Writer analyses what makes stories meaningful, authentic
SISONKE Msimang commutes between South Africa and Australia, where she is programme director at The Centre for Stories, which collects, preserves and shares stories about migrants, refugees and diverse people and places linked to the Indian Ocean Rim.
Msimang, a writer and activist, worked as the executive director of the Open Society Initiative for South Africa and the Sonke Gender Justice Network. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Mail and Guardian and on Daily Maverick.
In October, Msimang’s first book, which is tentatively titled Always Another Country, will be published by Jonathan Ball in South Africa.
The book is a memoir about her childhood in exile in Zambia and Kenya, her student years in north America, her return to South Africa and family, romance and motherhood.
Last year Msimang featured in a very popular TED Talk titled If a Story moves you, act on it, about the need not to just write and listen to stories but to take action against all forms of social injustice.
Heather Robertson (HR) interviewed Msimang (SM) for Nali’bali:
HR: In your TED talk you spoke about the strengths and limitations of story-telling. Why do you believe we have come to place so much emphasis on likeable characters and fiction over fact when reality is so much more nuanced, more gritty and complex?
SM: We are living in an era of oversimplification. Reality is nuanced and gritty but also hard and often painful. So in our fiction many of us are looking to escape, and in our non-fiction many of us are looking for answers.
The rise of self-help books is a great example. And so as more and more new outlets begin to play in the space of story-telling – in order to make certain kinds of stories more accessible – there is a huge temptation to make those stories and those people more palatable, easier for “mainst audiences to relate to.
HR: What are the ingredients that make a good story and what makes a shoddy, mediocre or downright bad story? SM: A great story is authentic. It’s written in a way that is true to the vernacular of the person telling it. That’s pretty much it. A shoddy story is one that seeks to hide or project things about its teller – it is invested in things other than itself. I guess I’m realising that a good story is one that is true to its own rhythms and cadences, and that completes itself. A story can’t be written until its teller has enough distance from it to tell it truthfully.
HR: How can stories work as an antidote to bias? Can you give examples of stories that do this?
SM: Chinua Achebe writes about how Africans are not often depicted by Europeans as “quite simply … a continent of people – not angels, but not rudimentary souls either – just people, often highly gifted people and often strikingly successful in their enterprise with life and society”.
For me [such a] story is one that does what Achebe says – elevates people beyond the notion of rudimentary souls. A story that does this is one that addresses bias without preaching about bias. The complexity and nuance of a good story is the antidote – not “the message”. Does that make sense? One of my favourite books, The God of Small Things by Arundati Roy, does this beautifully.
It doesn’t give us Kipling’s India. It gives us two wonderful, wounded children and in the telling of their story we understand the wounds of colonialism, nationalism and the birth of post-colonial India.
To be honest, though all great literature is an antidote to bias – because it’s complex. That’s what makes it great. And that’s what explodes myths about people and places.
HR: How can stories move listeners and readers, the audience of stories, to act for social justice?
SM: On their own, they can’t. That is why, for me, initiatives like Amandla Mobi are so excellent. It was started by a young black woman who was tired of hearing people whine about stories as a way to make themselves feel better, without taking action. Koketso Moeti is one of my heroes. She’s all about story-telling and action combined.
HR What book or authors have inspired you, and how have they inspired you?
SM: Arundati Roy of course. She’s lyrical and her prose is so evocative. As a young woman I loved the poetry of Nikki Giovanni – she’s smart and quirky and plainspoken. The plainspokenreally appeals to me.
I try to write simply because I want as many people as possible to understand me, even if the ideas I am expressing aren’t always straightforward. Ursula K Le Guin’s commitment to story-telling has always inspired me. The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas is one of the most haunting and yet simple stories I’ve read.
● For more information about the Nal’ibali campaign, for to access children’s stories in a range of SA languages, visit: www.nalibali.org