Celebrating the success of a Matopos Rotaractor

One of the Rotaract club of Matopos’ very own, Sanelisiwe Emma Mlilo is a lawyer by profession and also a poet. She recently published a poetry anthology entitled “Toffee Apples and Debris”. The book is available at Vignes bookshop and the National Art Gallery in Bulawayo.

Below is a review of the book done by John Eppel poet and author originally from Lydenburg South Africa but is now based in Bulawayo Zimbabwe. He has published 13 books (so far), one of which has been translated into French (The giraffe man), created a creative writing course for the University of South Africa and published three 'O'Level and one 'A' Level literature study guide. He was awarded the Ingrid Jonker Prize for his first poetry book, "Spoils of War" and the MNet Prize in 1993 for his Novel, 'D G G Berry's the Great North Road'. His second novel, 'Hatchings' was nominated for the MNet prize in 1993/4.His works are studied in universities across South Africa.

Toffee Apples and Debris Review

In his introduction to ‘Black Women Writers’ (Pluto Press, 1985) edited by Mari Evans, Stephen E. Henderson writes that black women are the ‘victims not only of racial injustice but of sexual arrogance tantamount to dual colonialism - one from without, the other from within, the Black community’.  While Henderson’s context is African American, what he says, I feel, applies to the continental African woman, and is certainly apparent in the poems of Saneliswe Emma Mlilo.

Her poems look like stylized beetles, scarabs, which were regarded as sacred in ancient Egypt.  According to the Penguin dictionary of symbols the hieroglyph of the scarab with legs outstretched means ‘to come into existence by assuming a given form’.  That’s how these poems are made.

The first poem, ‘Affirmation’, with its insistent refrain, ‘I believe’, establishes the general mood of the anthology, one of defiance against the double bind of black women.  This mood, however, suffers a reaction in an underlying sense of anxiety, and it is this seeming contradiction, this uncertainty in certainty which gives the collection its strength.  Take, for example, ‘Black Barbie’: The note of defiance is in the word, ‘black’; the contradictory note of anxiety is in the word, ‘Barbie’, a symbol, surely, of western (white) consumer culture. Take ‘I’m Not My Hair’: the note of defiance is in its admonition to the ‘you’, the ex-boyfriend not to judge the ‘I’ by appearances: ‘What defines me is not on top of my head but inside it’; but when, in the final stanza, the repetition of the poem’s title becomes almost hysterical, I am reminded of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s words to Jon Snow: ‘Black woman’s hair is political’; or her words to the interviewer of ‘The Cut’ when she was asked what  Ifemelu (in her novel, ‘Americanah’) means when he says ‘Hair is the perfect metaphor for race in America’.  Part of Adichie’s reply is ‘Hair is something we see, but we don’t understand what’s behind it, kind of like race’. Take one of Mlilo’s strongest poems, ‘To My Unborn Child’: here the dialectic of defiance and uncertainty is held in heart-rending suspension.  At one extreme we have ‘you were never a thought that crossed my mind’; at the other:

                                    And one day when I am old and grey,

                        You will sing me to sleep the way I did all those years ago

                                          When you resided inside me

                                    And this, this for me would be bliss.

Take ‘I Hate St Valentine’s Day’ where the poet asserts her disdain for cut flowers in love and death rituals.  She sees cut flowers, wreaths, as dead things:

                        When I die, do not bring me flowers,

                        Do not let me be buried with death.

However, the subtext of this poem is that cut flowers are not dead but dying.  In this sense they are a reminder that life is precious because it doesn’t last.  The message of the Valentine rose is just that; the message of the funeral wreath is just that: ‘Nothing gold can stay’ [Robert Frost].  It is the hovering subtext (oxymoron?) which introduces uncertainty to the poem, thus enriching it.

Once you have read through this stimulating collection, you realise that, for a young, professional black woman with dreams of worldly success, there is a third bond: the generation gap.  This is particularly evident in ‘Give’, where ‘they’ represent the traditional advisors, many of them womenfolk:

                        They do tell you that motherhood is a must,

            That marriage is a must, and that your husband is the head,

            They teach you how to cook and clean and how to belong in a household,

                       They teach everything you need to know to find a husband,

                                But very little on how to live a fulfilling life.

Wait, there’s even a fourth bond: the poet is left-handed:

                                    It’s the wrong hand,

                                    use the right hand.

                                    Which is the right hand?

                                                                        [‘Left’]

Notice the witty pun.  

Most of these poems are written in a confessional mode, which is a recognized poetic form made popular by North American poets like Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath.  A number of them, the least interesting, in my opinion, are very personal I/you accounts of failed relationships.  A tendency to self-pity, however, is mitigated by some robust, even shocking imagery:

                                    But you’re an entrance,

                           One he has entered many times,

                          Now he parks for you’re a garage

                                    And as with all garages

            He must drive off in time to find another place to park.

The paradoxical imagination of this gifted poet surfaces in ‘The Uncomfortable Comfort of the Comfort Zone’ where the listener is introduced to ‘This quiet unrest that is your soul’s passion’.  That is how I responded to these poems: with a ‘quiet unrest’.  I look forward to Mlilo’s next collection, and, in the inspiring words of Gwendolyn Brooks, ‘Live: and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind’.

The anthology is beautifully presented.  The cover and illustrations by Duduzile Diana Mlilo are exquisite.  Congratulations to Tracy Publishing on this your maiden (no pun intended) venture.  You couldn’t have made a better start.