22/02/2024
Thank you to the Chronicle for this great Q and A with Violette Kee Tui, following her NAMA nomination. Full transcript below:
Q: How easy was it transitioning from being a features journalist to being a fiction writer?
A: Initially it wasn't easy at all. As a journalist you work with facts, with information, you're taught from day one never to stray from the truth as it's been told to you or as you have investigated it to be. Fiction writing is the very opposite. You have no facts to work with, no information besides your own imagination. It's like leaping off a cliff with nothing to hold on to. But, in another sense, it's completely liberating. Without being bound to the facts, and the consequences of misrepresenting them, you can go anywhere and do just about anything you like. My years of training and experience as a features journalist gave me good observational skills, an ability to write in an engaging but more creative way than news writing, and to tell the stories of people and places. That helped a great deal in my transition to a fiction writer.
Q. What is "Magic and Masala" all about?
A: Although Magic and Masala is a stand-alone book, the story connects to my debut novel, Mulberry Dreams, published in 2021, also by Pigeon Press. Mulberry Dreams tells the story of an inter-racial relationship between a white woman and a coloured man in the 70s, which ends with tragic consequences. Their respective children meet 30 years later, still both reeling from the effects of those consequences and trying to put together the missing pieces of the puzzle that was their parents' lives. Magic and Masala focuses on the coloured family of Mulberry Dreams, switching timelines between present day (about five years after Mulberry Dreams ends) and looping way back to the early 1900s to tell the story of the family's Cape Malay descendants. The protagonist is the matriarch of the family, Sharifa, whose young sons leave Cape Town to find work and settle in Bulawayo. Throughout the book the story connects the past with the present, bringing all the threads together in the climax. Ultimately it's a story about tolerance and acceptance in a world which tries to keep people apart based on the colour of their skin, their culture or their religion. It's about the strength of womanhood and the fact that, in the end, love always wins. That's not necessarily to say it has a fairy tale ending - but that's for you to read and find out for yourself!
Q: What does the NAMA nomination mean to you? And what do you attribute your national tribute to?
A: Coming from a journalistic background, I don't have the long-standing credentials many other novelists do, and I have felt like I've had to work hard to prove that I can make the transition. The NAMA nomination means a great deal to me as it's a recognition of my role as a fiction writer. I think the themes of Magic and Masala (and Mulberry Dreams) are very relatable to most Zimbabweans. We are, as a nation, grappling with issues of race and tolerance on a daily basis and still have a long way to go in the healing process. I hope the national tribute means that I have struck a chord with a story that speaks to a wide and diverse sector of Zimbabweans.
Q: From getting a Roil Bulawayo Arts Awards nomination to getting a NAMA nomination, how far have you come in your literary journey?
A: While I am extremely humbled and grateful for this NAMA nomination, and while it's a lovely thing to win a prize for doing something you love, I don't think it's nominations or prizes which advance our journeys. Yes, they give us confidence, perhaps, or recognition - maybe they get people to take us more seriously. But if we get caught up in the prize-winning and don't do the work, we won't advance. I think my literary journey is only just beginning - and I don't mean I'm going to be churning out novels Stephen King-style! It means I'm more convinced than ever that I want to keep writing and telling stories which will hopefully engage and inspire readers.
Q: What's next for you in your diverse portfolio?
A: In terms of my literary portfolio, I'm currently editing and doing the photography for a glossy, coffee table book of recipes by my mom; putting it together has been an amazing culinary and emotional journey through my family's own transition from Iran to Zimbabwe to the US, and I'm very excited to see it completed. And there's also a children's book in the works, in collaboration with my partner and publisher, Paul Hubbard of Pigeon Press. There may just be a third novel connected to my first two, as well. I'm not sure yet, but I think something may be brewing inside me!
