Timely and at times wrenching stories about contemporary Zambian women fighting to establish their identities.
A debut collection about women living in Zambia and abroad.
Winner of the 2024 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, Kalimamukwento’s stirring stories explore the lives of women weighing their debts to tradition and family against their desire to break free and express their true selves. In “Azubah,” Funso has to return home to Zambia to care for the mother who never seemed to love her. The past still has a grip on her, even though she believes she has bought her freedom by moving to America and remitting her “Black Tax” with every paycheck to ensure her mother is cared for. In “Inswa,” the young female narrator discovers her sexuality with her best friend, another girl, and would rather endure her mother’s abuse than give up the pleasure she’s found. Kalimamukwento has an eye for the poetic possibility of the natural world. After her first kiss, the narrator says her “stomach exploded into an army of golden flying termites, spilling out of their underground castles after a December storm,” and her ears “filled with bees fighting to escape.” In “Mastitis,” another standout, the narrator loses her mother the same day she gives birth to a daughter, though her mother reappears—an apparition—with sage advice and common sense when the narrator needs her most. This collection covers a lot of ground—from the price of privileging English over one’s native language to the dehumanizing U.S. immigration system, from the AIDS epidemic in Zambia to illegal adoption rings. These are complicated and important issues, but at times it feels like Kalimamukwento is cataloging all the social ills that Zambian women face and the steep cost of global imperialism rather than slowing down and deepening our understanding of the particular women and girls who are emmeshed in these heartbreaking circumstances.
Timely and at times wrenching stories about contemporary Zambian women fighting to establish their identities.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9780822948360
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Univ. of Pittsburgh
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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