EP 6 Yvonne Vera - African Writer Who Challenged Silence | Women and Resistance

In this episode of Women and Resistance, Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla explore the life and work of Zimbabwean writer Yvonne Vera, delving into themes of silence, patriarchy, and historical memory. 

The conversation highlights her contributions to literature, her personal journey, and the importance of addressing taboo subjects to foster liberation.

Takeaways

*Yvonne Vera's background and influence
*The role of taboo subjects in her writing
*Her personal experiences with patriarchy and HIV
*The importance of storytelling in resistance
*Her views on liberation and historical memory

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Yvonne Vera's Legacy
01:57 Exploring Taboo Subjects in Literature
04:25 The Impact of Colonialism and Nationalism on Women
06:52 The Duality of Women's Lives
09:14 The Role of Silence in Healing
11:10 The Body as a Vessel of Memory
13:37 The Intersection of Personal and Collective Trauma
15:49 The Complexity of Women's Experiences
18:16 The Silence of War and Its Aftermath
19:48 Challenging Patriarchy and Speaking Out
22:20 The Power of Storytelling
23:10 Women and Violence: A Connection to the Land
24:29 Legacy of Strong Women
27:21 The Writer's Journey: Finding Home in Words
30:49 The Burden of Exile and Healing
34:17 Confronting Patriarchy and Embracing Truth

Welcome  to Women and Resistance, a powerful podcast where we honour the courage, resilience, and revolutionary spirit of women across the globe. Hosted by Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla...

You're listening to Women and Resistance with Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla—where we honour the voices of women who have shaped history through courage and defiance...Now, back to the conversation.

That’s it for this episode of Women and Resistance. Thank you for joining us in amplifying the voices of women who challenge injustice and change the course of history. Be sure to subscribe, share, and continue the conversation. Together We Honour the past, act in the present, and shape the future. Until next time, stay inspired and stay in resistance!

Transcript

Adesoji Iginla (00:07.298)
Yes, good evening, good evening and welcome to Women Are Resistance, where we examine the podcast story of women who resisted oppression and reshaped history. I am one of your hosts, Adesuji Ginla, and with me as my co-host, Ayafubara Nelya Esquire, before she goes into character. Today, we explore the life and work of Zimbabwean literal giant, Yvonne Vera.

a writer whose world confronted silence, patriarchy, and historic amnesia. Welcome, Miss Vera.

Adesoji Iginla (00:49.048)
without,

pushing the envelope too far in. One would say your literal car... Autoshapes has been defined by the ability to write about taboo subjects. But before you go into it, could you just give us a brief background of who Ivan Vera is?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:28.35)
as a writer and one who has had such a love.

loving and long relationship with words. This should be a very easy question for me to respond to, but...

I also lived my life in such a way that I did not often share about my personal life. And so this is an uncharted territory in terms of not knowing my own life, obviously, but in how much I am willing to share at this time. There are, course,

Adesoji Iginla (01:55.274)
territory.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (02:15.923)
bits and pieces that have emerged as people have shared about their relationships with me since my passing, including a book that my mother, Erica Gwetai, authored, as well as a book that's a compilation of

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (02:44.973)
Reviews and interviews and thoughts on my work interviews that were conducted

with me in a book called Emerging Perspectives on Yvonne Vera. I'll actually hold up that book for you at this time. So I will share some of the things that with a little digging someone would be able to find for themselves.

First, I guess I would start with one that was most shocking for many people, including those with whom I corresponded with quite frequently. Many of my friends would say that I was quite the prolific writer, not just in terms of my public work, but in keeping contact with my friends. And...

Many were surprised to find out that my death was a result of AIDS-related meningitis.

Looking back, some of them recognize times when they met with me and I seemed a little tired, but they were not aware that I had been living with an HIV positive status. And some of them have since written about how they are using my life and even pictures that they have of me to try to destigmatize that.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (04:35.271)
disease that people can live very full lives even while being HIV positive.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (04:50.861)
So I was born on September 19th in 1964 and I was born in Bulawayo which is in modern day Zimbabwe. Was known as Rhodesia at the time and we will not go into great detail today about

Adesoji Iginla (05:03.556)
I'm wet,

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (05:14.677)
the origin of that name, although hopefully your audience is curious enough to figure out where that comes from. I will leave a hint, Cecil Rhodes. And in leaving that hint, feeling the heaviness in my body of the violence that even just mentioning that name.

