Book Review by Beaven Tapureta
US-based pharmacist and writer Munashe Kaseke’s debut short story collection titled Send Her Back (2022, Mukana Press) is a daring exploration of the struggles, the pains and also the fortitude, of immigrants particularly black women.
In this book, sixteen pieces rock the reader in different pitches of emotion – love, betrayal, anger, loneliness, joy, and great expectations. While some of the stories are told from the first-person point of view, making them personal and therefore emotionally penetrating, it is the author’s ability to invite the readers to search and find souls like themselves among the different characters.
Most touching are stories about dishonest relatives who have not even an iota of imagination of what kind of real life one lives when living in a foreign country.
Rudo in the story The Zimbabwean Dream has been away from home for twelve years and, having been remitting lots of money every month, she is made to sacrifice all she has just to sponsor medication for a false illness of her aunt in Zimbabwe. Would they have understood her if she told them how she punished self, working long hours, living in a car, just to raise the money they squandered on parties of which photos they splashed on Facebook?
The same insensitive demand for money inundates the narrator in Send Her Back. This title story is double-edged – while it shows the same weariness a person living abroad feels when those at home seem to view him/her as a sole provider for their needs, the story daringly and vividly explores the struggle for African respectability in a country that mistreats immigrants known to have fled the economic crisis in their home country.
The wonder of Kaseke’s stories is that the reader gets to clearly see the complex and wild world which puts immigrants in a tight spot – at home, they are nothing but ‘banks’ and in their adopted countries, they’re but defenceless, unrecognized hard workers.
In a note at the end of the book, the author says, “In July 2019, I saw a clip of a primarily white crowd chanting “send her back” to congresswoman Ilhan Omar at a US President’s rally. It was a tense time in US politics. And as a black woman, also an African immigrant, I remember feeling defeated, hopeless, and even hated, despite being a permanent resident and an accomplished immigrant contributing meaningfully to society.”
Send Her Back and Other Stories ignites memories of a little known novel titled Down South (2018, Pearl Press Media) by Minnie Lee Tagwirei. In Down South, the author portrays from a woman’s viewpoint how hard it is to survive in a foreign country. Also based on personal experiences, the novel brings to light how economic and political crises in Zimbabwe under the leadership of the late former president Robert Mugabe drove thousands of Zimbabweans to foreign countries, especially South Africa, and how the ‘green pasture’ turned out to be just an illusion as xenophobia meant that their contributions to the growth of S Africa went unappreciated.
There is a badge of shame that seems to haunt Zimbabwean characters in a foreign country, especially when Zimbabwe itself is in the limelight for its economic and political instabilities.
Rudo in The Zimbabwean Dream loses her job for only enquiring about ‘the missing hours from her last pay check’. The irritating disdain with which the police in the story Send Her Back treats the immigrant narrator, who eventually faces deportation, is so touching.
A cry for identity is heard in most of the stories as the narrators throw in expressions in their mother tongue with a passionate nostalgia. Yet in one of the stories a narrator comes back home proud to speak with relatives in her mother language but only to realize her people have lost interest in the language they deem value-less in a fast-moving modern world!
Kaseke is concerned with cultural identity. In An Ostrich Partnership, she captures how a Zimbabwean couple living in the diaspora wish to keep bonded with their Shona tradition. Here, at least, is a jovial family in a foreign land. Tawanda, loving and caring, and his expectant wife, make their plans with an African attitude. For instance, they wish their unborn child to have an African name, African upbringing, African everything.
This story subtly suggests that the Zimbabwean tradition that says ‘rooranayi wematongo’, generally meaning ‘marry the one who shares the same culture with you’, makes things workable. When this wisdom is ignored, sometimes the culture shock in a relationship will be brutal as seen in the story When Zimbabwe Fell For Wyoming in which two lovers of extremely different cultures find it hard to connect. For instance, when the Wyoming lover learns about lobola (bride price), he asks his Zimbabwean girlfriend, “I get to buy you from your family! How much do you think you’re worth?”
As someone in Zimbabwe reading these fascinating diaspora stories, I for one appreciate that finally we are touching on the Diaspora, after many years of mining the Zimbabwe plight for the enjoyment of foreign readers.
Gripping and sincere, these stories give voice to those black female immigrants who have been suffering in silence or pretending they are fine when they are not. Now, like one of the narrators, they can say, ‘Finally, a physical representation of my caged existence has manifested.’ And the caged existence is laid bare for us all to empathize with in Send Her Back and Other Stories.
Beaven Tapureta is the director of Writers International Zimbabwe.
