Novuyo Tshuma

Quotes

• “And now, the valour of our people and the glory of the Mthwakazi Nation lives on not in any history book, or in any official account, where we are nothing but savages without culture, without history or glory or anything worth mentioning or passing on”
• “I heard the stories from my father, passed down to him by his father, my grandfather, and which I shall one day pass down to my children.”
• “Even though there was no petrol, people were driving. Even though the country was experiencing hyperinflation, my mother was able to secure chicken portions with her whole salary, without doing anything illegal”
• “Relaying ordinary narratives was a way to reclaim that space in the national identity for ordinary citizens and born-frees. If I’m going to do Zimbabwean history some justice, I need as many perspectives as possible”
• “Fiction allows me to make up events that happened but feel emotionally true…House of Stone took me six years to write, about 17 drafts. My aim was to fail spectacularly rather than succeed safely”
• “Zimbabweans and Nigerians are famous for just having PhDs PhDs, but that really opened my eyes to the importance of teaching, right, and not just teaching fiction, the craft of fiction but art is also a way to think together to build empathy, diversity, right? I think the humanities are really good at that and cultivating stewardship, citizenship, and that’s really what I’m interested in in the classroom”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA