Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives

by Peter Orner (Editor), Annie Holmes (Editor)

The fifth volume in the Voice of Witness series presents the narratives of Zimbabweans whose lives have been affected by the country’s political, economic, and human rights crises. This book asks the How did a country with so much promise—a stellar education system, a growing middle class of professionals, a sophisticated economic infrastructure, a liberal constitution, and an independent judiciary—go so wrong?

In their own words, they recount their experiences of losing their homes, land, livelihoods, and families as a direct result of political violence. They describe being tortured in detention, firebombed at home, or beaten up or raped to "punish" votes for the opposition. Those living abroad in exile or forced to flee to neighboring countries recount their escapes, of cutting through fences, swimming across crocodile-infested rivers, and entrusting themselves to human smugglers. This book includes Zimbabweans of every age, class and political conviction, from farm laborers to academics, from artists and opposition leaders to ordinary men and women simply trying to survive as a once thriving nation heads for collapse.

Genres: Africa, Nonfiction, Zimbabwe, Oral History, Memoir, Essays

304 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2010

About the author

Peter Orner was born in Chicago and is the author of three novels: Esther Stories (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (Little, Brown, 2006), and his most recent, Love and Shame and Love (Little, Brown, 2011) which was recently called epic by Daniel Handler, "...epic like Gilgamesh, epic like a guitar solo." (Orner has since bought Gilgamesh and is enjoying it.) Love and Shame and Love is illustrated throughout by his brother Eric Orner, a comic artist and illustrator whose long time independent/​alt weekly strip The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green was made into a feature film in 2008. Eric Orner's work is featured this year in Best American Cartoons edited by Alison Bechdel.

A film version of one of Orner's stories, The Raft, is currently in production and stars Ed Asner.

The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a San Francisco Chronicle Best-Seller, won the Bard Fiction Prize. The novel is being translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and German. The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo is set in Namibia where Orner lived and worked in the early 1990's.

Esther Stories was awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction, and was a Finalist for the Pen Hemingway Award and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award.

Orner is also the editor of two non-fiction books, Underground America (2008) and Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives (co-editor Annie Holmes, 2010), both published by McSweeney's/​ Voice of Witness, an imprint devoted to using oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. Harper's Magazine wrote, "Hope Deferred might be the most important publication out of Zimbabwe in the past thirty years."

Orner has published fiction in the Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, The Southern Review, and various other publications. Stories have been anthologized in Best American Stories and the Pushcart Prize Annual. Orner has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim and Lannan Foundations.

Orner has taught at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop (Visiting Professor, 2011), University of Montana (William Kittredge Visting Writer, 2009), the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College (2009) Washington University (Visiting Hurst Professor, 2008), Bard College (Bard Fiction Prize Fellowship, 2007), Miami University (Visting Professor, 2002), Charles University in Prague (Visting Law Faculty, 2000). Orner is a long time permanent faculty member at San Francisco State where he is an associate professor. He would like to divide his time between a lot of places, especially San Francisco and Chicago.

Reviews

[Oriana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh god, I think this book is even more devastating than those Holocaust essays from Vassily Grossman, because this shit is still going on. The situation in Zimbabwe is just fucking agonizing, and if not for this book, I'd have had only the vaguest idea that some weird bad shit was going down there, but because I lead a stupidly privileged life that I did nothing to earn, that would have been the extent of it.

Do you know about the Voices of Witness series? It's funded by McSweeney's, and it is absolutely harrowing and brilliant and so so urgently needed. Look, I know lots of people hate Dave Eggers for being twee and precious and full of himself and too pomo and all the rest. But even of you loathe his writing or your perception of his personality, I beg you to consider the lasting impact he has had and is still having on the literary and cultural landscape in this country today. He has a hand—and a financial investment—in some incredible movements (826 Valencia, The Teacher Salary Project, Voices of Witness, among others), which, at risk of getting all squishy, is so noble, so praiseworthy. You have to give him that, at least.