Adesoji Iginla (05:21.762)
Want to dig deeper? Yeah, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (05:40.326)
the violence that evokes in the cells in my body and the violence that was inflicted on my people and a particular kind of violence that was inflicted on women as they endured and survived the patriarchy, which they still do today.

I was born to Jerry and Erica Gwetai. Well, I was born to Jerry Vera and to Erica Gwetai. And my father moved to get a job and soon after my mother moved to join him, but that union did not last. And so my mother soon left with me in tow.

and we moved from place to place. She was a school teacher as she attempted to make a living. And by the time I was eight years old, I was picking cotton as a way to supplement the meager ironings of my mother of our family at the time. And I believe that you have

through this platform of yours spoken with other women who have also had this experience of picking cotton as well. And it might come as a surprise to many that that was not something that was unique to just the children or descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States of America.

Adesoji Iginla (07:20.087)
Unique.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (07:29.025)
but that it was a life that was imposed on many other people of African descent across the world.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (07:43.87)
you started off by saying you know I'm a writer known to have written about a lot of taboo subjects and and yes indeed I I have and I guess the question should be asked or I would ask is why those subjects are so taboo because these were not

Adesoji Iginla (07:52.266)
subjects yes I did

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (08:10.519)
things that I made up, but things that actually happened, whether I was writing about incest or abortion or rape or mediums as a matter of fact, or suicide. And what's interesting is that in hearing people discuss my work or discuss me, there were...

sometimes criticisms that my work was too biographical. And I would say to them, there is no way that I could have been a product of incest who also committed, who also had an abortion, who also committed suicide, and who was also a medium and I'm alive writing, right?

Adesoji Iginla (08:41.924)
Mmm.

Adesoji Iginla (09:02.262)
OK. So we put you down to vivid imagination as opposed to OK.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (09:09.419)
Well, of course most writers do draw from their lived experiences to some degree, but it's also what I've done with my writing is also explore particularly the experiences of women and often those experiences that we do not make space to be verbalized in fact.

most women would not even know how to verbalize those experiences even as they live them and even as the emotions and the trauma from those experiences create conflict and continue to impact how they live and how they relate to themselves and to others.

So yes, I wrote things that cannot be spoken, things that are carried, things that people often did not want to name. And I suppose that that brought about a degree of discomfort for some people. But it was important for me in my writing, and all my writing was based on

Adesoji Iginla (10:21.006)
discomforts, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (10:31.701)
in Africa, in Zimbabwe to be more exact. It was important to me to write in that manner because

We must recall our memories. We must not allow ourselves to be erased and our silence absolutely erases us.

Adesoji Iginla (10:51.097)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (11:05.439)
I was very critical in my writing of both colonialism and nationalism and the exclusionary effects.

of both these systems, the way they were gendered and the impact on women. And so even as we talked about freedom and independence, how women were truly left out of that conversation in terms of how we could live and how we could show up.

And one of the things that I wrote, and I will share that with your listeners at this time, I wrote, the greatest hurt takes a lifetime to heal.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (12:02.871)
How long would it take to heal lifetimes of waiting that end in betrayal?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (12:17.101)
How do we heal if we choose not to remember? If we choose not to find the courage to give voice to those things that have remained voiceless?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (12:37.823)
And so for me, my novels, my writing create for me a space of reflection and remembering. And my goal is to help change the object of the reader's desire in order to create a post-colonial nation in line with its original hopes, which was liberation.

Adesoji Iginla (12:56.313)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (13:08.781)
In other words, freedom as a way of being, a voice, a body to behold.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (13:18.73)
and

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (13:22.763)
We must name these things, we must speak these things that are considered taboo in order to move towards a truer form of liberation because the erasure, the silence will never bring about our liberation.

