Yvonne Vera The Fearless Taboo Queen

"I am against silence, the books I write try to undo the silent posture African women have endured over so many decades...” -Yvonne Vera.

Yvonne was born in 1964 and raised in Zimbabwe’s second largest city Bulawayo during British colonial and then Rhodesian minority oppression. Though Yvonne was somewhat graced by her families prominent status, her father was a prosperous well connected businessman and her uncle a former local football star and manager of a top hotel. Together they were both politically involved and friends of Joshua Nkomo who would become a pivotal figure in the 2^nd Chimurenga or Zimbabwean Liberation Struggle. Her mother was a school teacher and early on extended her love of books over to her daughter to take up the mantle. Yvonne did so and between them they convinced her father to find a way and successfully obtain an adult library card when she was twelve in the “Whites Only” main Bulawayo library.

Yvonnes parents did not go unrewarded by their attentions and she became a top mark student at Mzilikazi High graduated with a rack of A levels and went on to do the same at Hillside Teacher Training school. Yvonnes first teaching position was at Njube High where she met her soon to be husband John Jose a maths teacher from Canada. This was to prove a pivotal point in Yvonnes life for through their growing friendship John would invite her to Canada, and she would honour that invitation.

On the third visit to Toronto Yvonne and John married and Yvonne began to attend York University. In only eight years Yvonne completed her undergraduate, masters and PhD degree’s and during her masters discovered her true joy and talent was writing. Diagnosed with HIV in 1989 Yvonne undeterred and perhaps motivated by began writing short stories. These would grow in to an astounding collection which became her first published book Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals in 1992 released by Tsar Press, a Canadian independent publisher. With this collection of vivid lucid short stories Yvonne would set the landscape for her future novels.

In writing Yvonne consciously and carefully sought to openly and honestly break what she perceived as the crushing enforced silence of her Zimbabwean countrymen for the last 100 years. When colonisation first occurred Yvonne believed that the ancient flow of oral traditions that held history, myth and legend were silenced by white oppression. Yvonne sought to bring these traditions alive again and be a voice for the silent to now emerge and once more bring the storyteller to prominence in society.

In 1993 through her first novel Nehanda, Yvonne affirmed her pledge and gave voice to the life and times of Mbuya Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana, who led the first uprising against colonial rule in 1896. A legend in her own time Mbuya Nehanda was the spiritual leader of the Shona people, Nehanda is was the name given to the Lion Spirit who was originally the daughter of the first King of the great Munhumutapa Empire, Mutota Nyatsimba. Charwe Nyakasikana was bestowed this name when she became Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana and was considered to be the female incarnation of the oracle spirit Nyamhika Nehanda Lion Spirit. Mbuya Nehanda together with Mukwati and Kaguvi two other spiritual leaders, instigated the 1^st Chimurenga or uprising. After two unsuccessful attempts Mbuya and Kaguvi were captured in 1897, a photograph was taken by the British to display their success abroad and both were executed by hanging shortly after. It was this photograph that survived time and found its way to Yvonne, who upon viewing it was reminded of her grandmothers stories and the reverence with which all Zimbabwean still hold for Mbuya Nehanda. It was the actions of Mbuya Nehanda that would lead 73 years later, to the ten year 2^nd Chimurenga war of independence that culminated in victory and independence of Zimbabwe in 1980 when Yvonne was sixteen. Taking on the mantle of a true storyteller Yvonne unflinchingly wove a tale around Mbuya Nehanda creating a legend that wove between mythology and fact. In her unique style Yvonne through Nehanda began a literary voyage that would cut to the bone to reveal the absurdity of many long standing inequities against and within her own people.

“...Our forefathers crafted a language (Shona) that made it difficult to address these contentious issues. In African culture, for example, to talk to my father, I bow. If I am announcing that somebody has died, I use a particular language, a particular tone...so as to convey the message. But for subjects like incest and rape...you are not allowed to mention it. Even to your mother, who must pantomime the news if she tells your aunt.”- Yvonne Vera

Without A Name, was published in 1994 and gained Yvonne critical international acclaim by winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa and the Zimbabwean Publishers Literary Award. During this time she taught at Trent University until 1995 when she returned home to Bulawayo. Two years later in 1997 Yvonne released her third book Under The Tongue, through Baobab Books in Zimbabwe. That same year she was named Director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo. But she continued to write and in 1998 released Butterfly Burning through Baobab. Two years later Farrar, Straus and Giroux publishers in America reprinted Butterfly Burning with international distribution. Butterfly Burning gained a widespread fame and became required reading and study in many university literary courses, and was awarded The German Literature Prize. 2002 also saw the release of her fourth and sadly last novel The Stone Virgins.

Yvonne by 2002 had developed full blown AIDS and was stricken by an ever worsening immune deficiency related outbreaks. The Stone Virgins won the Macmillan Writers Prize for Africa later that year and undeterred as usual, Yvonne set to work on her new novel Obedience dictating to John as she lay in bed to weak to rise. Her fortitude took the upper hand and she seemed by 2003 to be on the way to a full recovery, but in April 2004 she was struck by a virulent meningitis with her condition rapidly deteriorating John flew her to specialist care in Toronto. Aided by the care and John she began to once more recover and started work again on Obedience, but the meningitis relapsed and on the day her mother arrived from Zimbabwe, Yvonne Vera on the 24^th of March 2005 finally succumbed to a 16 year adversary, and died in hospital at the age of 40.

Yvonne Vera leaves behind a legacy in her novels, short stories and many essays. In reading her works you can see she stuck firmly to her initial intent set out with Why Dont You Carve Other Animals and ending in The Stone Virgins. Though her writing she sought to expose and illuminate all aspects of life and if they were considered taboo she did not flinch but persisted in revealing the truth. This applies to her very style of writing in which she broke and flaunted all manner of traditional forms to create a world that taught directly through the experience of reading it alone. All Yvonnes works depict a rich and multifaceted world that questioned everyone and everything sparring with no quarter in the true timeless voice of the storyteller. Though there can be no other like Yvonne Vera, her voice will go onward and all who listen will be forever changed by that journey. For Yvonnes writing demands full participation and cuts through the barriers of disassociation to leave the reader marked and changed by the experience. So like our storyteller ancestors of past when Yvonne leaves our village to pass on her story in another place, what she leaves behind does change the fabric of our society.

Yvonne Vera The Fearless Taboo Queen was written By Ivor W. Hartmann.