>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. ^M00:00:04 ^M00:00:19 >> Hello everyone, thanks for coming to the Library of Congress today. My name is [laughter], my name is a very amplified Rob Casper. Can you hear me in the back? Okay, I'm Rob Casper, I'm Head of the Poetry and Literature Center here at the Library of Congress and I want to welcome you to our National Poetry Month conversations with African Poets and Writers Program, featuring Caine Prize Winne Lidudumalingani. We're thrilled to have him here, we're thrilled to have you here, we're thrilled to celebrate the Caine Prize. I want to give a special thanks to Lizzy Attree, the Director of Caine Prize for helping make this possible. I could not be more delighted with this series and with the partners that we work with and I'm going to introduce one of them right now but before I do so, let me just ask you to turn off your cellphones and electronic devices, anything you might have that would interfere with this event. Second, they'll be a Q&A session afterwards. Please note that this program is being recorded and by participating in the Q&A session, you give us permission for future use of the recording. This series started really out of a partnership with the African and Middle Eastern division and its Chief, Mary-Jane Deeb and she's been an inspiration to all of us that have gotten a chance to work with her and I'm delighted that we have continued it and deepened our partnership and she'll talk a little bit more about new partnerships going forward but it's a tremendous series, I'm very proud to have done it and I'm very thankful to Mary-Jane Deeb for helping make it possible so please welcome Mary-Jane Deeb. ^M00:02:06 [ Applause ] ^M00:02:11 >> Okay, well welcome, welcome to the African Middle East Division, I mean it's very exciting today to start 2017, with our Conversations With African Poets and Writers. And as Rob Casper said, this is a series that has become iconic if I may say so. It is known across the globe, people are very much aware of the great speakers that we have brought to the library. Let me say a few words, the Poetry and Literature Center has been a fantastic partner with us and so has been two other institutions, the African Society of the National Summit on Africa has been there from day one and day one goes back to a major event that we did with the great poet Achebe, writer and poet Achebe. We did this program almost a decade ago and we had started it also with another partner who is coming back on board and that is Howard University. Howard University had organized a major symposium on Achebe and we always thought Howard University should be a partner and low and behold, today I want to announce that Professor Mbye Cham, representing Howard University, has agreed to be a partner so now we have Library of Congress two divisions, Poetry and Literature Center and African Middle East Division and the African Society at Howard University are cosponsoring our series on, Conversations With African Poets and Writers. The Poetry Center has been a fantastic partner and has brought in a number of award winning writers. The African section, all four of the specialists in the African section have been fantastic representatives of this division in bringing and informing us about writers and poets for our writing, not only the established ones but the new ones like the one today. And now to introduce the Caine Prize Winner Lidudumalingani, we have the President of the African Society who will be doing the introduction so here we have Patricia Baine. ^M00:05:18 [ Applause ] ^M00:05:23 >> Good morning or good afternoon. So we're here, welcome this afternoon. I'm proud to introduce Lidudumalingani, who won the 2016 Caine Prize for African Writing, described as Africa's leading literary award for his short story entitled, Memories we Lost, that was published in The Incredible Journey, Stories That Move You. Memories we Lost tells the emotionally charged story of a girl who acts as a protector of her sister, whose serious mental health problems caused consternation in South African village. Her situation deteriorates as he care is entrusted to [inaudible], a local man who employs traditional techniques to get rid of people's demons. Lidudumalingani is a writer, he's a filmmaker, and a photographer and I remember reading someplace that he says that he writes visually. I guess he will explain to us what that means, he thinks visually. I think the photography overtakes all other aspects. This is a very short synapsis of the writer's bio which, by no means, is a reflection of the accomplishments and the amazing things that he has done. He was born in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. He has published short stories, nonfiction, and criticisms in various publications. His films have been screened at a number of films and festivals. This is the part I like, he is called the cool kid of South African literature currently [laughter] so we welcome him to the Conversations With African Poets and Writers. I am now going to ask Laverne Page, no, to start the conversation. All right, not [laughter]. I will ask Mr. Lidudumalingani himself, please clap for him, thank you. ^M00:07:24 [ Applause ] ^M00:07:29 ^M00:07:35 >> Greetings. Firstly, thank you everyone for being