Adesoji Iginla (13:37.348)
Hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (13:45.844)
In, have you finished the thought? I wanted to pose a question which, which stems from what you just said about not talking about taboo subjects. In your novel, Butterfly Burning, you said something poignant. You said, a woman's life is folded into two halves, one dead and the other living. Could you give

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (13:57.887)
Mm-hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (14:13.598)
some context to what you meant by that.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (14:29.331)
Even when you think about the life cycle of a butterfly and you think of that period where it's in a chrysalis, where it's for all intents and purposes not moving, very vulnerable, that could be a place of death if not, if it's not.

protected enough to get to where it becomes and is able to emerge as a butterfly. When you look at the lived experiences of women and often the things that we don't speak about, and the African woman in particular, there's this constant struggle and...

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (15:24.341)
And with the imposition of the patriarchy, almost a requirement to die to yourself in order to live. To die to your dreams, to die to your own hopes, to be the good daughter, to be the good wife, to be the good mother, to be the good grandmother. That endless sacrifice that is required.

if you will, of women. Now men might also see that in a different light and see their own sacrifices that are often imposed on them. But that is what I was speaking about when I talked about women folding in on themselves. Like you have to die to self, lose aspects of yourself to be celebrated as a true woman.

Adesoji Iginla (16:10.66)
Two halves. Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (16:23.327)
As a matter of fact, I will go back and give a little bit more of a chronology, but.

At one point after I had received my PhD in Canada, I returned to Zimbabwe and I was living in a home that had a colonial history. It was a home where a military officer had previously occupied and...

a woman whom I had known since childhood who had heard of my return and we were speaking, she was very critical of me. And the choices had made because she said, what you came back here, no husband, you're living in that place by yourself. And it was as though I was, my independence was an affront to womanhood.

I was bringing shame, if you will, even though she lived with her parents, that was a better state to be in as a woman. And so there, you know, the patriarchy is often upheld by women.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (17:50.026)
Not just men. We buy into it and we uphold it. That is why you would hear mothers talking to their sons and saying don't cry like a girl.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (18:02.181)
or telling their daughter sit like a woman or you know you need to learn how to cook so you can take care of your husband and your children things of that nature but men are not or young boys are not raised in quite the same way and so

Years later, as she started to read about some of my accomplishments and accolades, she did call, you know, showing some pride in what I was doing. certainly the initial response was I was not conforming to the way a proper woman should live. And yet in...

Adesoji Iginla (18:32.536)
Complete.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (18:41.811)
attempting to be what society requires us to be, often then exacts a price in terms of our autonomy, our independence of mind and spirit, and what we're able to do. I believe that my writing very much was shaped by the fact that I was

Born into a place that held both beauty and fracture. Born into a country that did not belong to itself.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (19:22.829)
And at an early age, I absorbed that history does not stay outside of us. It's not just something you read in a textbook, the way people say, well, this happened and that happened. The people, yes, it enters, it settles, and it remains. Even when they think it hasn't, even when they have

Adesoji Iginla (19:38.756)
and tunnelizer.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (19:50.614)
intellectually forgotten. It remains and it shapes how we show up. Of course, my writing is in English, so that is very clear an example and proof, if you will, of the violence that was inflicted on us that I'm not writing in Shona, Owen de Bele.

Adesoji Iginla (20:01.91)
In itself, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (20:14.893)
And people often have had, you know, critics, concerns about my writing being unfamiliar because it doesn't follow straight lines. But I would say neither does pain.

and neither does memory.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (20:40.961)
The past is never still in the way that we want it to be.

and it pushes up against and trembles beneath the present.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (20:58.293)
even when we're unaware of it. And so when I write, I write, when I'm writing my characters, I don't think in advance, okay, this is exactly how it's gonna work out. I get into my characters and I write with feeling and I actually don't always know where it's going to go, where it's gonna lead, but I write with feeling and I attempt to place my readers.

inside of the feelings of the characters.

My writings focus on the characters themselves, not this big, grandiose plot, but the people themselves. And I try to get the women to, my female characters in particular, to...

Emote and express those feelings which many women actually experiencing what my characters are experiencing would never mouth with mouth themselves. They would never speak themselves. And I do it to guide my readers gently to

Adesoji Iginla (22:12.012)
End of the talk.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (22:18.925)
have hopefully a better understanding of the experiences of women. Not just women having this understanding, but all of humanity, men as well. And that perhaps that might lead to more meaningful dialogue as we all try to this out. And so,

My novels, my writing is never tied in a bow, in a neat bow where all the questions are answered and everything is resolved because I'm still trying to figure it out. I write what is hidden, what is denied, what is carried in silence and to sit with an African woman who

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (23:16.031)
is in touch with herself, even when she's not aware she's in touch with herself. And what you can read in between the size. Have you ever seen, and I think this is a universal language of African women for sure, but maybe women from across the world, but have you ever seen a woman, an African woman,

lace her into lace her fingers and put them on her head.

