Abstract
Reading and literacy projects in South Africa have a long and fascinating history. In this conversation, Kgauhelo Dube talks about a contemporary Pretoria-based initiative which seeks to promote reading and literacy through the showcasing of African authors and texts. The discussion explores some of the social and material dynamics which inform the post-apartheid reading project, including the lack of reading and library facilities in township settings and the ongoing alienation experienced by black students and scholars in white-dominated institutions. It points to the importance of the contemporary revival of the discourse of decoloniality as a means of framing the project, and as a route to understanding the broader contexts in which African literature is produced and consumed. The discussion also engages with the importance of the short story form for the public reading event and considers some of the ways in which the written text is subsequently reshaped as a dynamic and mobile digital product.
Keywords
In the conversation that follows, Kgauhelo Dube, the director of a Pretoria-based arts consultancy Kajeno Media, gives an account of a reading and literature project called “LongStorySHORT”. Variously branded as “LongStorySHORT — African Literature Goes Digital” and “LongStorySHORT — Africa Reads”, the project employs digital technology in order to “showcase African literature through a combination of live readings and recordings” which are subsequently packaged into podcasts that the public can access as free downloads (Facebook, n.d.). The project aims to “introduce readers to the vast community of African writers and publishers” and to act as “an important distribution channel for African writing” (Facebook, n.d.). In this regard, it seeks to encourage a South African reading culture and to promote African literature and literacy in a context in which the structural inequalities shaped by the long history of colonialism, segregation, and apartheid still persist. This legacy is evident in the fact that the majority of public schools in South Africa do not have libraries (Davis, 2013), and, as Dube points out, that most people in township and rural areas do not have access to physical book stores (Facebook, n.d.). Also at issue is what Dube describes as “the literary value chain and how it consciously ignores African writers and readers”. LongStorySHORT uses digital technology to make books more widely available and to circumvent a publishing context which is skewed towards writers in the US and the UK by getting “African stories distributed through mobile platforms” (Facebook, n.d.).
LongStorySHORT was launched on 27 March 2015 at the Olievenhoutbosch Library in Centurion near Pretoria and, since then, events have taken place in community libraries in and around the city, including Soshanguve, Hammanskraal, Sunnyside, and Nelmapius. LongStorySHORT events typically take the form of a reading of a short story or extract by an African writer followed by discussion. In a departure from the literary festival norm, readings are performed by well-known local TV and theatre celebrities. These readings are also filmed and subsequently posted online in the form of accessible podcasts and YouTube videos that can be accessed on smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. At the inaugural event in Centurion, the short story, “Tender” by Cynthia Jele (author of the novel Happiness is a Four-Letter Word, 2010) was read by South African actress Hlubi Mboya. Since then, other writers featured in the project have included Zukiswa Wanner, Chibundu Onuzo, Nape a’ Motane, Uche Peter Umezurike, Thando Mgqolozana, Doreen Baingana, Niq Mhlongo, A. Igoni Barrett, and Zakes Mda. Some of the storytellers who have participated include Abena Ayivor, Sisanda Henna, Quanita Adams, Lindiwe Matshikisa, and Nigerian hip-hop group “Fokn Bois”. The stories are selected and curated by Yewande Omotoso, award-winning author of Bom Boy (2011) and The Woman Next Door (2016). As Omotoso remarks, the project seeks to do justice to the wide range of contexts, genres, and themes in African literature. Rather than being prescriptive about what young people should read, it emphasizes the entertainment value of literature and seeks to encourage young people to read as “widely as possible about a range of matters that concern us as human beings” (Books Live, 2015: n.p.).