here and thank you for all the partners for bringing me here. I've been in DC since Monday night. It's been interesting [laughter]. I'm going to read from page 76, and then I think I'm supposed to read for plus/minus 10 minutes or to stop maybe when I'm tired. ^M00:08:08 ^M00:08:15 >> We sat there and watched the day go by. We didn't even attempt to say a word. I realized then that she and I needed no words. In the afternoon that day, it began to rain. I dragged her out of the house. We jumped in the rain, begging it to pour on us so we could be tall, big, strong and bold. In that moment, my sister returned. She smiled and laughed. That day we began to form new childhood memories, filling the void left by the one that had been wiped out. We lay on the ground, stretched out our arms and legs, rain falling on our faces and felt free but my mother had seen us laugh and jump, and thought that this thing was going to come again. The following day, the entire village gathered outside of our house for yet another [inaudible] to cure my sister. She had been through all these rituals and [inaudible] and nothing had changed. Each time, [inaudible] promised that she would be healed within days. There was once, at least according to the elders, a glimpse of the [inaudible] healing, the [inaudible] that had been put in the [inaudible] for the ancestors to take at night in one of the many rituals were not there by morning leading them to believe that the ancestors had healed her. It was not long after that, that this thing again proving that the [inaudible] had simply been stolen by thieves, that it returned. The day of the ritual I remember how the clouds moved across the sky in a hurry and how thick fog hung onto the grass, the mountains, the riverbanks and forest as if to announce death. ^M00:10:07 It hung so low that people appeared to be floating with their legs cut off below their knees. The women's chatter and songs reached us long before the crowd was visible. It appeared as if the fog had swallowed them and that the women would never come into sight. All the same, they did. They [inaudible] and chanted song as they approached our home. Men came in silence, arms folded behind their back carrying sticks. A few minutes after the women arrived, smoke escaped the fireplace into the sky, dancing with the moving clouds as if the sky was their dance floor. The children ran around and kicked soccer balls that had been made by stuffing papers into plastic bags. Everyone moved in a chaotic choreography. That way went an [inaudible] woman carrying a bucket of water on her head, this way went a child with a tablecloth, that way went a dog with a bone, this way went chickens, that way stood women gossiping about my sister. From our house, I could see the crowds amplifying as more people arrived. I looked at my sister and found her face as it had been in earlier months, emotionless. In the past few days she had given me hope that she had returned. Now, tears rolled down our cheeks. I knew then that she still felt something, that the last few days of holding hands, laughing and jumping in the rain were not a dream. The fog began to clear and everything came into focus, the mountains, landscape, river, and the other villages were there, unmoved. An old man who had been smoking his pipe behind the [inaudible] emptied it and stuffed it in his pockets. The ritual began. Knives were drawn and the goat was first stabbed in the stomach to summon our ancestors from their enclaves and then it was meat. After some time, an old aunt came for us, calling for us to come out of the house. We hugged tightly. My sister and I wiped each other's tears. It was only after we had heard her footsteps approaching our house that we walked out, holding hands, fingers tightly intertwined. The only way to have torn me away from her would have to cut us apart. The villagers shouted insult at the thing as it remained unknown to them, for what felt like an entire lifetime, while my sister and I sat at [inaudible] our heads bowed. The elders kept referring to this thing as demons and the devil's work. None of them knew my sister, none of them cared. The sun was up now, thick shadows gathering around the house. Even though there was no wind, the windmill by the fields made a creaking sound. My mother was torn and defeated and questioned why God gave this thing to my sister and my father. Secrets stay buried for so long but one day they rise to open like seeds breaking free from the earth. Nobody had ever mentioned that my father had this thing, that he had left one day on his horse to see distant relatives and had never come back, to only be see in a way that [inaudible] after their death in dreams in hallucinations. He had been seen in some village at least twice, my mother told me. The person who had seen him yelled and waved but he never bothered to look. They were not sure if it was my father but they were convinced that it had to be. He was never buried, though it is now 20 years later. There was nothing to bury. I have no memory of my father. There was always hope that he would return from somewhere. Nobody knew where, nobody cared as long as he returned. The night of the ritual, my sister and I slept lying the same way and stared off in different directions. I woke up and she was holding