Adesoji Iginla (23:48.388)
as the universe.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (23:49.161)
and just the message that is sent with just in that moment.

Adesoji Iginla (23:54.315)
Universal sign of resignation.

Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (24:00.174)
As if to, is it to shield her head? it to?

The worst, the worst is, how do you then put that silence, but yet that very pregnant silence into words? And so I write the body because the body remembers. The body has its own language and it does not forget.

And so when I look at some of the books that I have written, in under the tongue, there is a child and she cannot speak what has been done to her.

So I give you her silence.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (24:55.169)
The words don't come. They remain buried under the tongue.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (25:09.621)
And if you sit long enough with the silence as uncomfortable as it might be, you begin to understand.

that silence is not absence.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (25:27.807)
It's wheat.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (25:34.527)
And so even as you read my work, how do you carry that into your life, into your interactions with people?

that woman who seems sullen and withdrawn.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (25:54.561)
What is her silence really saying?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (26:00.97)
in my book without a name.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (26:06.344)
War does not end when the fighting stops.

and I think of my people. And today...

We might think of the people of Lebanon or of Iran or the Congo or of Sudan or Medugri. All the parts of the world.

They're wracked by war.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (26:44.586)
It enters the body.

It enters the body of even the unborn.

and it lingers.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (27:02.166)
And of course, nobody or let me rephrase, most people would rather not face this discomfort.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (27:24.099)
the oil starts flowing again.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (27:29.589)
the bomb stopped dropping.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (27:36.046)
After even the rubble has been cleared and maybe new edifices erected.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (27:46.446)
war lingers in the body.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (27:53.037)
The body carries what we don't want to see. What sometimes the person carrying it can't even articulate.

and cannot remove.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (28:12.61)
And there's a part of me that at this time feels almost compelled to apologize to your audience because I suppose it would be easier to

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (28:28.352)
make you feel all happy and good on the inside. And maybe that's why some people struggled with my work and still do.

But what is to be gained from the erasure, from the silence? Does it stop the wars?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (28:54.146)
recently.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (28:57.976)
Dolores Huerta.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (29:04.056)
Some of you may know.

who fought for migrant farmers' rights.

and she worked alongside Cesar Chavez, who many of you may see as a hero, and he was very heroic in many aspects.

Dolores is 96 years old.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (29:36.128)
and she recently put out a statement.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (29:41.87)
stating that she was sexually molested.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (29:49.248)
on a number of occasions by Cesar Chavez.

resulting in pregnancies and that she had those children and she gave them away to other families to care for.

that she has since made her peace with those children. has a relationship with them and they have relationships with their other siblings, her other children she had. She kept silent because she did not want to derail the very important work, very important work that Cesar Chavez was doing.

But apparently, it is coming out that she was not the only one. There were many others who were also sexually molested by him.

I bring that up only to say that this silence never saves us, this patriarchy, this violence, this commodification of women.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (31:09.45)
Even amongst our heroes, somehow there's always this sense, not always, but it seems so prevalent, this sense, this right to women's bodies. We saw it with Gandhi. You've seen it with the Epstein files, with Deepak Chopra, and so many others.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (31:35.392)
And so I write, regardless of how it makes, how uncomfortable it makes some people feel.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (31:47.084)
Why do we only tell the stories of men in war?

Adesoji Iginla (31:56.964)
So I did love the hero.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (31:58.967)
we must tell the stories of women as well.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (32:05.302)
You brought up my book Butterfly Burning. And in it, I wrote about desire. I wrote about choice. I wrote about a woman deciding for herself. Choosing, even when the world refuses her the right to choose.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (32:26.604)
And I wrote without judging her. did not soften her. I did not try to explain her. I just let her exist as a full human being.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (32:44.374)
Now the world may throw all kinds of effects at her, label her with all kinds of words.

But can she just be whatever it is that brought about her being?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (33:02.454)
And in my book, The Stone Virgins.

