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cially since people didn’t talk about her. I [chose my name] as a way of honoring her, of wanting to be identified with my mother. Bulawayo is the city of my people. That is where I grew up pretty much, and, you know, being away from home and not being able to return for more than a decade created a kind of nostalgia. And then the names in the book, they are a celebration of my culture. We are given names that speak to something. I notice that most of our literature in English tries to sound English in a sense. You don’t get those kinds of names popping. In We Need New Names, I was writing about things that were going on at home, so it was my quiet way of saying, “we need new names, you can remove names, we need a new president, new ways of thinking of ourselves, new ways of being.” But I also feel like it is something that can transcend the Zimbabwean space. I see it as a movement that can happen anywhere. I think the rest of the world can take something from it or apply itself in the equation. Are you working on a new project? Yes, I’m working on a collection of AIDS stories. When I started, I was trying to write a memoir. I lost a brother to AIDS when I was 14 or 15. I lost a sister to AIDS when I was living here. I never got to go home [for the funeral]. I come from a big family. I was telling a friend, “I’ve lost at least 20 people, at least 20 people to AIDS.” And she was like, “No way.” Yes, it’s true. But I’m also concerned with the silence. I’ve never sat down and talked about my siblings, for example. It’s that unspoken chapter in our lives. When I was growing up with my brother, we thought he had TB. After he died, the evidence said HIV/AIDS. I found out later, when I was going through my father’s things. But now people know that AIDS is AIDS, and you can identify it, but the silence persists. I just went home. The culture is changing. Kids are becoming sexually active earlier. This generation that was born with HIV is coming into sexual awakening. Going back to activism, it is one of the things that we need to think about In We Need New Names, Darling’s father returns home with AIDS. Darling has no idea why he is sick, which makes me think of what you said about everyone believing that your brother had TB. In writing about issues that are taboo, like AIDS, you open up a space for conversation. Do you see writing as a form of activism? Yes, I do, because it is through writing that we speak the unspoken. It’s interesting, because some of the things that I write about are things that I never ever say. Because we have a language that does not allow you to have those kinds of conversations, or people just aren’t interested. In writing, I can create an illusion that I am just talking to a page when, of course, I know that I am talking about issues. I receive feedback from people. And that is when you realize that people are interested in talking about these things. I just wish I could see more of this, especially with young writers. There is so much that is a mess, that people need to be talking about. 73 Register Magazine
Being Bad 10 Books Featuring Subversive Women A Reading List for Defying Society’s Expectations By: Melissa Ginsburg In my noir novel, Sunset City, porn star Danielle Reeves is murdered, and her best friend Charlotte reels, heartbroken, in the aftermath of her death. Charlotte, Danielle, and others in the book are impulsive, selfdestructive, and lonely. They put themselves at risk in many ways: they drink too much, they do drugs, they have sex with strangers, they act without regard to personal safety. No one has an easy time of it, but they all do the best they can given their situations. The women in Sunset City and in the following books struggle to fit in, to find a place in society. They don’t buy into mainstream values. They aren’t very good at living the way they are told they’re supposed to live. Many of them are smarter, or more talented, or they feel things more deeply than the people around them. In a world where girls’ and women’s bodies and behavior are under so much scrutiny and control, self-destruction can be a meaningful act of defiance, self-assertion, or expression. 74
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Our Stories Make Us February 18' Vo
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Inside Front Cover 2
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Contents: Letter from the Editor By
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The inspiration for this issue of R
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In 1938, Gertrude Stein published T
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dents look at intensifiers in Chauc
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None of this, presumably, is a sour
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At the risk of making a dozen devot
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intimacy of the first person, the e
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We can, in seconds, compile long li
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Page 29 and 30: By: Joanna Walsh Joanna Walsh is th
Page 31 and 32: Books Challenging the Gender Binary
Page 33 and 34: By: Laura Jane Faulds 32
Page 35 and 36: self-indulgently, two if you count
Page 37 and 38: Mmmm? I talked to Keith Richards on
Page 39 and 40: are supposed to be the knuckles and
Page 41 and 42: This was the solution to why she’
Page 43 and 44: Interviewed by: Sandro & Sandra Fer
Page 45 and 46: into words the truth of a gesture,
Page 47 and 48: er. It diminished, then it vanished
Page 49 and 50: The Lost Daughter, I pushed the pro
Page 51: media simply can’t discuss a work
Page 54 and 55: figure of Nina, the young mother wh
Page 56 and 57: Interviewer: What does it mean when
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Page 60 and 61: 59 Register Magazine
Page 62 and 63: decided years ago, had the space an
Page 64 and 65: Soon enough the slices were divided
Page 66 and 67: Lately she’s been spitting, she e
Page 68 and 69: How he missed Jonga at times like t
Page 70 and 71: By: Alice Driver
Page 72 and 73: And when they asked us where we wer
Page 76 and 77: Mary Gaitskill, Bad Behavior The fe
Page 78 and 79: Mahasweta Devi “Please don’t wr
Page 80 and 81: The Horror of Female Adolescence an
Page 82 and 83: sexual drive is reduced to somethin
Page 84 and 85: Favorite Authors & Favorite Books:
Page 86 and 87: Doris Lessing Sandra Cisneros The O
Page 88 and 89: Women in Love? - It’s frustrating
Page 90 and 91: to the most recent Pew Report. That
Page 92: Editor—Elizabeth Pike Managing Ed
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