Anyway, please don't stop reading, I have more to say.

This book is several hundred pages of interviews with Zimbabweans, many in exile and under forced asylum. They do a brilliant job here of covering the whole spectrum of voices, people from all the different political parties, old and young, black and white, native and non-, soldiers, veterans, farmers, organizers, black-market suppliers, border-jumpers, the unemployed, the HIV positive, torture survivors, torturers, on and on and on. There are extensive appendices for the woefully uninformed (me), tracing the national problems back for decades, so you can see that none of this shit is black-and-white (pun not intended), that the problems today are results of mismanaging the problems from last year and the year before that and the year before that, that the horrifyingly corrupt government was originally elected on great platforms and intended to do wonderful things, that this terrible fucking mess is so far gone that how can it possibly be fixed now?

You will learn so much from this book, and it will leave you (probably; it did me) feeling so hopeless and devastated you will not know what to do.

Books like this make me hate myself, hate my easy life, my stupid fucking trivial first-world problems, my lack of awareness, my lack of action, god, what a fucking world we live in, full of so much shit and misery, and here I am in my nice little Brooklyn apartment deciding what new music to download with my fast internet connection on my spiffy new-ish laptop and wondering where I will go to pay for an overpriced dinner tonight, and no one is shooting at me and I am in no real danger of getting raped or tortured or forced off of my land, and I know I will be able to eat (too much) today and tomorrow and in perpetuity and why am I not working with Doctors Without Borders? Or trying to find a cure for AIDS? Or doing anything lasting or meaningful or real?

Fuck. Oh my god. Please read this book right away. I have to go finish crying now.

[cory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quoting Edmore, p.296:
"If you did that without paying (attempt to cross a part of the border), you would end up very sorry. One man was with his wife and kids. They told him to lie on the ground and then asked that woman to lie on top of her husband. Then they did whatever they did to her. Yes, the kids saw what happened. Some other women were unfortunate too. Some of them were limping afterward. Those people who stayed behind, we never saw them again. When I think about it...."

Aside from that kind of scenario, several of which are described, it is hard to comprehend that so many people who had reasonable middle class lives 2 or 5 or 10 years ago are now alone, broke, broken, and/or in exile in other countries. It's not like some society that has been poor for decades and decades, these problems are all within the last 10 years or so (and still going: NY times article from christmas day this year)

Because the society is/was rather modern/sophisticated, there is this weird juxtaposition where one day the government agents will be coming to beat you, and the next day you call your lawyer and then they leave you alone. Not exactly that, but still this weird thing where there is this brutally violent activity and a still a somewhat functional legal system.

Another aspect that is hard to digest is that this is going on, and has been going on now/recently. It's not like some historical stuff "oh yeah that was fucked up i can't believe people used to be like that" kinda thing. Should we be more aware? Or be made more aware? Have I just missed the news on this? I try to pay attention here and there, listen to The World now and again. I remember the elections in 2008, it just doesn't seem like the steady and systematic decline of this nation and subsequent suffering of its people has garnered much or enough attention.

It's nice that this publisher and the editors and people who worked on this project are sharing these stories. What next? What can we do? At least to start: read it, share it, and raise awareness.

[Tendai Huchu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book that takes oral accounts of Zimbabwean Lives during the 00's and presents them in a compassionate and non sentimental way. While most information about Zimbabwe on the news and in the media tends to be sensational, punctuated with clichés and reductionist, Hope Deferred whilst chronicling the lives of people living in difficult conditions still leaves them with the dignity they are stripped of in the mainstream media. These oral accounts from people of all walks of life manage the difficult feat of being a survey, a condensed view of the Zimbabwean experience in the last decade. Because the stories are told by Zimbabwean themselves, the book therefore has the authenticity usually lacking in the fly-by-night accounts of foreign authors. This is an excellent book by any measure.