I invite my readers to understand what happens when violence enters the land and how it also enters the body. And throughout my work, I talk about women's relationship with the land.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (33:30.872)
Credo Mutois talks also about Mother Earth.

talks about even this excavation of minerals and the ripping of Mother Earth herself. How we dig into her and dig out her wealth and leave these gaping holes.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (33:59.501)
This violence on the land, this pollution in the land, the wound is not only in the land, it is carried within. And when I write, I want my readers to feel it.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (34:19.202)
Because if they feel it, then maybe their move to do something differently, to see and act differently, to respond differently. We've got to feel.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (34:36.374)
We want to believe history is just words, that thing that happened and it's over, but it's not.

It continues and in my body I I carry the memories and the weight of all who come before me. In fact, my book, Nehanda, and I believe you also have spoken to Nehanda. Have you not? I wrote this book, this novel, Nehanda, and I based it on

Adesoji Iginla (35:07.064)
Yep. Yeah, we did.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (35:16.032)
My maternal great-grandmother.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (35:23.318)
Masi Dengue, she was a medium and she was a healer.

We call that Nanga. And she was a diviner and she was so powerful that when they started opening the hospitals, the Western style hospitals, they wanted her to help bridge the gap between our traditional healing and the Western healing. And she would not leave her land. And so they gave her a motorbike. So my maternal great grandmother was the first woman in Zimbabwe.

what area known as Zimbabwe today, who rode a motorbike and she would ride her motorbike from our land to Harare to the city and do her work at the hospital and ride back.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (36:15.462)
And I based this book on the stories of Nehanda, but also experiencing my great-grandmother as a medium and just her power. And I recall a story about when my grandfather was beating up my grandmother.

And my great grandmother heard about it and she drove her motorbike. She rode her motorbike rather. She rode her motorbike to where my grandmother and my grandfather were. And she took my grandfather by the cheeks and she pulled his cheeks and she said, and if you ever touch my granddaughter again and I have to come back. Well, her daughter and I have to come back.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (37:07.222)
And my grandfather never touched my grandmother in that way again.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (37:13.966)
And so for me also when critics say, she's been in the West too long and she's bringing Western feminism to her writing, these people are speaking, may I be so bold as to say out of ignorance, you do not know our history. Women, African women have been their own agents.

We have been resisting, we have been fighting. It wasn't always this way and we will continue to resist.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (37:51.757)
And it's not Western feminism. We actually had more rights than even the Western world could ever conceive of. So when they would come and see what African women could do and did do, they were the ones with their patriarchy and their ideas who would further inflame African men.

to be so threatened by the autonomy of women.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (38:35.062)
and that violence of patriarchy. It continues. it feels like it's.

put down roots and spread out and.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (38:52.142)
put out fruit and just proliferate at the land.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (39:02.542)
Now I was one of those children who loved to read. English was my favorite language, my favorite subject in school and I was an avid reader. And when I started writing, writing for me was life. In fact, I would typically write for 10 hours a day.

taking breaks just to grab something really quickly to eat to keep my energy up. But writing was where I came alive. was where I could feel. And I wanted always...

to be on my land, to be in Zimbabwe when I wrote. And I have many friends who say, you know, I can write anywhere, just give me a desk and give me a chair and something to write with. But there was something important to me about being in my land. And so after I graduated from high school, I taught for a while, I met a Canadian.

And I went back and forth to Canada, eventually married him. I got my, I completed my undergrad degree and my master's in four years. And then I went on to also complete my PhD in four years. And when I was done with that, I came back home.

Home is where I wanted to be. I did not want to be part of that African brain drain. It was important to me to be part of the work in my own land.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (40:59.438)
to be part of.

figuring out what we were going to be, how we were going to reclaim who we were and define who we were going to be. It was survival, it was necessity.

And writing for me is a way of remembering what the world asks us to forget.

What is it that the world is asking you to forget? What is it that when you sit down with perhaps your journal, you find yourself reticent to write for any number of reasons that might be the very thing that you must write?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (42:00.153)
so that your voice is not silenced.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (42:10.988)
And so when people say my work is difficult or my work is too heavy, it's too much.

I have to ask.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (42:26.766)
Too much for who?

