Telling the Zimbabwean story
Filed under: Books & literature, How Zimbabwe can be better
I appreciate the existence of this forum, which is open to all Zimbabweans who would like to express themselves and write the country into recovery. There is healing in words, and writers always contribute to the repository of hope. Look at all the writings accumulating on these pages.
As the country goes through change, as we seek ways to rebuild the nation in all its facets, whether it’s Biriwasha’s call for books, or an economist’s advice on how to help the country to get back on its feet, it is through words that we will realize the healing that our society requires.
I feel that the Zimbabwean writer, the novelist, the poet, the playwright, the momoirist, has much to tell. Asserting that this is the time for writer attracts the criticism that when is it never the time for the writer, but, seriously speaking, THIS, right now, feels like one of those times when you can stand up and shout it: This is the time for the Zimbabwean writer.
The difficult times have created great tension in the writer, whose heart has bled, but has not always had the opportunity, sometimes not even the time, to write country’s story. Now, as change happens, the writer is working; the writer is working on something, and that something may not even be about the Deal, the MOU, or the way forward; this something (let’s call it the subject), may be about Nehanda as a baby, or about the early eighties, about Bob Marley in a Harare hotel in 1980. Whatever the theme or style is, this tension, this abuse of, this shock treatment to, artistic patience might surprise you with a renaissance. A new chapter of African writing is opening….
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I agree. We need to tell our story to the world. This forum is a great place to start. I just found out about this site today and I think this and other online websites should be used to scream out to the world what we are thinking, feeling, hoping, wishing, dreaming and seeing as Zimbabwean.
Caleb,
Welcome to one of the best Zim online platforms. Thanks for your remarks. The writers here have great enthusiasm and they display their pride as Zimbabweans. I am happy to be one of them.
We will build a new Zimbabwe in the blogosphere, and future generations will know that we were not just a pack of cowards. We knew what we wanted, and with words, we weaved it though the dictators and the political dealers remained in the comfort of fattened sofas, and splashed themselves with foreign cologne.
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