[Nikki Chee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having grown up in apartheid South Africa and departing in 1997 when I was 13, I had no idea what was going on in my neighbouring country, only that people wanted to go from there to here.
An excellent insight into the lives of real people and the challenges they faced. A must read

[Meir Brooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is very important, but for whatever reason, I didn't feel the accounts brought out much that wasn't already understood and felt from reading the dry history (which one can read in the appendices, which were very useful). I don't know what the "magic formula" is that makes an oral history work well-- "My Soul is Rested" about the civil rights movement was phenomenal-- but I didn't feel this had that extra quality, for reasons I don't quite understand.

[Jill Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was incredibly insightful and not for the faint of heart. A more scholarly approach on the life of Zimbabweans than a single memoir...I feel as though I’ve sat through a class - and that’s a good thing. It took me a long time to get through this book, but I’m glad I stuck with it.

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a hard read. Story after story of abuse and national despair. And yet, the thread of hope is strong and I am glad I read these stories from Zimbabwe. The Voice of Witness series is a reminder of the importance of listening to a variety of narratives.

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding narratives of diverse individuals whose voices come alive. Provides a much needed human perspective of the political events of the last 40 years with solid background as well. Highly recommend!

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, I know!

It took me 7 months to get through this book!

It was certainly NOT because the book wasn't a page-turner. In fact, I was amazed how easily I could read some stories... but they were VERY tough to absorb. And I think I could only handle certain sections for a time.

If anyone wants a recent historical context of Zimbabwe, this is the most personal and genuine way to learn about it. Through the story telling of multiple people from Zimbabwe, white, black, living in rural and urban... you get it all through these powerful snippets of peoples' lives.

The Border section was the one that impact me the most out of all the parts. Reading Rudo's story, a young woman who had so much potential and was able to successfully build her own independence, would easily get destroyed by trusting a man. That was the most frustrating and sad story to read. Also, Oscar's story in that Border section just broke my heart in how he had the worst time crossing the border and losing his sister in the process, who had come back to Zimbabwe to bring her brother with her.

Reading about Briggs Bomba was also SO powerful, particularly because I know him. Learning his detailed story just awes me how lucky I am to know him and reminds me that every person we know in this life has a powerful story (which we probably don't know about) that has brought strength, love and courage into their human essence.

Ultimately I don't know where Zimbabwe is heading, especially now with the recent elections this year, where Mugabe won... where does the future hold for this country that its citizens cannot help but love in spite of all the hardships and tragedy?

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oriana's review from January 2011 pretty much says all that can be said about this book's intensity and the way it will make you feel. Wow! You won't put it down. You will burn through it all in one night and feel awakened, outraged, and ready to buy copies for your smarter and more conscientious friends. Here's what I liked best: You know that mental block you experience when you read about "government crackdowns" and "purges" and "persecutions" in bland mainstream news coverage? You know that vague sense of unease that such polite and evasive words create, that sense that you're not getting the full story? You will not have that underwhelming reaction with this book. The men and women interviewed here speak clearly and directly of their lives under the elderly sociopath Robert Mugabe's regime, creating the kind of immediacy and honesty that's absent in a lot of history or political science books. I attribute that equally to the compelling subject matter and to the great editors and interviewers who clearly researched the hell out of their subject (the appendices will quickly get you up to date on Zimbabwe). While the details in some of the stories may appall you, at no point will you catch a whiff of voyeurism. This is journalism with a purpose; it's enough to make the jaded not only care about the rest of the world, but acknowledge that's okay to care.

[Bonisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

perfect

[Genie McFate]

I love narratives featuring individuals and their various experiences. It's a difficult -- some of the stories these survivors tell are quite horrifying -- but worth while read.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The effect of the layered narratives provides powerful insight into Zimbabwe's political landscape. Beautifully written and compelling.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book makes it impossible to ignore the dreadful things that have happened in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe's dictatorship and the devastating impact this has had on the lives of its citizens.