Like hands, Vera’s words knead through the knots of a worn and aged back, untying the preconceptions in the spine of another man’s past.
Like hands, Vera's words reach and stroke the tender spots- uninvited- where we are rarely touched, where it hurts;
we find nerves anew.
Like hands, Vera's words give but also take: and we are forced to give as well.
We give up the histories we did not choose to learn, we loose the stories that write women and Africans out of existence; we gain space.
How does one rewrite the past?
In order to reconstruct a history, certain aspects of the former cannot be kept. Audre Lorde in "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," writes that the master’s tools “may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” However, it may be said that Yvonne Vera has the master’s tools, she has the power of the written word, and not only does she use it, she takes the previous guidelines and rules and turns them on their heads. I dare to say that “genuine change” is embodied within Vera’s texts. Her Zimbabwe is the Zimbabwe of the people who have been silenced for far too long, and her words make it real.
Less like creation and more like release, Vera’s stories enable her readers to think and rethink, to antagonize over the duality within each turn of events. The words will not comfort us, but strip us naked, bring us closer to a truer history, a truer identity. Cloaked in colonial breath and belief, we are warm, shielded, and supposedly safe.
We must undo what a one-sided account has taught us, peel away the layers of an uncontested lie and rebuild.
Vera’s texts do not resemble western construction. Heavy and poetic, women are intermingled with land, spirits, and men. Women are not invisible, not silent, not spectators. In Nehanda, women, earth, and ancestral beings compose one another, and what is done to the land by the “white stranger” is also done to the people; the hostile takeover and the feelings of loss are close and tangible. Women were not handed a position or a leading role in colonial histories. There was not a space designed and reserved for them in the dialogue of every past, sometimes they are simply invisible. We come to terms with the idea that equality for women within history must be seized, but how?
Vera’s voice bends in a way that our bodies cannot recognize. Spaces are opened, but only if we choose to see them. In the process, with the usage of language and paper and type in a way that colonial teachings cannot recognize, it is not hard to become confused. Personally, I find myself easily frustrated with the density of Vera’s works; peppered with precise intricacy, dialogue from vague sources, and layered meanings. As someone used to reading within a colonial context, I too often and too easily characterize Vera’s works as “other” and begin to criticize them within that context.
There is another way to read the stories of Yvonne Vera. The sentences are not sentences; they are an understanding, musical. The pace at times is intentionally agonizingly slow, and it provides a wider space for a deeper connection with the atmosphere and characters, exhibited in works like Butterfly Burning. In this novel, we see Phephelaphi’s abortion in a chapter that is spatially wide; time is manipulated. Structured differently from literature such as that of the standard cannon, we as readers are guided to read away from old understandings. We are not meant to stop at the book’s end, but instead go back to the beginning to re-read and rediscover.
In Nehanda the African community is not constructed within the limits of colonial order. Reflecting this, Nehanda herself challenges what the language of western culture has taught us to disregard. She converses with spirits and communicates in ways other than words. My education has taught me that this is nonsense, irrational and unbelievable. Vera throws my education to the wind. What is it exchanged for? Is it chaos? Or do I sometimes want to call it that because it makes me uncomfortable? Do we not have license to feel comfortable within the abstract?
To be lost among the new can be an enlightening experience. To lose yourself within some of Vera’s words can be essential, one of the best ways to get the grand tour. You may not know where you are, but how are you supposed to if you haven’t experienced it before? One can choose to see confusion and discomfort as a way of learning more about yourself and your surroundings. On your way, eyes intently seeking something familiar, you can notice what you’re doing and choose to stop, tread slowly, and breathe.
There are revelations and revolutions within Nehanda, Butterfly Burning, Opening Spaces, etc, but Yvonne Vera will not force them upon us. Let go of the colonizer, and find them. Let yourself be lost. The words, like hands, will find you.
By Rachel Malis
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