Alexandra Fuller | |
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| Born | 1969 Glossop, Derbyshire, England |
| Occupation | Author |
| Nationality | British Zimbabwean American |
| Notable awards | 2002 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize 2002 Booksense best non-fiction book 2004 Ulysses Prize for Art of Reportage |
Alexandra Fuller (born 1969 [1] ) is a British-Rhodesian author. Her articles and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker , National Geographic , Granta , The New York Times, The Guardian and The Financial Times .[ citation needed ]
In 1972 Fuller moved with her family to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). She was educated at boarding schools in Umtali and Salisbury (renamed Harare after 1982). She met her American husband, Charlie Ross, in Zambia, where he was running a rafting business for tourists. In 1994, they moved to his home state of Wyoming. Fuller and Ross divorced in 2012. They have three children. She currently spends much of her time in a yurt near Jackson, Wyoming. [2]
Her first book, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight , published in 2001, is a memoir of life with her family living in southern Africa. It won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize in 2002. In the same year it was featured in The New York Times list of "Notable Books" and a finalist for The Guardian 's First Book Award. [3] A sequel, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness about her mother, Nicola Fuller, was published in 2011. [4]
Her 2004 book Scribbling the Cat, about war's repercussions, received the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage in 2005. [5]
In her book The Legend of Colton H. Bryant (2008) Fuller narrates the short life of a Wyoming roughneck who fell to his death at age 25 in February 2006 on an oil rig owned by Patterson–UTI Energy. [6]
The autobiographical Leaving Before the Rains Come, published in January 2015, is about the disintegration of Fuller's marriage.
Fuller published her first novel, Quiet Until the Thaw, in 2017. [7]
In 2019 she published Travel Light, Move Fast about the death of her father and son. In 2023 she published Fi: A Memoir of My Son, a book about the life of her son who died aged 21 in his sleep.
Fuller received a B.A. from Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. [8] In 2007 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the same institution.[ citation needed ]
The memoir follows Fuller, called Bobo by her family, and her sister and parents as they move from England to Rhodesia and other points in Central Africa. The book mainly focuses on stories of family life while moving around Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Malawi and Zambia. The Rhodesian Bush War, or Second Chimurenga, serves as a backdrop to the family's time in Rhodesia. After the Rhodesian Bush War, the Fullers move to Malawi and then Zambia.
Fuller does not hide the effect her mother's alcoholism had on her childhood and is frank about her father's casual racism. Fuller writes about living through a war, being white while growing up in an almost all-black country, and the death of siblings and beloved animals.
Southern Rhodesia was a landlocked self-governing British Crown colony in southern Africa, established in 1923 and consisting of British South Africa Company (BSAC) territories lying south of the Zambezi River. The region was informally known as south Zambesia until annexed by Britain at the behest of Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company, for whom the colony was named. The bounding territories were Bechuanaland (Botswana), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Portuguese Mozambique (Mozambique), and the Transvaal Republic.
The prime minister of Rhodesia was the head of government of Rhodesia. Rhodesia, which had become a self-governing colony of the United Kingdom in 1923, unilaterally declared independence on 11 November 1965, and was thereafter an unrecognized state until 1979. In December 1979, the country came under temporary British control, and in April 1980 the country gained recognized independence as Zimbabwe.
The Rhodesian Bush War, also called the Second Chimurenga as well as the Zimbabwean War of Liberation, was a civil conflict from July 1964 to December 1979 in the unrecognised country of Rhodesia.
Peter Godwin is a Zimbabwean author, journalist, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, and former human rights lawyer. Best known for his writings concerning the breakdown of his native Zimbabwe, he has reported from more than 60 countries and written several books. He served as president of PEN American Center from 2012 to 2015 and resides in Manhattan, New York.
White Zimbabweans are Zimbabwean people of European descent. In linguistic, cultural, and historical terms, these Zimbabweans of European ethnic origin are mostly English-speaking descendants of British settlers. A small minority are either Afrikaans-speaking descendants of Afrikaners from South Africa or those descended from Greek, Portuguese, Italian, and Jewish immigrants.
The Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage has been given annually since 2003 for the best texts in the genre of literary reportage, which must have been first published during the previous two years. The award was initiated by Lettre International in Berlin, and is organized by the Foundation Lettre International Award, a joint partnership between Lettre International and the Aventis Foundation. The Goethe-Institut also cooperates with the project.
Rhodie is a colloquial term typically applied to a white Zimbabwean or expatriate Rhodesian.
The following lists events that happened during 1974 in Rhodesia.
St. Stephen's College, Balla Balla, Southern Rhodesia was a private Christian high school for boys from 1956 to 1975.
Air Rhodesia Flight 825 was a scheduled passenger flight that was shot down by the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) on 3 September 1978, during the Rhodesian Bush War. The aircraft involved, a Vickers Viscount named the Hunyani, was flying the last leg of Air Rhodesia's regular scheduled service from Victoria Falls to the capital Salisbury, via the resort town of Kariba.
Fay King Chung is a Zimbabwean educator and was an independent candidate for the 2008 Zimbabwean senatorial election. Chung has worked to extend access to education and to bring education-with-production principles into school curricula in Zimbabwe and other developing countries.
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, a memoir of life with Alexandra Fuller and her family on a farm in Rhodesia After the Rhodesian Bush War ended in 1980, the Fullers moved to Malawi, and then to Zambia. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize in 2002, was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002 and a finalist for The Guardian's First Book Award, an award given to the best regional novel of the year.
Public holidays in Rhodesia, a historical region in southern Africa equivalent to today's Zimbabwe and Zambia—formerly Southern and Northern Rhodesia, respectively—were largely based around milestones in the region's short history. Annual holidays marked various aspects of the arrival of white people during the 1880s and 1890s, as well as the respective unilateral declarations of independence (1965) and of republican government (1970). On these days, most businesses and non-essential services closed. A number of Christian holidays were also observed according to custom, in the traditional British manner, and referred to in official documents by name—Christmas Day, for example, or Easter Monday.
Rhodesiana is any artifact, or collection of artifacts, which is related to the history, geography, folklore, and cultural heritage of Rhodesia, the name used before 1980 to refer to modern Zimbabwe. Many objects, both physical and immaterial, can be defined as "Rhodesiana"; a painting of a Rhodesian landscape, for example, could be considered as such, as well as a song by a Rhodesian artist or a tale or personality from the country's history. The things involved need not be old, but need to possess relevant associations with Rhodesia; for Rhodesian people and their descendants, a piece of Rhodesiana will commonly arouse feelings of patriotism and nostalgia.
Diana Mary Mitchell was a Zimbabwean political activist and writer, who was an outspoken critic of the governments of Ian Smith and Robert Mugabe.
Queen of Rhodesia was the title asserted for Elizabeth II as Rhodesia's constitutional head of state following the country's Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom. However, the position only existed under the Rhodesian constitution of 1965 and remained unrecognised elsewhere in the world. The British government, along with the United Nations and almost all governments, regarded the declaration of independence as an illegal act and nowhere else was the existence of the British monarch having separate status in Rhodesia accepted. With Rhodesia becoming a republic in 1970, the status or existence of the office ceased to be contestable.
This list includes ministers of the cabinet of Rhodesia from 11 November 1965, the date of Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence, to 1979. It includes ministers of Rhodesia's transitional government, which began following the 1978 Internal Settlement and ended with the establishment of Zimbabwe Rhodesia on 1 June 1979. The internal transitional government included the creation of a four-person "Executive Council" and the appointment of black co-ministers to cabinet portfolios.
Janice McLaughlin was an American Catholic nun, missionary, and human rights activist. While working as the press secretary for the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in the 1970s, she was imprisoned by the white minority government in Rhodesia for exposing atrocities and human rights violations committed against the country's black citizens. She was placed in solitary confinement and, after intervention from the Vatican and the United States federal government, she was deported to the United States. She returned two years later to the newly established country of Zimbabwe to create an educational system, at the request of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe. In her later years she served as the president of the Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic in New York and worked as an anti-human trafficking activist.
Zimbabwean literature is literature produced by authors from Zimbabwe or in the Zimbabwean Diaspora. The tradition of literature starts with a long oral tradition, was influenced heavily by western literature during colonial rule, and acts as a form of protest to the government.
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