me, squeezing me, and she had sunk her teeth into the pillow so she would not cry. She [inaudible] for a few minutes and then fell asleep in my arms. In the morning, I went to milk the goat. I saw two human shadows hovering above the [inaudible]. At first, though it was unusual, I thought nothing of it even as they mumbled something to each other. In the shadows that lived inside the [inaudible], with the smell of manure, I saw that it was my mother and an uncle who had come to stay with us for the ritual. It was as if their heads were bound together into one, creating a giant head, a ghost even. I had meant to get out, but when I heard them mention my sister, I put the jug of milk down and crouched, leaning on the goat so it did not move. My father [inaudible], the man who had moved in with my mother were making plans to take my sister away. The medication and the ritual did not work, my mother said. The way she saw it, my sister needed to see [inaudible]. This thing is going to come back, she said. ^M00:15:22 ^M00:15:27 [ Applause ] ^M00:15:33 ^M00:16:03 >> Okay thank you very much, is your mic on? >> One two, one two, yeah it is. >> So now you're going to hear from the cool kid. >> I'm not sure where that comes from [laughter]. It's definitely not true. >> Well, I was going to say now you're going to hear from the cool kid and the grandmom [laughter], labels. Thank you so much for reading that passage from Memories we Lost, which focuses on mental illness. At the end of the story, the story ends, but at the end of the story where do these children go, that was my question. Children wandering around, the one that's attempting to help, and then the one that's ill, where do they go especially when you say 20 years later in your story, so there's something there. >> I mean, the ending was really motivated by two factors, one of them was the deadline [laughter] and the other was also this idea that a story is never really finished so what I really wanted to do because it's also a short story and I'm usually not really a short story writer, I struggled with the story so the idea was to then write an ending that suggested that there was a lot more going on and by that I didn't really suggest that it would come from me necessarily. I was hoping that people would read the story and they would perhaps take the challenge to finish it. >> Okay, I should point out that I'm asking this because although I would normally be interested, also there's an investigation right now currently in South Africa into the treatment of mentally ill patients. They were removed, a large number of them were removed from their hospitals and they were just sent elsewhere and many of them, or most of them died and so it's a political and a social issue and it's a tragedy. And so, since you're writing about mental illness, I'm wondering if this is more material for you for the stories that you write. >> I mean, because I wrote the story and I've spent about possibly close to a year talking about mental illness in South Africa and talking about the story specifically I mean, when the news of that tragedy broke out it was heartbreaking and then there was a thing they do in Parliament in South Africa where the president addresses the nation and one of the people from the political parties, the opposition, asked if they could give a moment of silence to I think at that time it was around 125 people that had died, and the Madam Speaker of Parliament refused and she was like, we are not here to mourn 125 dead people, so it was heartbreaking for me because at that moment I really got to kind of understand what it means to have a family member whose got mental illness and what it means when they die that the government doesn't care. ^M00:20:03 So because of how emotional that was for me, I've never really seen it as, to put it in a very crass way, as an opportunity for material. It's just been really heartbreaking that I haven't even though about do I write more about it or do I make images or do I make forms? I haven't really thought about it. >> Well, let me ask you about the Caine Prize. I'm curious as to whether or not it's made a great difference to you. I'm wondering if its contributed to your current projects and the audiences that you reach. When exactly were you notified that you had won the prize? >> It really happens in the right, you really don't know until the announcement is made but I mean, for me the exciting thing was finding out that I had been short listed because Memories Lost was a second story of fiction that I've ever written and more than anything it was the idea for me that I needed to write other things except nonfiction and so I was, I'll write a short story and that's what I did. So to have it nominated, short listed for the Caine Prize was amazing for me. I was really excited and I mean, if you get short listed you go to London and you spend about a week doing readings and talking to people and it's very exciting until the night of the announcement and then you start thinking about who is going to win the Caine Prize. It was exciting to win and I've really had an exciting year and because, I mean I've never really written any fiction before this so it was exciting for me to be immediately thrown into a very wide reading community which I've really appreciated which