As a project which moves from material book to digital product — from spoken word and written page to illuminated screen (Jabr, 2013a, 2013b; Piper, 2012) — LongStorySHORT can be seen as yet another example of the burgeoning practices of innovative digital engagement with the written text. In the case of LongStorySHORT, the printed book is also accompanied by a performance of reading, thus instantiating important connections with ongoing practices of orality. Both the oral performance and the printed page are subsequently transposed into a malleable and mobile digital product which is also highly visible, widely accessible, and infinitely reproducible. In its unusual combination of oral performance, printed page, and digital video, LongStorySHORT offers a striking example of the journeys and afterlives of the written text as it is shaped and reshaped in relation to altering contexts of production and reception. Like other digital publishing ventures such as Jaladaa (jaladaafrica.org) and Chimurenga (chimurenga.co.za), LongStorySHORT takes the arguably marginal literary forms of African literature and the “short story” and inserts them into the fluid, rhizomatic spaces of the cybersphere. In its new incarnation as mutable digital product, the work of literature is put into play as part of a range of new digital reading and interpretive contexts and connections in which many different kinds of texts, images, and interventions vie for attention. As several scholars have suggested, the particular settings and spaces of book display, diffusion, and consumption have an influence on the reading experience itself (Colclough, 2011; Darnton, 2011/1986; Hammond, 2006; Hobbs, 2011). In this regard, digital reading projects such as LongStorySHORT offer fresh possibilities for thinking through some of the implications of digitized reading environments.
By harnessing the dialogic potential of other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter — through associated hashtags such as #FortheLoveofAfrikanLiterature and #OneStoryAtATime — the project also opens up an important public debate on a range of questions including decoloniality, racism, and the legacy of apartheid. In this way, the reading of stories facilitates a wider political discussion. What is also significant is the amenability of the short story and flash fiction to various online and electronic formats, and the ease with which they can be transposed into new forms and novel contexts. This condition of transferability has important implications for genre classification: that is, even if the story is extracted from a longer work, the piece is nevertheless read and received as a “short story” in its own right. In its multiple performative and digital afterlives, the extract becomes a work of short fiction by default.
As is suggested by the various descriptions of the project, LongStorySHORT explicitly draws on the discourse of decoloniality, famously inaugurated in Ngŭgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Decolonizing the Mind (1981) and taken up more recently by various Latin American and South African scholars (Mbembe, 2016; Mignolo, 2009, 2011; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013). In the Facebook incarnation of this project, this impetus is evident in citations of popular decolonial quotations and polemical statements as well as the inclusion of interviews with African writers such as the late South African poet laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile who, from its inception, was also the project’s main patron and promoter. The discourse of decoloniality as it takes shape in this context reflects on black (in)visibility and the continuing epistemological dominance of Eurocentric paradigms and interpretive frames. As Kgositsile remarks in a LongStorySHORT interview, one of the consequences of colonialism was that African content was replaced with content from Europe and North America, thus making it particularly important that Africans draw on a collective memory and indigenous stories (LongStorySHORT, n.d.). In another intervention, South African writer Niq Mhlongo speaks of the importance of “dismantl[ing] the institutions and systems of the oppressor”, of creating the space “to imagine something new, something not informed by a colonial framework” (LongStorySHORT, n.d.: n.p.). As our interview with the project’s founder will also go on to suggest, what is at issue is the sense of dislocation and alienation experienced by African scholars and students in institutional contexts which are still dominated by colonial or apartheid logics.
As a community reading initiative, LongStorySHORT is usefully historicized as a contemporary post-apartheid manifestation of a longstanding interest in literacy and library projects for black readers in South Africa. The question of black reading — Do black people read? Should black people read? If not, why not? And what can be done to encourage it? — has been an issue in South African public debate since the early twentieth century. These interventions, which drew in a range of political constituencies, tended to reflect a basic tension between the Enlightenment project of creating a critical citizenry via literacy and the more utilitarian or assimilationist colonial project of inducting black citizens into an amenable workforce. 1 More radical reading projects in early twentieth-century South Africa (associated with groups such as the Communist Party and the Non-European Unity Movement) took shape as private libraries, discussion groups, debating societies, amateur theatrical groups, salons, and adult education classes (Dick, 2012; Sandwith, 2014). The instigators of the liberal reading project, by contrast, tended to focus on the establishment of the segregated “Non-European library” (Cobley, 1997; Rochester, 1999), taking the act of reading as a consoling sign of the possibility of black advancement and a compelling index of approximation to Western cultural norms. Projects developed in this name, drawing on the Romantic ideal of quiet contemplation and inward reflection, sought to address a gap opened by state neglect and thus tended to be framed in moral terms. However, as in the British and North American contexts, the democratization of reading provoked anxiety and fear. This was as much a response to the threat of “the great unread” as to the danger of vast numbers of readers untrained in the rigours of “proper” moral and aesthetic discrimination. The ambiguities in this discourse are pervasive, reflecting the contradictory allure of reading for indoctrination, compensation, assimilation, and education as well as an awareness of the dangers posed by the spread of radical ideas (Sandwith, 2016).
