Story
Petina Gappah reads her own story Weblink to audio
The Mupandawana Dancing Champion
Zimbabwe: Petina Gappah
Petina Gappah is an Geneva-based international trade lawyer who has written poignant, humane and funny collection of stories about her home country, Zimbabwe. Her first collection of stories, An Elegy for Easterly was a winner of the Guardian First Book Award in 2009. Gappah’s collection of 13 stories, An Elegy for Easterly, tells of the lives of people, rich and poor, caught up in events over which they have little control.
Themes
- Poverty and Unemployment
- Inflation and Purchasing Power
- Incompetent and Corrupt Government
- Silliness of High-Ranking Officials
- Music, Dance and pursuits of common people
- Humour as a Defence Mechanism
Notes and References
Additional Material
The Guardian. 5 Sept 2015. Interview with Petina Gappah. I’ve written a very Zimbabwean story.
Song for the Story!
Billy Joel’s Allentown from his 1982 album The Nylon Curtain:
> About Allentown
“Allentown” is a song by American singer Billy Joel, which was the lead track on Joel’s The Nylon Curtain (1982) album, accompanied by a conceptual music video. Upon its release, and especially in subsequent years, “Allentown” emerged as an anthem of blue-collar America, representing both the aspirations and frustrations of America’s working class in the late 20th century.
Well we’re living here in Allentown
And they’re closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem they’re killing time
Filling out forms
Standing in line
Well our fathers fought the Second World War
Spent their weekends on the Jersey Shore
Met our mothers in the USO1
Asked them to dance
Danced with them slow
And we’re living here in Allentown
But the restlessness was handed down
And it’s getting very hard to stay
Well we’re waiting here in Allentown
For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard
If we behaved
So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real
Iron and coal
And chromium steel
And we’re waiting here in Allentown
But they’ve taken all the coal from the ground
And the union people crawled away
Every child has a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got
But something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our face
Well I’m living here in Allentown
And it’s hard to keep a good man down
But I won’t be giving up today
And we’re living here in Allentown
Writing Prompts
- Humour and Laughter as our “last refuge”
- An encounter with a Government Department
- Listening to a Politician’s speech
- Participating in an HR function at your workspot
- On a story told to you by an elderly relative, full of mother-tongue words