Violette Kee-Tui discusses her debut novel Mulberry Dreams with Drew Shaw

A Synopsis of Mulberry Dreams – By Drew Shaw 

Violette Kee-Tui’s debut novel Mulberry Dreams (Pigeon Press, Bulawayo, 2021) tells the story of Emma, now in her forties, escaping a mid-life crisis and failing marriage in America. Remembering snippets from her childhood, sitting on a branch in a mulberry tree with her brother in Bulawayo in the late 1970s, she realised ‘In a second, everything can change.’  Just before her tenth birthday, a loud gun shot marks the end of her childhood in Bulawayo, taking her to a new life on another continent. 

Mulberry Dreams spans three decades, 1977 to around 2009/2010, when Emma returns to Bulawayo to face old ghosts and uncover old secrets. An engrossing story told in interconnected flashbacks, this is Zimbabwe’s first full-length novel to centre itself on the culturally rich but much neglected coloured community. Mulberry Dreams is an intriguing tale, full of joy and tragedy, which immerses us in the vibrant colloquial lingo of ‘Skies’.

I met with the author at the Orange Elephant craft and book shop in Bulawayo to discuss her new book. Thanks to Rita Moyo for the above photograph.

Congratulations on the launch of your debut novel! I know you have written several short stories in the past and you won the Yvonne Vera Award at the Intwasa Arts Festival 2012 for Tattered Cloth, a story about forbidden love. You were also a finalist who published a short story in the International Readers’ Digest. You’re a well-known citizen of Bulawayo who went to Townsend High School and started a career as a journalist at age 18, becoming a features writer and editor for The Chronicle, where you worked for many years, so you are no stranger to the art of writing. You’ve also been an English teacher at Christian Brothers’ College, and you’ve been involved in numerous charitable projects. Mulberry Dreams is a great read. How does it feel to have published it?

I was beginning to think it would never happen. So it is pretty exciting. It's finally done - with thanks to Paul Hubbard and Pigeon Press who worked so hard and encouraged me so much to get it done, John Eppel who edited it, Wayne Nel who did the typesetting and Blessing Chakandinakira who did such a great job on the cover.

Well it looks lovely. And it reads wonderfully as well. Is there a big difference between journalistic and creative writing, and was it difficult to make the transition?

Well, yes, it is very different. Because you know, we're instructed as journalists to stick to the facts, get the information, do the interview and make that the guidelines for the story you eventually write… With creative writing, to be in a medium where you literally have nothing to work with but your imagination, took some getting used to and it was quite scary. It was like jumping off a cliff. I had no character, I had no plot, when I started this project, I had literally nothing to ground me. However, John Eppel once told me, and I’ve never forgotten this, first create your characters. He said, create your characters, and they will lead you where they want to go. That was such a pivotal moment.
Mulberry Dreams ultimately came about when I entered NaNoWriMo (https://nanowrimo.org/), held every November to encourage creative writing, with the challenge of writing 50,000 words in a month. A friend and I decided to sign up on October 31, at 10 o'clock at night. She said let's do this together and encourage each other. And so I started on the 1st of November with no idea where my writing was going. I discovered you need to see it as a job and just put down those words. The rule is don't go back and edit, just get it down, which I didn't entirely listen to. But by the end of it, I had 50,003 words. I was writing about 1500 on average a day; some days it would just flow and I'd find myself with 3000 words. Sometimes it would be a struggle, and I wouldn't make even the minimum. And the story changed as I went along. It was going to be a story about a woman whose life is told through the food she makes and eats. And that somehow just completely fell away. I ended up deleting it and the first draft of Mulberry Dreams emerged by the end of November 2010.

Amazing. What an achievement. So it has been a labour of love for ten years. Can you say some more about the process - easy, difficult, time-consuming, a happy endeavour, moments of despair, a lonely exercise maybe?

Well, it was all of those things. My kids were quite young, they were still going to school, and I was teaching at CBC [Christian Brothers' College]. So I was writing when I could find spare moments in my schedule, and I'd sometimes teach a couple of classes, then dash home to write, then go pick up the kids, go back for classes. It was kind of a crazy time. I found myself quite lost in this world I was creating, which did become lonely in a way. Then I had to abruptly stop and go do the school run. And those characters were kind of floating around. I felt disconnected, like I was living in two separate worlds. And I can imagine what a professional full-time writer feels in terms of an isolation and no-one really understanding where you are, where your head is. I never thought it possible to create my own imaginary world. And then when I finished writing, the characters kind of lived with me for a while, and I'd look around for Calvin and wonder about Emma. And even in recent times I’ve seen people who have their traits or looks. And so they've kind of lived with me, all of these 10 years. To now watch them come alive through my readers is pretty intense and very exciting.