As a black reading initiative in contemporary post-apartheid South Africa, how does LongStorySHORT differ from its historical antecedents? An important point of correspondence is that reading projects in South Africa, whether developed in the 1930s or the post-2000s, respond to a similar set of structural and economic inequalities in which access to education, work opportunities, and infrastructure continues to be closely linked to race. The need for projects such as LongStorySHORT thus speaks to an important contemporary political failure which replicates that of the apartheid and segregationist regimes. Other continuities between past and present are evident in the dominance of reading as a communal, convivial, and shared activity, based on the oral performance of extracts in public spaces such as libraries and schools, underpinned by various kinds of social networks and relations, and generating public debate. Also evident is the ongoing practice of mediated reading, namely the importance of reading and mentoring relationships in which the uninitiated are guided into what is frequently experienced as an intimidating or elitist activity. In this sense, reading in the present, as in the past, takes shape not as a solitary practice but one which is animated by various social relations (Sandwith, 2018). What the evidence of reading initiatives in South Africa, both past and present, suggest is not a “downgrading of the network of personal loyalties” favoured by oral cultures, as Jonathan Rose (2001: 25) suggests, but rather their continuation and even elevation.
In the contemporary post-apartheid period, the older tropes of the liberal-paternalist ethos such as reading for moral education, “advancement”, anthropological knowledge, or racial harmony (Sandwith, 2016) have been supplanted by a more radical political stance which places emphasis on redressing inequality and empowering the poor. Framed within the contexts of economic constraint, dislocation, decoloniality, and alienation, the idea of reading as formulated in LongStorySHORT is linked to the goals of education, emancipation, and even healing. In these non-prescriptive, more open, reading contexts, reading accrues significance as a means of pleasure and escape. In the access it grants to a wider world of debates and ideas, it is also understood as both a counter to parochialism and as a platform for new pan-Africanist solidarities. Finally, the emphasis in LongStorySHORT on undoing the dominance of Western epistemological frameworks indicates a further departure from the liberal model; in this sense, the project seeks actively to engage with the invisibility of African literature in the broader corporate publishing context.
Before addressing the LongStorySHORT project itself, can you tell us a little about your background, your early career, and the reasons why you became interested in issues of literacy, reading, culture, and the arts?
My name is Kgauhelo Dube. I was born in Pretoria and I am 34 years old. I was raised by my mother so my upbringing is really related to my mother’s life. My mother’s father is from Winterveldt, North West of Pretoria. My great grandparents are called the pioneers of Winterveldt because of the work they did in starting schools and churches in the area. I did not know much about my mom until I was old enough to actually understand who she was and then I understood that she was a journalist. When I was growing up, she was writing for The Sowetan. Later, she became a journalist for SABC Radio News in Pretoria before moving to the SABC in Johannesburg. So I spent a lot of my time in Pretoria — I went to school there — even though I was living with my grandmother in Mabopane and Garankuwa, which were then part of Bophuthatswana. 2
My years at school were very influential on me. I attended Pretoria High School for Girls: as you know, black schoolgirls there have been protesting against the rules about black hair. 3 The rules say that natural black hair must be relaxed. For me, it’s all about control: black hair is just too big. It gets in the way. It’s like it’s too much. Actually, I am grateful to that school for politicizing me because after I left high school I never relaxed my hair. Yet, my former classmates were saying that this black and white thing is tired. And I got so upset and hurt. These are black girls who have their own struggles with white supremacy on a daily basis. The fact that some of my former classmates are defending this white supremacist system is unthinkable. Some of them defended it by saying, “I had the opportunity of having white friends”.
I go back to my upbringing. I am being raised by a black woman who does not have a husband. She is raising three children. She is probably the only black journalist in the Newsroom and in the 1980s she already has white friends. For me it was not important to make white friends in school. So it is also not fair for me to judge those people because my life was different. I was not privileged but my life was different. For me, it was not a privilege to be with white people. And now to fast forward to today when some of my classmates are excusing white privilege because it meant that they had access to white people? It is painful for me, you know.