I think for any writer that's what's important, that your writing is read widely and that's what's happening to my own writing and I'm very grateful for that. >> For the Caine Prize, you don't submit your own work, someone else submits the work, correct? >> Yeah so the publisher submits the work to the Caine Prize, yes but you can ask your publisher to submit. ^M00:22:30 [ Laughter ] ^M00:22:32 >> You can make a suggestion. >> Okay, okay well, can you tell us more about your current projects? Since you're a writer, a filmmaker, and photographer I'm just wondering what you have been working on and which of these genres do you enjoy most and in which are you the most prolific and if there's a certain subject that you prefer so there are a number of questions in one. >> I mean, the other amazing thing that happened to me in 2016 was that I was given then Miles Morland Scholarship, which allows me to spend a year writing my debut novel so that's what I'm going to be doing next month. I'm trying to really not do anything else. I mean, the one thing that I've tried to, I've been working on a full script for the past four years and it's been really up and down, a lot of suggestions from people that I've sent it to so one of the things that I've tried to do is to finish that full script before I begin work on the novel. >> What's the subject? >> Of the novel? >> Of the film and also of the novel. >> I can talk about the film but not really the novel. Well I mean, it's not even a novel at this point, it's just really, when I was in film school I went to film school with a photographer from South Africa called [inaudible], who I think most of you might be familiar with her work. If any of you have met her, you would understand the power that she has, so a lot of the conversations that were going around my class when I was in film school were about, because a lot of violence in South Africa happens to lesbians. There's a very terrible thing called corrective rape so that's what the film was about but more than that, the film was really looking at a society that allows a society where corrective rape happens so that's what the film was about and this is why it's been really difficult to write because for me it's not just the subject but it's important for everything about it to kind of fit perfectly into both my own politics but also for the film to go against the sort of very problematic descriptions or problematic conversations that have gone on around corrective rape. >> What does that mean, corrective rape? >> I mean you know, the way to describe it is that there's the idea that if a bunch of men decide to rape a lesbian, gang rape a lesbian it's called corrective rape because the idea is that you cannot be a lesbian so we will show you that you are a woman, and this is why it's called corrective rape because in their mind it's the idea that you will then become a woman as they describe and see it. >> Okay and you cannot tell us about the novel so I won't ask any more questions about the novel. What about short stories, since you're doing so well with that genre? >> I don't know about doing well, I wrote one short story [laughter]. >> But you won the Caine Prize. >> There's one short story that I'm working on. Again, I mean, my short stories are only sort of like my writing, and my film work, and my photography is always really in a way just me being very receptive of the community that I live in so the short story which I'm currently working on which I hope to finish before the novel is about shack fires in South Africa. In South Africa, there's places called informal settlements where people live in shacks so these are houses made of zinc and often what happens is that because some of them don't have electricity people use candles and what happens often is there's usually fires and people die. I mean, I remember one in 2011, which happened right on New Year's Eve when people were going out to celebrate 2011, people were dying in their houses and about a month ago there was another in Cape Town again, which happened in an interesting place where it's called, I mean the place is called [inaudible] and it's in Hout Bay. I mean, it sits right next to the very big mansions of rich white people in Cape Town, so I was really interested in sort of like, that relationship between people who live in these very lavish houses and people who live in shacks and who live in poverty and these houses that they really try to build and get things together without any money and then it gets destroyed overnight. The short story I'm writing is about one family who loses it all during that fire. >> Oh. >> It's a very happy story [laughter]. >> Yes, I'm just thinking about the social issues that concern you and it seems wide ranging and wow. With the films, I'm curious, I know that there is a prolific film industry in South Africa so lots is happening with literature, with film-making. Is there a difference, since you live in Cape Town, is there a difference between Cape Town and Johannesburg in terms of let's say literary activities? >> [Inaudible] is here, he can maybe help me out [laughter]. Look I think, I mean Cape Town is interesting in a way because I mean, there's a lot going on especially with young Black creatives and we try to get together and do things but the larger