap'. Bukowski would probably say that, crap, he's one of my 'Andy Capp' writers; you know, the 'okes whose words read like every line was composed with the author leaning his head to the side trying to keep the ciggy smoke from smarting his one open eye? Squinting at the goddamn thing, coaxing his quill with devil-dick-shrivelling curses to course at the speed of thought. I should read him again soon, just to remind me not to be superficial.

Hey, do you think it's superficial to use words like superficial? I mean...

Yeah, I'll reread that Bukowski alright, but not today, today I want to write something black, bad gramma like skin-tone was a handicap! Oh how about this: use words like kaka, no time for that quote-mark nonsense on dialogue, because I'm gansta and African. Nigroence, that's my new word, my new genre. The arrogance of negroes. Sounds great.

Now about that kaka writing... wait... why does that sound familiar? Where have... oh kaka! that was We Need New Names! Blasted; we need new ideas... and names for characters. Unless you are Brian Chikwava pulling off a literary Fight Club, characters should have names. It's in the bible... somewhere; it has to be one of those commandments that people don't like facing because you read and realise 'you know what, Christianity's not for me, God's probably gonna smite me for choosing catfish over Him but there'. It has to be in there considering some characters got names they didn't even need... the only screen-time they be getting is between the same word: beget. Now that's how you use up that word-count! It's like the guy H. Christ's dad commissioned to holy-ghost-write for Him was billing by the word!

Not naming characters is like being that guy from that book, what's-his-face? Adam. He didn't name his childrens for over a year! Now that was a damn good book, tingles my spine just saying the title... watch me shiver: East of Eden. See?! I didn't cry at the end of it, I don't know why I have to announce that each time I mention the book but I didn't cry. Ruined my prose though, suddenly my characters felt hollow, no depth at all like... I really need to use 'Agamemnon said' each time said Agamemnon says, otherwise readers wouldn't know who was talking. Gourd-dam those characters were sooooo alive! It's like he was writing his dialogue in Dolby Surround! I should never read that book again, makes my writing seem awful, and nobody wants to write awful stuff. Medium-rare I can stomach: never go too deep on some texts, unlike Tendai Huchu; went 'full retard' on his debut now everyone thinks he's a homosexual. Ha! Idiot.

Ignorance is bliss my friend, remember that one time we wanted to do a whole novel set in one day? That was an awesome gimmick until we realised Dan Brown has been doing that since aforementioned holy-ghostwriter's now-famous line: 'In the beginning'. One-trick-pony... two actually, his second trick is transcribing encyclopaedias. Oh dear, my horns are showing, grumpy-grumpy-grumpy. Serves you right for reading popular fiction... sparkling vampires and all that.

Well, clearly this writing thing isn't working out today. I read somewhere you need a ton of patience because you only write cocaine when you're like... super ancient and God sometimes mistakes you for his dad and you need viagra just to sit through a book signing. What's on TV? Programming. Ha! Sounds like we're stuck in a George Orwell novel. Animal Farm, or 1984? Eenie-meany-my-knee-more... Hey what else did that guy write? Maybe I should just get some Borges up in here, get all esoteric and shit. 

Philani Amadeus Nyoni is a writer, spoken word performer and actor. He is the author of three poetry anthologies: 'Once A Lover Always A Fool', which received a National Arts Merit Award in 2013, 'Hewn From Rock', (with John Eppel) and 'Mars His Sword'.