Virginia Phiri | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 1954 (age 69–70) Bulawayo, Zimbabwe |
| Nationality | Zimbabwean |
| Occupation | Author |
| Notable work | Published : Destiny (Corals Services, 2006), Highway Queen (Corals Services, 2010), Desperate (Xavier F Carelse, 2002 & 2013) |
Virginia Phiri (born 1954) is a Zimbabwean feminist writer.
Virginia Phiri was born in 1954 in Zimbabwe's second largest city, Bulawayo.
Having been raised in a family of political activists aligned to the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union, she was actively involved in the Zimbabwe's liberation war at the age of 17. Later, in 2000, together with Zimbabwe Women Writers she contributed to an anthology, Women of Resilience – the voices of women ex-combatants. [1] In 1972, she left the country for neighbouring Botswana on the way to Zambia.
Phiri is married to Werner Fibeck. Their only child a daughter named Tecla, died 2001. Apart from being an author Phiri is an accountant by profession, as well as an African orchid expert. She has co-authored orchid articles in journals such as Die Orchidee since 1996. Due to her African orchids research and writing she was an IUCN Africa Committee member up to 2012 and is currently a member of IUCN Species Survival Commission.[ citation needed ]
Phiri has written both fiction and non-fiction books in English, and in two of Zimbabwe's local languages, chiShona and isiNdebele. She is founder of Zimbabwe Women Writers (1990) and Zimbabwean Academic and Non Fiction Authors Association (1996). [2] She was a board member of the Zimbabwe International Book Fair from 1998 until 2004, when she stepped down. Over the years, she has built on her career as an author through active membership of various writing organisations and associations. [3] [ citation needed ]
These include:
In Zimbabwe, Phiri's writings have been criticised as mainly dealing with mainly risqué issues. [4] Some of her most controversial subjects include the experiences of sex workers, a trade outlawed in Zimbabwe. These writings were published in two anthologies by the Zimbabwe Women Writers in Shona, Masimba [5] and a version in isiNdebele. [6] 7
Her most popular published works include:
Destiny (Corals Services, 2006). A book on Destiny that deals with a subject that is viewed as taboo in Zimbabwe - Hermaphrodites (LGBTI community) and their everyday reality.[ citation needed ]
Highway Queen (Corals Services, 2010). [7] A book that touches on the daily global challenges of unemployment, poverty, crime, health, education, and economics from a woman's perspective.[ citation needed ]
Desperate [8] (2002) (Xavier F Carelse, 2002 and 2013). A collection of stories about the circumstances that lead women to commercial sex workers, and their lived experiences. The book was inspired by a real life experience as a guerrilla during the Rhodesian Bush War, when she sought refuge with sex workers when she found her life was at risk owing to her activism.[ citation needed ]
Phiri's writings have been used for academic university purposes in Zimbabwe and the world over for research as well for Doctorates. [9] In 2006, Desperate was discussed by students from Prof. Ruby Magosvongwe's English class before examinations. That gave Virginia Phiri an opportunity to interact with students and discuss Desperate at length.University of Zimbabwe Department of English in its courses.
In 2012 at the Cape Town Book Fair Phiri had an opportunity to speak to students from the Universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch in relation to her book Destiny, which addresses LGBTIQ issues. The South African students were led by Professor Meg Samuelson. Also present were Zimbabwean academics Professor Kizito Muchemwa and Professor Faith Mkwesha, who were at that time based in South Africa. Destiny (2006) is one of the few books that has addressed LGBTIQ issues.
In 2014, German publisher Peter Hammer Veerlag commissioned her to contribute to the book Visionare Afrikas [10] on the first black African woman Nobel Peace Prize winner, Professor Wangari Maathai. Her contribution was translated into German.
Phiri went into self-publishing following encouragement by the late University of Zimbabwe lecturer Dr Xavier Carelse, who noted that she had struggled to have her book Desperate published due to the taboo issue of sex work. He later partnered her in publishing it.[ citation needed ]
Virginia Phiri is married to Werner Fibeck. Their daughter Tecla died tragically in 2001.[ citation needed ]
Bulawayo is the second largest city in Zimbabwe, and the largest city in the country's Matabeleland region. The city's population is disputed; the 2022 census listed it at 665,940, while the Bulawayo City Council claimed it to be about 1.2 million. Bulawayo covers an area of 546 square kilometres in the western part of the country, along the Matsheumhlope River. Along with the capital Harare, Bulawayo is one of two cities in Zimbabwe that are also provinces.
Matabeleland is a region located in southwestern Zimbabwe that is divided into three provinces: Matabeleland North, Bulawayo, and Matabeleland South. These provinces are in the west and south-west of Zimbabwe, between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers and are further separated from Midlands by the Shangani River in central Zimbabwe. The region is named after its inhabitants, the Ndebele people who were called "Amatabele"(people with long shields – Mzilikazi 's group of people who were escaping the Mfecani wars). Other ethnic groups who inhabit parts of Matabeleland include the Tonga, Bakalanga, Venda, Nambya, Khoisan, Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana, and Tsonga.
Dambudzo Marechera was a Zimbabwean novelist, short story writer, playwright, and poet. His short career produced a book of stories, two novels, a book of plays, prose, and poetry, and a collection of poetry. His first book, a fiction collection entitled The House of Hunger (1978), won the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1979. Marechera was best known for his abrasive, heavily detailed, and self-aware writing, which was considered a new frontier in African literature, and his unorthodox behaviour at the universities from which he was expelled despite excelling in his studies.
Tsitsi Dangarembga is a Zimbabwean novelist, playwright and filmmaker. Her debut novel, Nervous Conditions (1988), which was the first to be published in English by a Black woman from Zimbabwe, was named by the BBC in 2018 as one of the top 100 books that have shaped the world. She has won other literary honours, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the PEN Pinter Prize. In 2020, her novel This Mournable Body was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2022, Dangarembga was convicted in a Zimbabwe court of inciting public violence, by displaying, on a public road, a placard asking for reform.
Yvonne Vera was an author from Zimbabwe. Her first published book was a collection of short stories, Why Don't You Carve Other Animals (1992), which was followed by five novels: Nehanda (1993), Without a Name (1994), Under the Tongue (1996), Butterfly Burning (1998), and The Stone Virgins (2002). According to the African Studies Center at University of Leiden, "her novels are known for their poetic prose, difficult subject-matter, and their strong women characters, and are firmly rooted in Zimbabwe's difficult past." For these reasons, she has been widely studied and appreciated by those studying postcolonial African literature.
Beitbridge is a border town in the province of Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe. The name also refers to the border post and bridge spanning the Limpopo River, which forms the political border between South Africa and Zimbabwe. The border on the South African side of the river is also named Beitbridge.
Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana also known as Mbuya Nehanda was a svikiro, or spirit medium of the Zezuru Shona people. She was a medium of Nehanda, a female Shona mhondoro. As one of the spiritual leaders of the Shona, she was one of the leaders of a revolt, the Chimurenga, against the British South Africa Company's colonisation of what is now Zimbabwe led by Cecil John Rhodes in 1889. She was a Hera of the HwataShava Mufakose Dynasty. She and her ally Sekuru Kaguvi were eventually captured and executed by the company on charges of murder. She has been commemorated by Zimbabweans by statues, songs, novels, and poems, and the names of streets and hospitals. The legacy of the medium continued to be linked to the theme of resistance, particularly the guerrilla war that began in 1972. Her name became of increasing importance to the nationalist movements in Zimbabwe.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in Zimbabwe face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBTQ residents. Since 1995, the Government of Zimbabwe has carried out campaigns against LGBTQ rights. Sodomy is classified as unlawful sexual conduct and defined in the Criminal Code as either anal sexual intercourse or any "indecent act" between consenting adults. Since 1995, the government has carried out campaigns against both homosexual men and women.