Adesoji Iginla (42:32.568)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (42:37.454)
Too much for the one living it?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (42:43.832)
Too much for the one desiring change.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (42:58.062)
Too much for the one looking for a waiter.

Survive? Talk less of thrive? Too much for who? Like how dare you in your place of comfort?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (43:18.314)
Decide that the burden someone else is bearing is too uncomfortable for you to even consider while they get to live it in your forgetfulness.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (43:38.69)
This is what I know.

Truth is not excessive.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (43:47.022)
truth is exact.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (43:56.392)
I would love to be remembered.

as a writer who had no fear for words.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (44:08.726)
I didn't live very long, relatively speaking.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (44:18.848)
I died at age 40.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (44:29.312)
As I mentioned earlier, most people had no idea.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (44:37.794)
that I was battling an HIV positive status or when it became full blown AIDS.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (44:53.014)
One of my biggest fears.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (45:01.068)
was being in exile.

And I know you've talked to many other African women who were exiled.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (45:15.66)
This violence.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (45:28.578)
You spoke with Mama Mary and MaKabah.

Adesoji Iginla (45:32.416)
So that's my title.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (45:35.138)
How do you heal the violence from not being able to go back to care for an ill mother?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (45:46.67)
for

participate in a ritual to send her to be with the ancestors.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (46:02.274)
But I left Zimbabwe when I could no longer remain.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (46:10.266)
I was the director for an art gallery and I was very intent on

showcasing the art of my people and we had Patrons who were

Indigenous people, but we also of course had people who are not Indigenous to the land who also patronized our gallery. We wanted to make sure that it was accessible to everyone.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (46:52.344)
But then the landscape started to change and fuel costs went up and people couldn't even afford the transportation costs to come to the gallery. And the tourists weren't even traveling to Zimbabwe anymore.

being able to patronize our gallery. And so I was working for Peanuts anyway, but then even the artists, we would do all of this work to put up their art and there would be nobody there. We went from having 2000 visitors a month to barely even 10. And it just stopped making sense. And I was so afraid of what was going to happen and would this place close?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (47:48.14)
and the artists, because of all the persecution that was also happening, were fleeing themselves.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (47:59.757)
I remember one time driving into the township and I had a car that could sit four people.

And as I was driving, I saw some women who were trying to get transportation to get into the city. And I stopped and told them they could come into my vehicle. And I drove them into the city. And when I dropped them off, they were trying to give me money. And I said, no, you don't owe me anything. And they just started crying and just praying over me and just so profuse in their, in their gratitude. And after they exited the vehicle, I just sat there weeping.

because we should not have to live this way.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (48:42.424)
Just the gratitude of these women just because I gave them a ride into town Like I said, I was going to be driving into town anyway the same amount of the fuel But what it meant for them not to have to shill out what few Shillings that they had And if you ask me today what I would say to any leader of Africa

Adesoji Iginla (49:03.874)
And he's there.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (49:14.338)
What advice I would give them?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (49:20.11)
Excuse me.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (49:27.51)
I am not one taken to public displays of emotion in this way, but I feel so heavily right now the burdens of my people. What I would say to any African leader is get out of your motorcade.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (49:51.916)
Get out of your fancy dwellings and go walk amongst your people.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (50:01.944)
See how they live.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (50:06.934)
see what a day in their lives looks like.

and you will make different choices.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (50:19.542)
And the same is true for you listening to me today.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (50:37.998)
I did leave Zimbabwe when I could no longer.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (50:44.48)
I had separated from my husband, but I returned to Toronto and to my husband.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (50:54.922)
and to a place where I could access.

a different level of healthcare.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (51:07.34)
And even then the work remained.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (51:18.944)
And even now the work remains.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (51:28.706)
The question is how willing we are to do that work, to be uncomfortable.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (51:40.76)
to not be swallowed up in that silence.

to not be erased and to not erase others either.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (51:57.911)
You know how I first got published? I

I had submitted, I was in Canada, I was an undergraduate student and I had submitted a short story to, I think it was a newspaper. And they loved it and they wrote back and they said, do you have more? And I didn't, but I said, yes, I do. And so I went on to write more. And that was my short story collection.