When my mom heard about the protests, she called me and said: “My child, why didn’t you tell me what you went through at school?” And I said, “Mom, it was a rough time; we were always treated like it was a privilege to go to that school so we shut up. Even if stuff happened”. These kids are only talking about hair. Can you imagine what else is happening there?
But if you think about it, it is the same with what is going on in literature, when we are talking about decolonizing literature. It’s actually about decolonizing everything. So I feel that what happened at Pretoria High School has sparked something; I am trying to remember why I am the person that I am. I studied advertising; I worked in advertising as a brand strategist and I let it all go. I had a crisis of conscience: I had clients who wanted me to sell black people jeans, airtime, and cars. And I thought, is this it? Especially selling that stuff to black people who can’t even afford it. Now knowing that my cousins live in an RDP house, 4 you understand, I felt it was dodgy. I understand that I am not implicated in the system; I understand that I cannot change it but I don’t think I want to be a part of it. What I thought then was that I am a good marketer; I am good at selling things. So maybe I should apply myself to selling culture and art, things that will actually take these people out of this poverty.
The question of decolonizing the literary landscape has been the subject of ongoing debate in South Africa. Was this something you originally imagined when you started the project?
LongStorySHORT for me comes from a very deep place, from my experience at school and from my relationship with reading and books. Here I am, a young black girl in a primary school before Girls High. I’m at Brooklyn Primary. I’m in a primary school in Brooklyn, which is a very affluent neighbourhood in Pretoria and I still live with my grandmother with about four or five of my cousins, and not with my mom. And the rest of my cousins, most of whom were my peers, go to township schools. I am the only child in that house who goes to a white school, you know. And I come back home every day; the commute is an hour and a half.
I leave home early; I come back late and there is a lot of resentment towards me because I go to school with white people. That’s why also I am very happy with what happened [at Pretoria High School for Girls] because our communities will understand that kids who go to these schools do not have it easy. Because a lot of these kids who live in the townships are reduced to being cheese boys and cheese girls. 5 We don’t know what these kids go through in these schools, just for a quality education.
So already from a young age I’m in this situation and I come back from school and my cousin, who is six years older than me, is studying the same thing that I’m studying in Grade 5 and she is in Grade 8. She is older than me so I don’t want to say, “Oh, I know how to do this”. So I just keep quiet. But for me at that age I already see the divide in the quality of education. Also, because I’m living in the township and going to school in Brooklyn — I’m alienated from my family because, when I come back, nobody wants to play with me so what do I do? I take books from the school library. And if they do want to play with me, I have to live with the fact that people are going to be passing remarks like “You think you’re white”. So books are my escape. I think to myself, I am so happy. I have a library at school I can take five books a week and just read, read Adrian Mole.
At times I would visit my mom. As a journalist, sometimes she would have a story to follow up on. If the story was at a squatter camp, I would have to go and just sit there and play with those kids there. I had to be in a world where my daily life was much more privileged than those around me. I’m in a squatter camp, in a township, but I’m also at Brooklyn. It’s kind of schizophrenic. Actually, it made me a very sad person. That’s why I just wanted to read. I couldn’t deal with it so I just wanted to read. Luckily, socially, I would never have closed myself off, but I was always disturbed. And it’s not even just the other kids at school. Even in my own family I was so different from the others. I could never let the disparity go. But I told myself, at least I have a school library. At least I can get books. At least I can easily lock myself in a room and read until it’s time to eat and have a bath.
So you had all these varied experiences?
Ja, so that escape. It’s not just a nice PR story. I lived it and I carried that throughout my life. Also the fact that when I was with my mom, she would be socializing with artists, photographers, a lot of black consciousness writers. So there was a huge gap between that reality and my life in other places. Even going into the advertising industry, it still did my head in because, as a result of my conditioning, I always felt like there must be something better. And I felt like, for me, books presented that possibility. Even in a place like Girls High, books were still an escape. You would think that, Oh, because I went to such a good school it is fine, but for me I had to break the madness with reading.
Would there have been any African writers?
Very few. And actually, this whole situation about black hair has made me think that maybe I should engage the school, do readings there and maybe encourage the girls to have some sort of a black feminist club.
