Zimbabwean - Writer | 1971 -
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
TruthPowerPathLiePeopleAfrica
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?'
MorningPastRichPresentShadows
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.
PositiveNamePraiseNamesKinds
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.
GenerationTryingCountryNewLiving
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?
LifeMyselfMeLawyerMy LifeEarly
There's a Shona saying: 'chakafukidza dzimba matenga' - 'What covers the home is the roof,' or 'Every home has its secrets.'
HomeSayingSecretsRoofEvery
'Authentic' is one of my least favourite words because in such a diverse country, whose authenticity are you talking about?
WordsTalkingYouCountryWhose
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.
FamilyManGrandfatherHimTwoHe
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.
PeopleConflictBelieveBadFindGo
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.
TimeParentsSufferingWorldMeaning
I don't want to write because I have to; I want to write because I want to. Sometimes, when writers write because they have to, the results are disastrous.
ResultsSometimesWantWriteBecause
If I truly had the courage of my convictions, I would be a full-blown comic novelist.
CourageConvictionsWouldComicHad
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Petina Gappah quotes