In 2009, Weaver Press (Zimbabwe) published his collection of short stories, which one awards. He has gone on to publish more stories, and has even been instrumental in the founding of a new journal called The Write Mag, edited by Memory Chirere. We now publish an interview with him, in which he talks about the issues in his first collection of stories. Here is Lawrence Hoba, a writer from Zimbabwe.Lawrence Hoba was born in 1983 in Masvingo. he is an entrepreneur, literary promoter and author who studied Tourism and Hospitality Management at the University of Zimbabwe. Hoba’s short stories and poetry have appeared in a number of publications, including Zimbablog, the Warwick Review (2009), Writing Now (2005) and Laughing Now (2007). His anthology, The Trek and Other Stories (2009) was nominated for the NAMA, 2010 and went on to win the ZBPA award for Best Literature in English.

 

MLJ: I’m glad you already started to address the roles men play in these stories. Can you talk some more about why most of the men are seen by the child narrator as lazy, always getting drunk while all the important work is done by the women? Is this a critique of something you have observed in Zimbabwean gender dynamics, or should the reader limit this observation to the scope of the specific stories in the collection?

LH: The stories are a reflection of a point in time; a time when as the author I had a higher consciousness to gender issues, and the gender dynamics persisting in the country. I grew up seeing some men who carried themselves as if they were the farm foremen over their wives and children. And yet these are the stories of specific characters, who do not generally reflect the whole society at large. Because at the same time, I grew up in a family where my father would cook for us and no duties were specific to women or men. And yes indeed, the men I sometimes saw in the farms got themselves sloshed on work days. And these are the men that I chose to write about. READ MORE…