I read quickly but even so, finishing a 371-page doorstopper of a book in half a day is a new personal record.
Having not read Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s previous novels, I had no idea what to expect from her latest, The Creation Of Half Broken People, but the name piqued my interest, as did the intriguing back cover description of it being a ‘hypnotic novel showcasing African Gothic at its finest.’
I’ll just read one quick chapter to see if I like it, I thought to myself one sunny Saturday when I had all kinds of other things to do… Many hours later, I turned the last page: my eyes bleary, my brain blown, my imagination ablaze. And my family loudly moaning that I’d ignored them all day.
Instead of reviewing and rating this book (an effortless five stars, in case you’re wondering), I asked Siphiwe’s publishers if I could interview her instead. I had to find out more about this talented author who lives in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where much of the novel is based; and how she so cleverly showcased the devastating effects of colonialism by weaving together the stories of six different, but inter-connected, women, over the course of a hundred years.
Here is what Siphiwe had to say…
On not naming the protagonist… “Her story is written in the first-person narrative so it is deeply intimate but at the same time you don’t know who she is and that feels jarring. This makes you realise how lost she truly is, and draws you deeper into her journey of self-discovery.”
On letting characters arrive when they’re ready… “I’d already written the three historical women’s stories but needed a modern-day character to thread through them. When my nameless narrator came along, I realised the book was really about her journey; and that pulled everything else together.”
On being good… “When I read King Solomon’s Mines as a child, it was interesting to me that one of the characters’ names was John Good. Reading that story from my perspective, I didn’t think he was good, so I took that character and played with it… The John B. Good in my book is the ninth – an imaginary descendant of the first – and he is the man who connects my heroine to the overseas Good Museum that owns a pair of giant silver wings. When she understands that her destiny is to return these wings to their rightful home, her own journey home also begins.”
On mothers who think they are right but are wrong… “Just like the colonisers, the heroine’s mother also thinks she is doing good by trying to stop her daughter from embracing their family legacy. She doesn’t want her to land up in a mental asylum but the heroine only sees her mother hurting her to get her way. I wanted their mother-daughter relationship to be strained to show how our perspective of ourselves can be wholly different to the person who is experiencing us.”
On narratives about women’s bodies… “The colonial narrative was not kind to women: it expressed the idea that black women’s bodies were dangerous and diseased; and put white women on a very shaky pedestal. I wanted to talk about this violence because we don’t do it enough; and that makes us a tool of the same narrative which then gets passed on.”
On the trauma of colonialism… “Oppressive systems are oppressive, for the colonised but also for the people who perpetuate them. They limit the way you are, the way you think, the choices you can make. We’ve inherited a world that allowed this divisiveness, so I’m not surprised that so many of us feel confused and disconnected.”
On an uncertain future… “I purposefully left the ending of the novel open. I wanted to capture how up in the air everything felt in 2020, which was when I finished writing this book. And it’s on-going because even now it’s hard to know what the end of 2025 is going to be like. The whole world is in this weird limbo state where everything is changing but we’re all hanging on and hoping it’s not as bad as it seems.”
On what’s next… “I’ll be in Franschhoek for the Literary Festival in the middle of May and then I am doing a fellowship through the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS). And, of course, I’m busy writing another book!”