What you have been describing about your experience of reading as a form of escape leads us back to the LongStorySHORT project. Why do you want these kids in the township to read? What is driving that?
Well, to go back to what I have said, I think reading as an escape is good. There are certain realities that black people find themselves in and maybe literature, particularly African literature, can be part of the healing. Especially when we realize that our realities are not just South African; they’re bigger than that. We are part of a bigger struggle. South Africa is a very closed off space because of apartheid; we’re so closed off in our thinking. You see the advantage that other African countries have over us in their knowledge of the world. Firstly, because our democracy is younger but also because apartheid was really successful in separating people. So there has to be an active intervention in opening up people’s worlds, particularly those who don’t have economic means. If you don’t have economic means, reading is such an immediate way of opening up your world and also realizing that, Oh! These people in Nigeria have the same struggles. So, there is this mind travelling thing that happens with reading; reading facilitates those human connections that apartheid closed off. So I feel that books can enlighten people and then if people read more of this literature, do you think we would have the xenophobic attacks? I wonder.
So this also speaks to the Pan-Africanism of the project. Because you include Nigerian, Ugandan, and South African writers.
From all over the continent. And Yewande Omotoso is the curator. I don’t choose the stories. It’s up to Yewande and, since she is a writer, it works very well. This has been a very successful part of the project; the writers have bought into it because a fellow writer is curating. Yewande’s involvement is also important because when we talk about African literature we think of Achebe, Mphahlele, Ngŭgĩ wa Thiong’o, Mandla Langa, and so on but we are not thinking of the more contemporary writers and yet they are the future Achebes. For me this is something that is also very exciting as I’m working with future classics.
So she chooses the stories. Does she choose what extracts are taken or do the writers have some say in what they want to be read?
There’s a word count. I think it is 1,000 words and the writers are asked to submit.
Submit new stories?
No, they submit extracts.
So, they do the cutting. Does Yewande help with that process?
Yes, she does. And then for the writers who are too lazy to do it themselves — who say, “choose anything” — she does it for them. But this doesn’t always work. We saw it with Bra Zakes’s book The Sculptors of Mapungubwe. It so happened it was not an exciting part of the book when it came to the actual reading.
Do you tend to choose parts that are funny or dramatic or exciting? Is there any sort of genre that works better?
My understanding of Yewande’s curatorial process is that she wants to represent a cross-section of contemporary African literature. We also have flash fiction. We’ve got A. Goni Barett’s submission which is very very short. That’s also exciting for us because this is a very interesting way of introducing people to literature.
So, you have the whole range from short short fiction to longer extracts from a novel.
Yes, it’s really a cross section and I’m most excited about flash fiction. For me, the most important thing is the consumption of what we’re doing. It’s not about us boasting about knowing all the writers. I get a sense that flash fiction is an interesting inroad for us to try and win readership because these are serious writers. It takes a particular skill to condense a story into a hundred words.
Yewande has already curated about 24 stories so far since the inception of the project in March 2015. The reading in Uganda last week was on the 10th. We read from Doreen Baingana’s Tropical Fish, which was awesome because she was there and we could do a Q and A with her. We’ve done ten stories, nine English stories, and one Setswana story. There are also some guys from Ghana who are visiting South Africa called “Fokn Bois” — very interesting hip hop, very rebellious, social commentary kind of guys. The “Fokn Bois” are big internet rock stars so it works for the project because our content lives online. If we do a reading with them it will be an English story and a Ghanaian Pidgin story. Ja, so we’re slowly trying to break out of English. Language has always been an issue for us. It was always part of the branding for us to start with English stories but if we didn’t move to other languages we wouldn’t be speaking to the decolonizing agenda.
Do you imagine that the stories are a kind of taster?
Yes, definitely; they are almost mini adverts for the books because whether the book lives within a Caine Prize anthology, or a whole novel, the entire book must be read. So, the little bit that you get should spark your interest in the writer or the book that the story lives in. For me it is a triumph to promote literature in this way. I’m a marketer, so I don’t live in that world where books are books. To me, books are creative products; they are like songs. So how have musicians managed? How does Beyoncé manage? How did Miriam Makeba manage? How is Chimamanda [Ngozi Adichie] doing it? She has a machine that gives her exposure and that puts her on particular platforms that have a particular style and aesthetic. In this way she has become a feature of popular culture and yet she is a writer.
