Zimbabwean author BLESSING MUSARIRI’s latest novel, When It’s Your Turn for Midnight, is a thought-provoking YA novel about sisterhood, trauma and the fighting spirit of women. We caught up with the author to learn about her characters, inspiration and sisterhood.
When It’s Your Turn for Midnight explores family secrets, trauma and healing. What inspired you to write this story?
I was actually inspired by a number of things, the first one being that of how deeply (in Shona culture) a family can be impacted by issues of bloodline and how destructive these kinds of secrets can be. I’d also spent considerable time in my immediate years, after university, assisting different people here at home with compiling war memoirs because I was interested in the history of the Liberation Struggle. It’s something I lived through on the periphery and I had my own memories of the time that I wanted to reconcile with facts.
Why is it important for Chiante to understand her own identity?
It’s important for Chianti to understand her own identity because the niggling suspicion that lived deep inside her subconscious, that something wasn’t quite right affected her relationships with everyone in the house. Chianti’s feeling that she always had to be good was predicated on an instinctive desire not to rock the boat because there was something dark lurking under the surface of her life and because of this, she was never really peaceful within herself. Understanding her identity helped to ground her and gave her a better sense of security about her life.
The novel touches on the idea of secrets in families. Why do you think people sometimes keep big secrets?
People sometimes keep big secrets because at the time the situation may have been too difficult / volatile for them to reveal the truth. Sometimes they do it to avoid an unwanted result of the truth being known and sometimes people just don’t know what to do and choose to take it one step at a time.
Chiante finds refuge in a community of women who’ve lived through war and hardship. What do you think sisterhood and community mean in this book?
Sisterhood and community mean the difference between simple survival and thriving. The sisterhood and community provide upliftment, support, love and laughter, without which, past traumas would continue to rule over the present.
Zimbabwe’s culture and history are important to the story. Why is it important for young readers to read stories that are outside of their own experience?
It’s important for young readers to read stories that are outside of their own experience because it grows their intellect and expands their capacity to be empathetic to others whose lives are different from theirs.
What challenges or joys did you experience in writing When It’s Your Turn for Midnight?
I thoroughly enjoyed the ‘company’ of the Gogos and Mr Kingsley Pfupajena, even as characters, I felt a part of the community they created and I loved being able to put their world so engagingly onto the page. I enjoyed sifting through the challenges and nuances of sibling interaction that was between Chianti and her sisters. My biggest challenge was writing the audacious plan of action against the robbers and setting up a scenario that could be plausible while at the same time being completely outrageous.
Can you tell us about the moment you first realised you wanted to be an author?
I’d always wanted to write from since I was in junior school. When we did English composition I used to write complex surrealist stories that stumped my teachers. My imagination has always been vivid and active and being an avid reader all my childhood, the compulsion to write formed almost on its own. I started by trying to create a magazine with a friend, in high school, then I progressed to writing high school romances (which I never finished) and finally, after two years of working in formal employment I quit my job and travelled to America where after applying for many jobs I didn’t want, it finally came to me one evening while I was telling my sister a story about one of my friends, that I wanted to write a book. So I came back home to Zimbabwe and began to write.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© Lincoln Mandengu, Inspired Faces of Africa
Blessing Musariri is an award-winning author of short stories, children’s stories, radio and screenplays, and contemporary adult fiction. Her work has also been published by the Guardian, Granta, and Poetry International. Blessing lives in Harare, Zimbabwe.
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