And then I wrote from 1992, I wrote five novels. So, Nehanda in 1993, Without a Name in 1994, Under the Tongue was published in 1996, Butterfly Burning was published in 1998, and The Stone Virgins was published in 2002. And at the time of my death, I was writing my book,

obedience, which I didn't finish. And the collection of stories, which was my very first book, is called Why Don't You Carve Other Animals? And

Hopefully this doesn't sound too forward and if it does, well it is what it is. I think my work is definitely worth reading. I would strongly encourage your listeners to read it and explore how it makes them feel and hopefully it inspires them to write as well. I got my PhD in English literature while I was studying, I was writing, I was teaching.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (53:46.957)
I was also becoming, I went to York University in Toronto and I was married just once and that was in 1987. And that was to John Jose, a Canadian teacher.

who had first come to Zimbabwe backpacking, I guess, looking for adventure. I have been celebrated in a number of ways.

I got quite a few awards while I was living. A lot of people talked again about my difficult political style and that I emphasized the unequal relationship between men and women, particularly within the Zimbabwe struggle.

but I do believe that my work can be extrapolated into just about any other place in the world if you just sit with it and if you are paying attention. My archives today are stored at the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections at York University in Toronto in Ontario.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (55:24.11)
And I think I will stop there. I think I've shared enough.

Unless you want to know some of my words, mean, these things are important to some people because then, that legitimizes her. But, I was recognized with a Commonwealth Writers Prize from the Africa region.

I did get the Zimbabwe Publishers Literary Award and the Macmillan Writers Prize for Africa in 2002 and also the National Arts Merit Award. There were awards that I also received in Germany and in Toronto and yeah, so.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (56:09.976)
Thank you for having me.

Adesoji Iginla (56:11.874)
No, thank you for coming through. Again, this is the reason why we do what we do here. We need to highlight the role women have played in the struggle and to also underscore whatever it is they've put into it, no matter how little. In the grand scheme of things, moving a needle is quite a...

Quite a heavy tax in itself. But there is one quote I want to live us with, and it's from your novel, Under the Tongue. And it says, and I quote, it says, a daughter is the birth of a dream. A daughter is daylight in growing leaves. daughters to mothers, mothers to daughters, mothers to grandmothers, you know.

You're the best of a dream, as you said. So that said, we've come to the end of this week's episode of Women and Resistance. Next week, it will be the turn of Queen Mother Moore. Who she is, what she's about, we shall find out in the course of next week's episode. If this is your first time here, do like, share, subscribe to the channel, and do all the good stuff.

Until next week.

Adesoji Iginla (57:45.998)
Would you like to leave us, Ms. Vera, would you like to leave us with some parting words?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (57:52.269)
Well, let's see if there's something that I've written that I would like to share with you. There's a part of me that feels I don't want to leave them down. But I do want to challenge.

Adesoji Iginla (58:03.618)
You

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (58:13.292)
I do want to challenge the women who are listening.

Because as I said earlier.

Patriarchy has always functioned via women, ourselves. And I think that it would be so powerful if we can at least start with ourselves.

to begin to dismantle this thing that is causing us so much violence. I also want to say this to all the women and to the men, to all of humanity.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (59:08.044)
I recognize how.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (59:13.128)
difficult it is to go to those places.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (59:21.24)
that have been in the shadow for so long. Those places that don't quite make sense, those places where your emotions conflict. I think it's why Carl Jung would talk about doing shadow work. I think it's why so many of us deal with substance abuse or find so many ways to escape our lives.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (59:56.377)
But there is a treasure, there's a treasure in remembering.

There's a treasure in excavating those spaces. And there's a real tragedy in allowing life as it is now to function like termites that go and destroy these memories, or at least try to. And so I want to encourage a deep bravery.

to go to those places where you don't know whether you want to scream or laugh uncontrollably or whether where you're rocking back and forth because you just have to figure out a way to soothe yourself where you're besides yourself literally so that you can get in touch with those deepest parts of you.

because there's a treasure in those memories and the healing, the healing is in those places.

what you don't heal, the next generation still has to contend with.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:01:22.22)
I thank you again for the opportunity to speak with you all.

Adesoji Iginla (01:01:26.334)
Thank you all for coming through. As I said earlier, next week would be Queen Mothermore. That said, next week, it's good night and God bless.