So, is LongStorySHORT a way of becoming part of this popular dimension, rather than the more elite circuits like the festivals? 6
I can’t speak of markets that I don’t know, like Europe and the US, but my understanding of Africa and my people is that people still have a thing about FOMO — Fear of Missing Out. We have to appeal to that fear. If people want to be members of this cool club of people who read, let’s humour them and within that time and space they’ll get around to reading the books. In an interview with Chuma Mwokolo recently, I asked him what books he would recommend to someone who has just started to read African literature. He said he would recommend short stories because they are not intimidating and yet you feel you have accomplished something. He said, “Please, if a book doesn’t feel right let it go, don’t feel the pressure to complete it. Rather finish a short story that is four pages long and read another one”. And I suppose that is why there is this thing around the short story. Also because they are short. For example, I can tell you a story about what I did yesterday in five minutes and that’s a short story and that is why it works, especially in this environment with us being so busy and consuming so much information.
What is interesting is that a longer work becomes, or is reshaped, into a short story. At the moment it is read it is a short story and not the longer work.
Ja, I remember at one of the readings in Soshanguve, one reader asked that particular question and the MC said, “Ja, that’s what makes LongStorySHORT fabulous. Writers can actually rework pieces of their novels to be short stories” but, you’re right, the piece works on its own and it is fulfilling. You don’t feel like you’ve been short changed. In my interview with Chuma, I asked him to comment on the assumption that blacks don’t read. He said it’s just a very obtuse statement because a lot of our storytelling is oral. So, perhaps the stories that people want to hear have not been captured in books. Because literature is oral and it is written, we are leaving out a big chunk of literature when we make these statements. So I suppose, because it is read out loud, LongStorySHORT also speaks to that space of oral literature.
And it is read by celebrities and performers. Could you talk a bit about the idea of having celebrities read the stories?
The idea is that celebrities are used to sell a lot of products that are of no value to society. So why can’t we use them to do something useful? We also made a choice to use people with a theatre background because they are more comfortable with live performance and also with the reading. They are not supposed to memorize the story: they are supposed to read. It is important for the audience to see the act of them reading. It is not about knowing your lines. No, it’s a demonstration that it is okay to read. We also try to work with people who we know are readers themselves. It’s not a one-off act. You have to be a bookworm in order to be part of this project.
Another important part of the LongStorySHORT readings is that we have a theatre director who works with every celebrity. So, there’s a strong performance and preparation. You can’t just rock up and read. We can all read. We are trying to sell people the world of loving to read, so you can’t come there and just mess around. You have to enthral these people. When the person leaves they must want to buy the book. They must want to meet the writer. They must just feel “Oh My God, I thought books were boring but now I feel differently about this, and on top of that my favourite celebrity read the story so beautifully”. And then we put up the podcast and I think, “You were there! Go get the book!”
So the specific books would also be sold at the event?
Yes, we have a partnership with African Flavour Books. Every time we have a reading, they do a pop-up store. So that’s all been very good because this idea that black people cannot afford books is a big fat lie. People can buy whiskey, and all sorts of things, expensive shoes, and expensive sunglasses. This is also the reason why we house the readings in libraries: if you can’t afford to buy the books, you’re in the library, you can get that book. But if you want to take the book home, right now, you can buy it. So the follow-through is there. That’s why I’m quite disturbed by some of the campaigns especially with National Book Week and the campaign “Buy a book, read a book”. What book am I supposed to read? Where am I supposed to buy it? Actually you need to curate people’s choices.
So you’re saying that to choose a book can be quite intimidating.
Yes, hence you find many people reading something, but not fiction. Black people read self-help books, for example. It is also informed by our life circumstances and also no one is actually encouraging us to interact with the world of imagination and fiction and to make us realize how much truth is there. There seems to be prejudice against fiction. Among black men especially. It’s not that they don’t read but they don’t read much fiction. This is one challenge I would like to take up in the near future.
That is the good news, although it has been very difficult to run LongStorySHORT consistently because of funding. It costs a lot of money to put the production together.
