Book Cafe discussion with Tsitsi Dangarembga and Shimmer Chinodya
Pamberi Trust hosted a literary discussion last night, on theme “Is writing craft or emotion?” The panelsits were Zimbabwean authors Tsitsi Dangarembga and Shimmer Chinodya, and the discussion was chaired by Stanley Mupfudza. Both speakers drew on their own works, and a number of other authors from elswhere in Africa, the US and Latin America, to conclude that both craft and emotion matter in creating great literature. But both speakers also agreed that as a motivation, emotion – the desire to convey a certain feeling to the reader – was a greater impetus to write than any interest in mastering the craft of writing for its own sake. In discussion, participants by and large agreed that both craft and emotion matter – but that emotion was of primary importance. Listen to Dangarembga urging Zimbabweans to speak out across their full range of emotions, and deepen our understanding of one another.