Mulberry Dreams is the first full-length novel in Zimbabwe centred on the coloured community. There are other remarkable novels which include coloured characters, but this feels different because it goes to the heart of a particular subculture. [In southern Africa, we should note, ’coloured’ means mixed race and is not used pejoratively]. What was your motivation to do this?

I've always looked at the coloured community from the outside in. But then I’ve always felt like the outsider looking in, my background being Iranian, and no Iranian community to speak of in Zimbabwe. My ex-husband and the father of my kids is from a coloured background, though as a child he lived between England and Zimbabwe. Also, I had friends, and dated a couple of boys who were from the coloured community. And my kids, by virtue of their dad being coloured are coloured too. I’ve always felt that it’s such a rich community, in culture, in a blending of faiths, of racial backgrounds, of custom, of tradition, in its depth and beauty, brought about by its diversity. And to me, these combine to create a beautiful ‘potpourri’.
At the same time, there’s a real grappling with identity that's often based on our politics here. I remember teaching classes of older boys at CBC, and sometimes the coloured boys would say to the white boys, ‘If a bicycle goes missing, you think it's one of us!’ So the boys had stereotypes associated with the coloured community. So there's all this richness and beauty and, at the same time, brutality, like in every community, and ugliness, like in every community, and I wanted to write the full story. And I hope this comes across: Mulberry Dreams is intended as a story about healing of wounds rather than, you know, an exploration of flaws.
I also felt that there's been so many stories written about and from the perspective of the black or the white community, but very rarely has anyone spoken about this community that is a product of the coming together of the two. It’s almost forgotten in some ways, except at times when there is criticism of it.
What's been lovely has been the response from members of the community who have read it. And I've liked the mixed response too, all positive but sometimes also questioning, debating, starting conversations. A friend of mine, who is coloured, gave me the biggest compliment: she said, Vee, it's like you grew up in an olden coloured community. We talked about the character Clayton, who she saw as a hero, the man who keeps it all together. There has already been a wider conversation started about it, which is really amazing. Another woman I have known for some time but not really discussed family or background with before told me, ‘Do you know that my daughter married a coloured person and this is what we went through?’ It means so much to me that people are starting to identify with various themes and elements of the novel.

Do you think the coloured community has generally been neglected, and in fiction particularly?

I definitely think there are so many stories to be told, and they haven't been been…Paul Hubbard and I had a wonderful interview with a 90-year-old man from the community, who had just the most incredible stories about when, for example, Barham Green was first established and why, and the kind of jobs that he did and how he worked his way up and there's still this memory and oral tradition of storytelling. There are people who are old enough to remember when things were segregated. I think a very telling statement about this marginalization, about being left out of the narrative of this country, is when my character, Gwennie, says,‘We were too dark for the whites, and we're too light for the blacks.’ So there is this weird twilight zone where you’re not quite accepted on either side. Also, you’re not at the centre of agendas on either side. And so where are you? And I can relate to that not because I’m not mixed race but I have the skin tone that can be taken for mixed race. The eternal question becomes, where do you fit in?

It’s an interesting community, as you say, with so many stories to share. Can you tell us the basics of your story and what you were trying to achieve?

It’s a story about two families separated by colour and circumstance but connected by a tragedy which leaves two generations trying to figure out the pieces of their lives that led them to this, trying to process the pain, the anger, trying to move forward but not knowing how because they’re stuck in the events of a tragedy that happened over 30 years ago.

And there was still a colour bar in the 1970s.

Yes, I think that coloureds were probably given more space then than blacks, but we hear the white character, David, call grown men ‘boys’ for example. And the tragedy, I feel, is that we still haven’t moved on from that nearly enough.

Do you feel in 2021 we are still a bit stuck?

Yes, we’re still stuck. We make headway in our groups maybe or as individuals, but really, as a society, we're still talking about colour, we're still referring to someone we come across in terms of their colour.

So, we’re not a post-racial society?

We're not. And you know, a lot of that is political. We have a system that wants us to be divided. But I also think there's a lot of pain from the past that was never addressed, that we're not talking about. I realise not all the conversations are going to be easy or positive, but I think they have to happen. Ultimately, I hope people can relate to this novel as a story about being human in a difficult world where we are often separated by superficial things, and about love and about loss, no matter who you are or what your background.

The novel is mostly set in Bulawayo, where you were born and where you still live. However, it also follows its main character, Emma, to her life on the west coast of America. Where did you get your inspiration for this story? Is it entirely fictional, or were you able to draw on personal experiences, people you knew, stories you had heard?

