SHARDS
Shards explores the links
between the African traditional spirit world which unfortunately is harangued
into an uneasy silence by colonial conquest faiths. A strong undercurrent of
the link between the living and the dead or the living dead permeates this
work.
The novella largely is
Cynthia’s heart rending experiences of her face to face encounters with the
African spiritual realm and everyone around her thinks it’s nothing, but a
mental trauma. They all sought a solution in Christianity and modern medicine.
Their radical intolerance of her spiritual vocation justifies their reason to
alienate her at the same time giving life to her passion for solitude.
Her use of the stream of
consciousness style, exquisite language and gripping imagery takes the reader
out of the world of the physical to capture the realities of the world of the
divine. Surely this book is a tribute to the late author of ‘Mazivandadzoka’, J
W Marangwanda the grandfather of the author of Shards. This novella proves that
his blood courses through Cynthia’s
veins and arteries.
Jabulani
Mzinyathi
In a society that is servile to
dictates of other civilizations, this piece sanitizes African spirituality
blemished by the colonial past and its present ghosts of neo-colonialism. Here
the departed souls continue to vindicate their progeny and are the reason for
their social alienation. The narrator is a victim of such, using her
reincarnated and omniscient voice in this piece
she offers a rebellious alternative to the eulogized values of
modernity, for example Christianity. It exposes the violence, xenophobia and
marginalization that Christianity has rendered to those who respond to the
African celestial call. Apart from the
present day challenges of neo-colonialism, this narrative voice locates the
cradle of humanity to Africa long before there was the Bible, Koran and the
political flags now representing the identity of a people and their place in
the face of the earth.
Richard Mahomva
The violence, acculturation and
immorality in Shards is a reflection of the day to day stresses of the modern
African’s survival space. Self-originality is criminalized, human dignity lost
in the trash bins of urban life. Cynthia warns us not to lose ourselves in the
present day political and religious gimmick. This is because modern religious
and political alterations in Africa are the reason why we can’t trace the
source of our true identity.
Kudzai Chikomo
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