Many languages are spoken, or historically have been spoken, in Zimbabwe. Since the adoption of its 2013 Constitution, Zimbabwe has 16 official languages, namely Chewa, Chibarwe, English, Kalanga, Koisan, Nambya, Ndau, Ndebele, Shangani, Shona, sign language, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa. The country's main languages are Shona, spoken by over 70% of the population, and Ndebele, spoken by roughly 20%. English is the country's lingua franca, used in government and business and as the main medium of instruction in schools. English is the first language of most white Zimbabweans, and is the second language of a majority of black Zimbabweans. Historically, a minority of white Zimbabweans spoke Afrikaans, Greek, Italian, Polish, and Portuguese, among other languages, while Gujarati and Hindi could be found amongst the country's Indian population. Deaf Zimbabweans commonly use one of several varieties of Zimbabwean Sign Language, with some using American Sign Language. Zimbabwean language data is based on estimates, as Zimbabwe has never conducted a census that enumerated people by language.
Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean lawyer and writer. She writes in English, though she also draws on Shona, her first language. In 2016, she was named African Literary Person of the Year by Brittle Paper. In 2017 she had a DAAD Artist-in-Residence fellowship in Berlin.
Julius Masimba Musodza is a Zimbabwean author.
Morgan Mahanya is a Zimbabwean Shona-language writer of detective fiction and war fiction. He has published 13 books since 1976, including books in Shona and in English, both fiction and nonfiction. Mahanya is one of the pioneering writers of detective stories in the Shona language. His books Chidamwoyo, Zvinoyera and The Wound are about the Rhodesian Bush War.
Barbara Makhalisa, also known by her married name as Barbara Nkala, is a teacher, Zimbabwean writer, Ndebele translator, novelist, editor and publisher, one of the earliest female writers published in Zimbabwe. She is the author of several books written in Ndebele, as well as in English, of which some have been used as school textbooks. Barbara is married to Shadreck Nkala. They have three adult children and six grandchildren.
Zimbabwe Women Writers (ZWW) is an organization for women writers established in 1990 in Zimbabwe. It was "the first women's organization in Zimbabwe and in Southern Africa to address gender imbalance through writing and publishing".
Irene Staunton is a Zimbabwean publisher, editor, researcher and writer, who has worked in literature and the arts since the 1970s, both in the UK and Zimbabwe. She is co-founder and publisher of Weaver Press in Harare, having previously co-founded Baobab Books. Staunton is the editor of several notable anthologies covering oral history, short stories, and poetry, including Mothers of the Revolution: War Experiences of Thirty Zimbabwean Women (1990), Children in our Midst: Voices of Farmworker's Children (2000), Writing Still: New Stories from Zimbabwe (2003), Women Writing Zimbabwe (2008), Writing Free (2011), and Writing Mystery & Mayhem (2015).
Weaver Press is a Zimbabwean independent publisher formed in 1998 in Harare. The press was co-founded by Irene Staunton, who has been credited with "quietly shaping post-independence Zimbabwean literature", with Murray McCartney, and the Press has published many notable African writers. Weaver's list focuses on books on political and social history, the environment, media issues, women's and children's rights, fiction and literary criticism.
Indigenous religion in Zimbabwe is explained in terms of the Zimbabwe ethnic groups, beliefs, norms and values, rites and rituals, ceremonies and celebrations. Indigenous religion is more carried out by living it than with its theory. Religion among the Africans is very important, it plays a vital role for the individuals, the family and the community as a whole. Bourdlillon asserts that indigenous religion is one, though there can be various manifestation just like Christianity which is one but has various denominations. Thomas Gale defined the word indigenous as to anything that is native to a particular geographical culture. Mbiti says in Zimbabwe Indigenous religion is in two classes, the Ndebele and Shona. However, Zimbabwe has a lot of minority tribes including the Tonga, Venda, Kalanga and Sothu.
Zimbabwe does not recognize same-sex marriages or civil unions. The Marriages Act does not provide for the recognition of same-sex marriage, and civil partnerships are only available to opposite-sex couples. The Constitution of Zimbabwe explicitly prohibits same-sex marriages.
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