Mungoshi, Charles
Genre:
Short story, Poetry
Bio:
His name will remain etched on Zimbabwean literature as one of the most prolific of Zimbabwean Artists. Born in 1947 near Chivhu, Charles Mungoshi left school at the tender age of 16. He worked for the Forestry Commission before going to work for Textbook sales. Mungoshi published his first Shona Novel , Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura in 1970.
The novel was followed by his first anthology, Coming of the Dry Season (1972) Oxford University Press). In 1975 Mungoshi produced two novels, Ndiko Kupindana Kwamazuva (Mambo Press 1975) and Waiting for the Rain (Heinemann 1975).
Charles Mungoshi has written several collections of short stories, including Some Kinds of Wounds and Other Short Stories (Mambo Press) and The Rolling World (Heinemann). His collection of poetry, The Milkman Doesn’t Only Deliver Milk (Baobab Books), won second prize at the Zimbabwean Literary Awards in 1998. Mungoshi has also published two collections of children’s stories: Stories from a Shona Childhood (Baobab 1989), which received an Honourable Mention from NOMA in 1990 and One Day Long Ago – More stories from a Shona Childhood (Baobab Books) which was joint winner of the Noma Award for publishing in Africa in 1992.
While continuing to write, Mungoshi worked for the Literature Bureau (1975-1981), and for the Zimbabwe Publishing House (1981-1986). He was invited to be a writer in residence at the University of Zimbabwe's Department of English from 1985-1987 and has been at the helm of Zimbabe Budding Writers Association for a long time now, where he has been inspiring up coming artists improve on their literary skills.
Charles Mungoshi is considered one of Zimbabwe’s best writers, his book Stories from a Shona Childhood is listed alongside Meshack Asare in the 100 Best Books list, as one of the four best books in literature for children. He has won two International P.E.N. awards, and the NOMA prize in 1992. He won the African region Commonwealth Writers Prize for Walking Still and The Setting Sun and the Rolling World was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1989.
Bibliography:
The Milkman Doesn’t Only Deliver Milk (Baobab Books, Zimbabwe. 1998)
Walking Still (Baobab Books, Zimbabwe. 1997)
One Day Long Ago – More stories from a Shona Childhood (Baobab Books, Zimbabwe. 1991)
Waiting for Rain (Zimbabwe Publishing. House, Zimbabwe. 1991)
Stories from a Shona Childhood (Baobab Books, Zimbabwe. 1989)
The Setting Sun and The Rolling World (Heinemann, 1987) (Beacon Press, 1989) – Out of Print
Some Kinds of Wounds and Other Short Stories (Mambo Press, Gwero. 1980)
Coming of the Dry Season (Zimbabwe Publishing House, Zimbabwe. 1972)
By Jameson Gadzirai
Sample Work:
Dotito is our brother
Dotito is our brother
He is strange
He will not play with us on the streets.
He doesn't want to go with us to the community centre.
He doesn't want to play the hoola-hoop.
He likes to sit under the mango-tree
all day long
all alone
drawing strange things that look like people
but aren't really people.
He is at the bottom of his class
and each time we go for games
in the play-ground, he disappears.
He loves the rain.
He could walk for hours in a heavy downpour
and never notice. Father caned him for it once.
And now when it rains he just sits by the window
looking out. Sometimes talking,
opening his mouth and saying strange things
to the rain.
When he is tired of talking to the rain,
he blows breath onto the glass pane,
and draws the same weird things
on scraps of paper.
People who don't know him
think he is deaf. He isn't although we
aren't sure he won't be. Soon.
Behind the closed door of their bedroom
father and mother whisper about him in the dark,
but we aren't supposed to hear it,
we know what they have begun to think
about Dotito.
We are a little afraid.
Strange people point and stare at us in the street -
even when Dotito isn't with us.
We know what they are saying too,
even when we don't see them open their mouths.
They are talking about how we are
Dotito's people.
© 1988 Charles Mungoshi
From: The Milkman Doesn't Only Deliver Milk
Publisher: Baobab Books, Harare
ISBN 1 77909 006 4
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