community is in Johannesburg and I mean, I've toyed with the idea of going to Johannesburg a lot but it hasn't happened. There's certainly differences and I think Johannesburg is far more receptive of young Black creatives both in filmmaking and literature and Cape Town is less so. Cape Town is still predominantly very white oriented both when it comes to spaces to exhibit your work whether it's films or you want to read literature so you have to really find sort of the spaces that have been curated for people like you to go read your work. ^M00:30:06 And often, you find that's perhaps the best way to read your work to people that actually I suppose to put it very bluntly, won't be asking you very obvious questions about what you're trying to do, people understand what you're trying to do. >> And can you tell us something about where you read your work a little bit more, those of us who may not know that side of city life? >> Generally, I'm just at home the whole time. I mean, I hear a bunch of people reading their work and then I plan to go but things happen and then I don't go. I just stay at home and read but there's a place called Observatory, some people can get around there, there's different places there to read your work but there's also young people, there's a thing called creative nestling which gets people together to read their work both in Johannesburg and Cape Town. >> Creative? >> Creative nestling. >> Nestling. >> Yeah so that happens as well in Cape Town but also I have a circle of friends that I can send my work too. I mean, I'm in touch with those people on email and if I finish a short story I send it and if they finish anything they send it around and we can all read each other's work which I think is hugely important in Cape Town to do. >> Well, there's a quote attributed to you in one of your interviews, "I think South African people should read more South African and African fiction before reading anything else. There seems to be a growing list of new Black writers being published at the moment and this is encouraging." I am wondering who you like among these new writers, can you say something about that? >> I mean, that quote was specifically talking about a lot of the times in South Africa you meet people and they will tell you there's not good literature coming from South Africa and this is why I'm reading this or reading that and I think that's completely rubbish because I think if you are really interested in reading South African literature you will find it and you'll find some really good literature. Part of the young writers that I really love reading is [inaudible] who was short listed for the Caine Prize with me. [Inaudible] whose novel [inaudible] is absolutely amazing [inaudible] which is an insane novel so there's a lot of people like that who are writing at those levels and I'm hugely excited I think, to write at this particular time because I feel like there's a certain presence of young Black writers and I'm excited to be in sort of that space as well. >> And since we're here in the US, who are your favorite American writers? >> I don't read any American literature [laughter]. >> Okay, let's go to the last question [laughter]. >> I mean it's impossible to escape US literature. You can try but, so I have an interesting or I suppose, I grew up in the villages and a lot of things that I read in the villages were very English I mean, Shakespeare was one of the things we read. So when I started reading, I was already aware that I needed to read Black authors so a lot of authors that I love from America would be the Black authors of America, the Toni Morrison's, Maya Angelou, so those are the people, and James Baldwin of course, so those are the people that I really love reading in America and also some of the newer African-American writers. I just call them African writers so [inaudible] so those are the two that I really like reading. >> Okay, my last question and might be a little bit redundant but it's one that we always ask, what do you think is the future for African writers, both diasporic and from the continent and what steps need to be taken to bring more recognition from the international community. So prize wins such as the Caine Prize of course but what steps need to be taken to bring more recognition from the international community? >> I mean, it's a very tricky question to answer because I think often there's a disparity between the presence of African literature and sort of like what is being published and what people are reading. I don't necessarily think that we as African writers or African publishers have to do anything different. I mean, people are publishing books, people are publishing online so for me the thing is if you are really interested in reading any African writer you will find them and there's a lot going on, and if you are really interested you will find them because they exist everywhere. >> Okay, well thank you, thank you very much. I think we should open the floor for questions. ^M00:35:34 ^M00:35:40 >> Thank you, I really enjoyed hearing part of your story and I'll finish reading it. My question to you is you talk about South Africa, how it's considered to be possession that causes mental illness and a lot of other African cultures it seems to be continent-wide there seems to