The story's not in any way autobiographical. It's not my story at all. I think we've all had heartache, and we've all had loss, so I can relate to the themes and some aspects of the characters, but it wasn't my story. And that actually made it quite easy in a way because I could put it there, at a place separate to me. It was, again, me looking from the outside in. But the settings, to some extent, are autobiographical: I was an exchange student in Seattle. So I knew the university districts there. Also, my parents live in Florida. So the place that Emma and Alan met up was Miami. And then the childhood home that Emma is born in and leaves when she's 10, coming back to as an adult, is based on my childhood home in Burnside here. So in the settings I think there are autobiographical elements, but not the characters.
Also, I can very clearly see Calvin’s childhood apartment, so similar to blocks of flats in the city centre, and I tried to paint the picture of the Clayton’s neighbourhood, not unlike, I feel, any neighbourhood around the world that still upholds a strong sense of community, of people living close to one another and being interlaced in each other’s lives.
I’ve realised the idea of a neighbourhood still very much exists in the coloured community. It’s the situation where you know everyone on your street and if you get up to mischief, your aunt down the road is going to report you. It’s a community where everyone knows you. And that's comforting, but it can also be binding because how do you break out of that if you want to? Or how do you live differently if you want to? You kind of have to live within the expectations of your community. If you want to be someone who talks differently, or does things differently, you're often criticised for trying to put yourself apart from others.

That's interesting. You have a clear command of geographical space in your novel, maybe because those are real places you are often describing. To move onto another impressive attribute of Mulberry Dreams, it has a well-constructed plot. There are multiple strands, yet you tie them all together as the story unfolds - mostly in a series of flashbacks. It’s a real page-turner. Did you have to work hard on the plot and the planning?

My biggest worry was whether people would be able to flashback easily and navigate between the two timelines, because I've read books where I’ve become confused….Then it struck me that the very short chapters worked as transition mechanisms for moving back and forth.
It was a later decision to begin with ‘Emma 1978’, which is her voice as a child. And that was thanks to John Eppel: I gave him the manuscript and said, ‘Would you please edit this for me, not as your friend, but just honestly as a job?’ And he did an amazing job. Again, at a crucial point Emma goes back to the first-person narrative, being a 10-year old, and that worked for dramatic impact. Yes, it took a little bit of thought, but then it kind of fell into place. I had to work on tying Calvin back in, to make it clear where his part was, and the transitions had to bring the two stories together. It’s supposed to be a step-by-step plot from what happened in the late 1970s to where they ended up, and every step of that way was crucial to both.

Well, it reads very well. Can we return to Emma, your protagonist? She escapes a midlife crisis and failing marriage in America, revisiting a lost childhood in Bulawayo - one which was brought to an abrupt end, when she was taken away in the late 1970s. She’s an endearing character with whom we sympathise. Can you tell us more about her, how she became your novel’s protagonist?

Well, I think Emma lives in the shadow of her mother who was a strong and very beautiful woman with a clear vision of a society so different to the one she was living in. She sees the ability for people to be treated the same regardless of their skin tone and tries to pass this onto her children. Emma lives in that shadow without having the guidance of that shadow. So I actually see her as quite a weak character, a little bit whiney at the beginning, but I like to think she learns from her mother and her experience and becomes the person that she wants to be, as her courage and self-worth grows.
I suppose It’s not a dissimilar struggle from many women, for different reasons, who struggle with their identity and independence and their place in the world. We battle because maybe we didn’t get the same attention as our siblings or we battle because we are a strong character who butts heads with our parents, or because we are economically sidelined, and we enter into adulthood and we’re kind of flailing, trying to find our place and trying to find our worth. We’ve maybe hinged our worth on our parents or a husband or children.
Far too often women are identified by their husband or their kids, putting careers and their own needs on hold. And then they get to a certain age and maybe their children have left home, or maybe their marriage has broken up and now who are they?

Yes, Emma is interesting, and relatable for many with her personal struggles. For me, though, Calvin is your most intriguing character - alluring, yet prickly, a bit of a ‘bad boy’. Yet there is an honesty and loyalty about him, as seen in his care for Elizabeth, almost a mother to him. (And Elizabeth is a likeable memorable character in the novel too). To me, Calvin captures the charm of the coloured community’s subculture. Teasing Emma with his street lingo, he takes her under his wing, takes her to Bulawayo’s bars and dancehalls, where she meets his uncle Clayton - also charming, though entirely different, a real gentleman. If Elizabeth is maternal, Clayton is avuncular. It’s as though in Bulawayo Emma falls into a ready-made family, though it’s unclear until the end whether Calvin will be an adopted brother or a Heathcliff-type lover, and that’s part of the intrigue. Several of your characters seem to carry on living beyond the text. What went into the making of Calvin and others?

