new reads

.An excerpt from Autumn in Zimbabwe, a short story by Wadzanai Mhute, published in the current issue of Per Contra.

"What's going on? Do you like Simon?" Musa, Simadi's friend who was also black, asked her.

"No way!" Simadi said, partly because he was white and in post-independent, still racist Zimbabwe, whites and blacks didn't like each other that way... Each was accepted individually; together they represented a side to Zimbabwe that was not to be encouraged.

--Read the whole story here.

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And here's another story, this time by blog regular Afam Akeh. Titled Legend of the Speaking Ass, it is published in Position Magazine.

The people of Ise still tell their children about the time when all things, including the animals, spoke one language and understood each other. It is a tale they tell to teach their young but even the adults are much entertained by it. In those days, in Ise, voices grew out of everything. Everyone was gifted with one language. The goat spoke that language and the hen understood it. Every animal also had its opinion, its peculiar view of things. There were well-known wags among the parrots and gifted orators crowing daily among the cockerels. But it was not only the animals that could speak in that way. The things you sat or walked on, the place you lived in, even the things you wore on your body, all could speak. A loincloth had once been heard complaining from the waist of an Ise elder, “I stink. Wash me!”

-- Read the story here... You can also read a note on Akeh in the same issue.