be a denial of mental illness and therefore a reluctance to treat it as such. Do you feel that writing about it is going to, you as an African writer writing about mental illness existing within the African community will make it a little bit more accepted and also lead people to look at it as an illness rather than a spiritual possession or even worse, non-existent at all? >> I mean, that's I suppose a very difficult question to answer for me because I mean, I wrote the story because I was really concerned about the conversations that people were having around mental illness more so in my own community in the villages so the idea was to really bring that conversation right into sort of people's everyday life and my idea was that if I write the story, people are going to read it and perhaps we are going to have this conversation and I think that's where it begins, it begins with openly having the conversation and then we can begin to kind of change how society sees it. The problem is that no one talks about it. I mean the story of the government for example, that decision was made purely on the idea that what are you going to do with mentally ill people? You can do whatever, because these people were taken from the hospital and they were given to [inaudible] that have no experience at all. I mean, the horrific stories is that they were even picked up in, they were thrown into vans and just driven out to the villages so part of my idea with the story was to do the opposite of that, was to get people to talk about it and hopefully once that conversation begins we can let it begin to come up with a number of solutions. ^M00:37:51 ^M00:37:58 >> Thank you very much. Your story is very inspiring and you made me think of different things, so what are other subjects that are not talked about that should be talked about in literature that you feel as a writer that should be addressed and are not being addressed? And I don't mean necessarily only in South Africa, it could be in the United States, it could be in any other part of the world that you feel should be addressed. >> Oh jeez, I mean I don't know. I mean, I work on an I suppose story to story basis and you know, when I was writing about mental illness it was something that I was really thinking about and when I wrote the film that I'm continuing to write because that's something I was really concerned about, so I'm not quite sure what else I could write about in the future but I certainly know that one of the interesting things for me being a village child is that when you come to the city there's a lot of cultural issues, a lot of cultural indifference that you sort of have to reconcile your own beliefs and kind of the way the city operates so a lot of my writing is concerned with that, how do you come to the city and how much of you changes and how much of you remains and what do you become, so those are some of the things that I want to write about. I think part of the one thing I can tell you about that novel is that it has a bit of that. >> As an artist that practices a lot of different art forms, how do you make the decision to put the story that you're thinking about into writing, versus film, versus photography? ^M00:39:45 ^M00:39:51 >> I mean, I don't know how I make that decision. I mean, part of it is really just convenience right? ^M00:40:00 I have no idea how I would visually make anything out of mental illness. I do not see myself taking my camera and invading people's spaces like that and making that film but it felt more comfortable for me to think about my own community where I come from in the villages and write that so a lot of, I mean it comes to that and sometimes I mean, I was in Tanzania before I came here and there's a big fishing community in Tanzania and I made some really interesting images there but I didn't write anything about it so it really depends on what works at that time and so what time is available to me because at the time I was in Tanzania, I was writing a story so I didn't have the time to write another but I could make the images so it really works in that way. ^M00:40:50 ^M00:40:57 >> This isn't exactly a question, I was just going to say that here in America in Black families, mentally illnesses are often really ignored because they're seen as being in your feelings or you need to work harder or something so I don't know, I believe this may help shape, this may help like you said, may help it be more talked about no like, yes, okay [laughter]. >> I mean, I completely get you so even in South Africa, there's a bit of that especially with depression. Parents will just tell you go play outside, listen to some music, or watch movies as if that helps so definitely there's a lot more and this is why I think I mean, the story has been interesting for me because a lot of the conversations about it have been from the point of the villages and their traditional living there but the truth of it is that even in the city there's a huge problem. >> You mentioned that you hadn't written fiction before the short story and so I was going to ask what's the most important thing you've learned in terms of fiction versus non-fiction? ^M00:42:18 ^M00:42:25 >> I mean I'm thinking about it because even in my non-fiction I make things up so [laughter] I mean, I think that the major