Well Calvin, as I said at the book launch, is my favourite character because he’s such a paradox and embodies such extremes. On the one hand he’s a womaniser. He’s got the looks, the build and all that, but he uses women - so he has a dark side, and the language he uses is coarse, irreverent. He kind of took on a life of his own and is a patchwork of people that I’ve come across who can kind of scare you with that façade, and they are, as you say, prickly so you may stay away from them. But then if you give them a chance, they may not express it in words but they do it in actions. There’s a lot more to them. And I think that if Emma had dismissed him on first appearances she would have missed out on a lot. I’m sure people have dismissed people like him without trying to dig deeper and that’s a real pity.
At the book launch I said that when I was younger I made the mistake of believing the facade, and I didn’t know how to unpack that. But we see that it’s often an insecurity that makes a person behave with all that bluster. And you have to look more carefully for who they are. You have to listen more carefully for who they are. As you say, Calvin is very loyal, he protects his family fiercely, but also violently. He’s violent when he has to be, and he’s not going to hold back. But Harry his father was a different man. And again, Calvin lives in the shadow of not being Harry, perhaps thinking he disappointed his father.

Yes, you describe him as a chip off the old block, physically anyway, and Emma does a double take when she first sees him. Yet Calvin and Harry are very different in other respects.

And that could be down to circumstance. Had Calvin been dealt a different hand… And if both Calvin and Emma had had the opportunity of guidance from stronger parental figures, things might have turned out differently for them. … If you remember, Harry cautioned Calvin not to talk slang, ‘to make something of yourself.’ But there are many ways to make your parents proud, and I like to think both Calvin and Emma are on a developmental arc.

Shall we also talk about Elizabeth? She of course is the occupant of Emma’s old house in Bulawayo, who knows part of the story of that tragic moment that Emma is revisiting. She sort of guides Emma along, gets her to engage with Calvin.

Yes, Elizabeth is kind of the glue that holds the story together, because she has a foot in two worlds. She also insists they both face their pasts. She almost pushes them to it. And I think her age, and her generation, make her a very important character because she was an adult in the 1970s, so her views could have been shaped by the society of her formative years. But she seems to step out of that mold and become the thread, for me, between that era and the present. She, for me, doesn’t define people – by colour or anything else; doesn’t let it cloud her judgement. She teaches us many lessons. Number one, we’re never too old to change. Number two, not everyone born in a particular era holds racial prejudices. Margot, Emma’s mother didn’t. Elizabeth doesn’t. For me they are the beacons of hope. Elizabeth may seem like this sweet old woman but she’s steely. For me, she’s really strong, she tells Emma she can’t keep running away. She has to face the ghosts of her past.

It seems there is a statement about prejudice. I say that because Emma could well have been put off by Calvin on first impressions: he’s prickly and rude and someone who could be dismissed. But when Emma learns to look beneath the surface, she sees something quite different. And Elizabeth is able to do that with Calvin, helping him to get a new start in life.

Yes, there are two leading characters who are not prejudiced and we can maybe observe something from that. Elizabeth took a chance on Calvin which many wouldn’t have. And Emma wants to make peace with the past. So both want to acknowledge that there were injustices and want to make a difference, if only just in one person’s life.

Yes, Elizabeth looks beyond appearances at a time when that was not very common. So, she is one of the heroes, but we’ve got a few actually. Emma, also, wants to set things right, and there are others... Lastly, there are some provocative themes in the novel: love across the colour bar; domestic violence; adultery; unplanned pregnancies; abortion; homosexuality; crimes of passion, etc. The book is really quite racy at times but you manage controversy rather well, nevertheless guiding the narrative towards a neat conclusion with a light touch. Did you need to do a lot of planning, or did the story, with all its twists (and trysts!) and turns, just come to you spontaneously? I’m just wondering how you managed to weave so much controversy into a delightful novel that’s very easy to read.

[Laughter]. It is quite surprising for me because I’ve always been known in my family circles for a sometimes unrealistically optimistic outlook. A rainbow and picnics type of person. I tend to be the one who avoids conflict, avoids causing a stir…But all the controversy in the novel wasn’t really contrived or intended. It just kind of came out, because life is surrounded by all of those things. In my immediate experience, there have been issues of the acceptance of homosexuality, which is very important to me. And issues of identity which, again, is something that I and people around me have grappled with. And there’s how to come out of heartache, and perhaps deal with causing heartache to others. The racial issues are so apparent to us all the time. So, in telling a story about anyone’s life, in this current time, in this current place, you’re not going to be honest if you don’t look at those issues. They’re part of our lived experience.

Well said. You certainly hit all those themes. And the characters live on afterwards, so that one can imagine a sequel or prequel. Thank you for agreeing to talk to me about it, and good luck with the next one Violette ! [Laughter]