Because it is very professional. It reads easily. It reads very well and it’s such a pleasure to watch online.
Thank you. But it’s quite a costly exercise. There’s a Facebook joke which mocks the idea of artists doing things for the “exposure”. They say “Is exposure going to feed my children?” I can’t patronize the writers, the performers, the filmmakers, myself, and my social media team by saying it is about exposure only. They are attached to the project. They know it is worth something but they still have to eat. It does give us social capital but it is also our work.
I think the next frontier would be for us to team up with the writers and to say, for example, “Okay Yewande, would you entrust us to do the audiobook of The Woman Next Door?” Because now we have the technical experience of producing. I listen to audio books and sometimes they leave much to be desired.
There are African classics and writers such as Chimamanda Adichie and NoViolet Bulawayo but not a lot of young South African writers are on audio.
LongStorySHORT started off in its simplest form as a means of encouraging reading and promoting African literature. But when you are in that space where you are doing a reading in a township and you discover that there is so much more that is needed, you can’t just walk away and just do events with celebrities. And ideas take on their own lives; that is what happens. We are trying to promote African literature but we don’t have much of it in the public libraries. Public libraries have very rigid systems of procurement so publishers can’t just walk into a library and present new books. So it’s difficult; you are trying to run a very simple reading project in a library and you uncover all these obstacles. There is no point in me having a reading and having someone like Niq Mhlongo in the library when the library does not have even one of his books.
We see what you mean by these other things which are beyond the project. The project has become much larger.
And I can’t just walk away from these things. I also feel that the space for audio books is untapped because with an audio book you just need a digital file that you can send by SMS or WhatsApp. So, if books are taking too long to get to a place, you can have an MP3 and then you start. And people who say they don’t have data are lying because they are the ones when you phone them they have songs as caller IDs.
But one of the bigger challenges that we have with the culture of reading and literacy is that although there are quite a few government programmes for young people, many of these grants and programmes are accessed by people like me — young people who went to good schools. Because the others cannot articulate their aspirations; they don’t read; they cannot write.
Do you have time in the sessions for people to ask questions and to talk about their own experiences?
Yes, so the format of LongStorySHORT is that the celebrity reads and obviously, because it is a short story, the reading is hardly ever longer than 12 minutes.
Would you have an introduction to the writer?
Yes, we have an MC who is fabulous.
And do you pay the celebrities?
Yes, but we do not pay them a lot because we are building such an important brand. We rely on good will from the celebrities because we have to podcast the reading. The agreement is that we pay them what we can afford and if they are not down with that they must just say so.
So the format?
The format is the MC welcomes everyone and the celebrity reads the story. The MC comes back and calls the writer on stage. When the writer is around s/he talks about what it was like to hear their story read by someone else and the celebrity talks about their preparation and how different it is from their other work; the celebrity also discusses the work at hand. Then we open it up to the audience. They can talk about anything related to the performance. We’ve found that young people often want to talk about their own writing and about being a writer. At the session in Hammanskraal, for instance, one girl came to me and said “I have written a book”. A whole book.
So even when the writer whose story is being read is not around, we always make sure another published writer is present to do the Q and A. For example, in Soshanguve when we were reading Doreen Baingaina’s story, the author was not there, but Futhi Ntshingila was there. In Nelmapius we were reading Peter Umezurike’s story, but Umez was not there so Yewande filled in for him. The writers give the project credibility. But I think from their side — from what I have heard from them — it’s such an interesting and new way to promote their work, something they had not thought of, especially the fact that when we read their story, there’s a podcast. Whether they send it to their next publisher or to friends and family who do not understand what this writing thing is about, they have got something that is alive. They have something that has some social capital to it as well.
Something else I want to highlight are literary festivals. I don’t know who organizes them but I get a sense that it is writers rather than other types of people. If writers want people to read their books, I think the structure of these literary festivals should be opened up to readers. They should have fewer panel discussions and more informal interaction. One way could be to have a selfie booth where there are say five writers, where readers can take selfies with authors and their books. This may help to demystify this world of literature to readers. Just because we are comfortable with these formats doesn’t mean that potential readers are. So if we are to have interventions — that is, if we are trying to make people read — then we need to break down that wall that exists between readers and books which theatre people call the fourth wall. 7
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.