difference is really in facts. There's a certain level with non-fiction that you really cannot write that far away from the truth but with fiction you can totally do that. For me it's all the same because my poetry exists both in fiction and non-fiction, the real difference is really in the facts. ^M00:43:05 ^M00:43:10 >> A couple of questions, how would you characterize the relationship between, or the attitude of the younger generation of South African writers to those that you can maybe call the older generation who were writing during the moment of apartheid? I think your work on mental illness, I mean, makes me think about the work of Bessie Head for example, who was engaged more consistently than perhaps most other South African writers this particular issue so I really commend you for, as a young writer really focusing on that particular issue there. The second question I have is in relation to how, when you write, how do you position yourself vis a vis your own indigenous traditions of narrative? Do you consciously try to draw from let's say the oral traditions to infuse your writing with South African specificities as far as style and technique and so on and so forth? >> I mean, I think I mentioned this a little bit that my own encounter with literature really started very late in my life and I was already by then aware of sort of the presence of I suppose white writers and I wanted to read more Black writers so I mean, Bessie had [inaudible] of course and a lot of the drama writers in South Africa were writing at that time so I've read a lot of that and I really appreciate it and I think for me, in South Africa especially there seems to have been a space between the [inaudible] writers and the writers now after absence of the Black writer, that they've been designated to sort of write certain type of narratives so I'm really excited to be writing now in a space where it feels like Black writers are really just concerned about writing their own story and not explaining it to anyone so it's exciting for me to write at this time. Not really to the second question I mean, one of my favorite writers is [inaudible] and so my obsession with writing has always been poetry and not so much the oral tradition but it's interesting now that I think about it because every time I go to readings there's a sense of the oral tradition as well that exists in that space so I mean, I'm not a great reader all but thinking about the way that we tell stories in the villages helps a lot when it comes to the reading for me. >> Hello, I read your story yesterday and I was very fascinated. I don't know whether it's intentional but I think we all know that mental illness is a harsh issue all over Africa, we don't talk about it and that this village was engaged, I was impressed. I think you typically [inaudible] to get involved in things. >> Thank you. ^M00:46:44 ^M00:46:52 >> I wanted to know what book are you currently reading? That's it. >> I'm currently reading a book that I picked up in Durban called, I can't remember the author but it's called, Fifty Ways to Read a Poem and it was a column that ran in The Independent in England I think and so this person would take a poem every week and they would write about that poem and what that poem is saying, how it's saying it, the difference between the narrative and the rhyme of the poem and I specifically am reading that because I wanted to get ready for the novel. >> Is this an online source, The Independent, that you're speaking of now? >> It was published in The Independent, which is a paper in the UK for, someone who knows The Independent, I think- ^M00:48:03 [ Inaudible Comment ] ^M00:48:05 >> Yes, yes is. >> Ruth Padel? >> Yeah, yeah was it The Independent? ^M00:48:13 [ Inaudible Comment ] ^M00:48:16 >> Yeah okay, it's really an amazing book. >> Okay I'm just wondering if you could tell us or make suggestions on sources that we should read, that we could read. You mentioned UK, South Africa, sometimes it is easy to get online sources more quickly than print although we have a terrific collection of material here at the Library of Congress about South Africa as well as from South Africa, literature, history, you name it we have it. Cookery, we have these publications but make some suggestions please so that we can remain- >> I'm going to ask people to help out, from the top of my head there's an online platform called African in Dialogue from [inaudible], which is run by a poet called [inaudible] where she interviews people and it's really exciting conversations. There is [inaudible] in Cape Town which is run by [inaudible], there is in Nigeria a couple of them, there's [inaudible] in Kenya, there's [inaudible] in Kenya, there's Warscapes, there's Kings and Kingdoms and what else is there? There's [inaudible] in Kenya. >> Brittle paper? >> Brittle paper. >> Short Story Day Africa. >> Yeah, Short Story Day Africa. ^M00:50:00 Short Shop Stories as well so there's a couple, I think it's called [inaudible] which is based in the UK for African diasporic writing so there's also that. >> Well, thank you, thank you very much and we're so pleased that you could come here and enlighten us, thank you. >> Thank you very much. ^M00:50:26 [ Applause ] ^M00:50:30 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov. ^E00:50:38