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" If I truly had the courage of my convictions, I would be a full-blown comic novelist. "
Petina Gappah
Convictions
Courage
Had
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" I get irritated by the term 'African writer', because it doesn't mean anything to me. "
Petina Gappah
Writer
Mean
Anything
" I was eight when independence happened. I remember my mum and dad getting dressed up to go to the independence concert to go listen to Bob Marley. Independence was such a wonderful time; we had so many expectations of the kind of country we would become. The vision of the government then was a wonderful vision. "
Petina Gappah
Government
Independence
Vision
" I see myself in public service in Zimbabwe. I would prefer an advisory role - cabinet secretary, minister of trade or the arts, or something like that. I don't want to be just a writer. "
Petina Gappah
Want
Service
Myself
" Ian Smith thought his Rhodesia would last 1,000 years: it lasted less than 15. "
Petina Gappah
Thought
Would
Years
" People always ask me how I manage to find humor in so much bleakness. I think this is almost a necessary skill to have. "
Petina Gappah
People
Humor
Me
" My grandfather was a polygamous man, and he had two wives, and between him and his two wives, we are about 200 or so in our family. "
Petina Gappah
Grandfather
Family
Man
" I'm not even sure that I want to go back... The Zimbabwe that I really loved, the Zimbabwe that I grew up in, just isn't there anymore, and I'm not sure about the country that has replaced it. "
Petina Gappah
Country
Back
Go
" Only al-Jazeera is allowed to report from Zimbabwe, but it is unwatchable. Their Zimbabwean reporter Supa Mandiwanzira was one of Zanu-PF's praise-singers at the reviled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation. "
Petina Gappah
Broadcasting
Zimbabwe
Reporter
" For the first years of my life, I went to school in Rhodesia. My memory of living in the townships is that they were actually really happy places. "
Petina Gappah
Life
Happy
School
" I was one of the first six black kids to integrate a formerly all-white school. I remember being looked at all the time and people laughing at my hair. I was also very self-conscious about the food I had for lunch. I had egg sandwiches, and the other mothers gave kids fancy stuff like bologna and Marmite. It took about a year to settle in. "
Petina Gappah
Black
Food
Hair
" I actually don't sleep much; I only need about four hours a night. "
Petina Gappah
Hours
Only
Night
" What we are trying to do now, this new generation of African writers, is to write about what it is to be a human being living in a particular African country. These are stories that resonate with anyone, anywhere. "
Petina Gappah
Trying
Country
Living
" The struggle for Zimbabwe lit up the imagination of people around the world. In London, New York, Accra and Lagos, bell-bottomed men and women with big hair and towering platform shoes sang the dream of Zimbabwe in the words of the eponymous song by Bob Marley: Every man has the right to decide his own destiny. "
Petina Gappah
Hair
Man
Men
" It was one of those early mid-life crises, really. I started asking myself, 'What is it that I want from my life?' This question kept haunting me: 'Do I want to be a lawyer who always wanted to be a writer, or do I actually want to be a writer? "
Petina Gappah
Life
Myself
Me
" I guess you could say I'm lucky because I've known a Zimbabwe that didn't have Robert Mugabe leading it. One of the saddest things about Zimbabwe is there are so many hidden casualties of the Mugabe government's misrule. They're not just casualties that you immediately see. "
Petina Gappah
Hidden
Government
You
" The first thing I remember when I moved to a school in the suburbs was, 'My gosh, all these books!' The classroom and school had a library; I'd never seen so many books in my life! It was something we didn't have in the township. "
Petina Gappah
Library
Remember
School
" 'Authentic' is one of my least favourite words because in such a diverse country, whose authenticity are you talking about? "
Petina Gappah
Words
You
Because
" Zimbabweans, I've come to believe, we are very passive-aggressive people. We don't like conflict; we don't like confrontation, so we find all sorts of ways of avoiding that conflict and confrontation. We are not allowed to talk about bad things that go on in families. "
Petina Gappah
Believe
Find
Go
" There's a Shona saying: 'chakafukidza dzimba matenga' - 'What covers the home is the roof,' or 'Every home has its secrets.' "
Petina Gappah
Home
Covers
Saying
" A novelist, poet and playwright who writes equally well in Shona and English, Charles Mungoshi is Zimbabwe's finest and most versatile writer. His life project has been to interrogate the notion of family. "
Petina Gappah
Family
Most
Poet
" You could have names like Hatred; you could have names that mean something like Suffering or Poverty. So names are not just names: names have real meaning, and they tend to tell the world about the circumstances of your parents at the time that you were born. "
Petina Gappah
Suffering
Poverty
Parents
" The prolific Chinodya has written a number of striking books, most notably 'Dew in the Morning', an exploration of an idyllic rural boyhood; the sophisticated 'Strife,' in which sins from the pre-colonial past cast shadows into the present; and the rich and varied short-story collection 'Can We Talk?' "
Petina Gappah
Past
Rich
Present
" I wonder why people commit crimes that are premeditated - to gain love, because of hatred, or for financial reasons. "
Petina Gappah
Financial
Wonder
People
" There are some people who are happy to be African writers. They are pan-Africanists. I'm not a pan-Africanist. I think African countries have a lot in common. But we are also very different. "
Petina Gappah
Some People
Happy
People
" Zimbabwe is an unusual case study in African colonialism in that it was invaded by a private company under Royal Charter. "
Petina Gappah
Study
Colonialism
Case
" Publishing can be a cliquish and incestuous business; it is not uncommon for writers from the same agencies and publishers to review each other. "
Petina Gappah
Review
Other
Business
" These are the kinds of names that Zimbabweans like: names that have positive qualities. Like, Praise is a very popular name; Loveness is a very popular name. "
Petina Gappah
Like
Name
Names
" I always say to people that Zimbabweans are the funniest people in Africa; we even laugh at funerals. And it's true. I mean, there are so many jokes about funerals. There are so many jokes about AIDS. We find ways of coping with pain by laughing at it and by laughing at ourselves. "
Petina Gappah
True
Pain
Say
" On April 18, 1980, the last outpost of empire in Africa died. From Rhodesia's ashes rose a country that would take its place among the free nations as Zimbabwe, the last among equals. And men and women leapt to embrace this dream called Zimbabwe. "
Petina Gappah
Rose
Place
Men
" The painful truth may be that Zimbabwe, the youngest of Africa's former colonies, has simply followed where the continent has led, treading the well-worn path beaten out of the lie that taking power from the colonialists and delivering democracy to the people are one and the same. "
Petina Gappah
Same
Lie
Power