10/26/2018 0 Comments reVere re VeraI spoke with an esteemed literary personage in Zimbabwe who explained, despite their fondness for Yvonne Vera's work, they didn't believe it would last.
I found myself agreeing, to be agreeable, but also because I did wonder at the half life of her elusive, lyrical, hypnotic, violent, torquing prose. I find myself disagreeing. Like this time last year in Bulawayo, the jacarandas cornflowering, I'm rereading Vera's work. It shocks me. The details sear into the brain's folds: the searing mealie meal sacks, the burning Thandabantu store; the township architecture and photo studio; the lovers' magnetic embrace. Those stick, the rest ebbs; it is sinuous and evasive, but every time I read it again, it shocks. Its half life is long, I reckon now. There's too much discovery, too much witness, to bear witness to, to bear. Re memories of cassia and jacaranda and hibiscus shove up through the pages, sucking out the water from the air, evanescing.
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AuthorJames Arnett is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga ArchivesCategories |