Course Summary:
This course enables students to explore how autoethnography may be used as a qualitative method through which the self may be imaginatively interpreted through reflexive investigation and observation. Through a close reading of critical creative texts, students will be able to reim...
How do we listen to the silences to tell our (hi)stories?
Hearing the Silence was published in 2019 as part of a book called Surfacing: On Being Black and
Feminist in South Africa. In this essay, Panashe uses her personal conversations with her maternal
grandmother, Mbuya, as an entry point to reflect on what it means to practice the seemingly
paradoxical (contradictory/ impossible) act of hearing the silence.
Who is Panashe Chigumadzi?
Panashe Chigumadzi is an essayist and novelist, born in Zimbabwe and raised in South Africa. Her
debut novel Sweet Medicine (Blackbird Books, 2015) won the 2016 K. Sello Duiker Literary Award.
Her second book, These Bones Will Rise Again, a historical memoir reflecting on Robert Mugabe’s
ouster, was shortlisted for the 2019 Alan Paton Award for Non-Fiction. A columnist for The New York
Times, and contributing editor of the Johannesburg Review of Books, her work has featured in titles
including The Guardian, Chimurenga, Boston Review, Africa is A Country, Transition, Washington
Post and Die Zeit.
Prior to this, Chigumadzi was the founding editor of Vanguard Magazine, a platform for young black
women coming of age in post-apartheid South Africa. She gained media experience both as a
journalist for CNBC Africa and columnist for Forbes Woman Africa and as a project executive for the
Africa Business News Group.
In 2015, Chigumadzi was a Ruth First Fellow, delivering the annual memorial lecture in honour of
the anti-apartheid activist. The following year, Chigumadzi, was the curator of Soweto’s inaugural
Abantu Book Festival, South Africa’s most important gathering for black readers and writers. Having
completed her master’s degree in African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, she is
now a doctoral candidate at Harvard University’s Department of African and African American
Studies.
Definitions
• Hearing
o The faulty of perceiving sounds. The range within which sounds may be heard
o An opportunity to sate one’s case
• Hear
o To perceive with the ear the sound (made by someone or something). To listen or
pay attention to. Listen to all someone has to say
o Be told or informed of. To be contacted by someone
o Will or would not allow or agree to
• Silence
o (noun) Complete absence of sound. A state of abstaining from speech. The
avoidance of mentioning or discussing something. A short period of time when
people stand still
o (verb) cause to became silent; prohibit or prevent from speaking
• Chigumadzi uses conversational English to speak about difficult and complex issues that has
implications for all of us who live in a world filled with intersecting oppressions.
• At the beginning of the essay, Chigumadzi invites the reader into a conversation between her
and her grandmother, whose voice is soft and ready (high and thin in tone). This description
of her voice offers the reader a sound related texture that informs how they will hear the
words on paper.
• Chigumadzi sets the context for the reader. It is Christmas Eve where she is invited to her
grandmother’s personal space, her bedroom. The writer does not isolate the grandmother;
she shows that the grandmother is part of a family and suggesting that her personal history
is representative of the multiple histories within Zimbabwe. Her grandmother’s personal
history becomes the entry point for the multiple other women who have similar histories
and this hard topic. Difficult history has the ability to render someone silent. You can choose
to be silent as a way to communicate something
• Chigumadzi notes how the multi-generational black women in her family have different
ways of practising silent refusal. She is telling us that silence is a form of speaking. However,
often when speaking, one may encounter obstacles where we stumble over language.
• What the difference between hearing the silence and hearing the silence? What does the and
a mean respectively? What do these small changes in words change your interpretation?
Words are very important and must be used with intention and carefully.
• In her work, Chigumadzi highlights how critical the things we say are. The way you
approach people can be the difference getting things done or not. She mentions how her first
approach irritates her grandmother and she does not get the answers she seeks. Somethings
are just not asked is a motif.
• A lot has to happen before you can commit your words on paper, especially if you are writing
about something that is outside your world. You have to listen/ read intently whilst you do
your research and try your best to understand.
• In her work, Chigumadzi speaks about what it is like to be a black female writer. Because she
is a black woman writer interested in work that centres the voices of black women, she is
often asked to write about their voices and its importance. Here, she speaks of her
positionality and how it informs the narratives she finds importance.
• Anyway, her being asked to speak on the importance of black women writing their stories
indicates to her how dominant (overpowering) cultures have a tendency to put a lot of value
on speech and presence when compared to silence and absence.
• Some women were unsure of their authority to speak and sent me to others. Other woman
were militant in their refusal to speak for Chigumadzi failed to follow the right protocol.
Some had things they were unwilling to talk about. Is silence always a case of having one’s
power taken away? Can one hold power by refusing to speak?
Week 3
• Easy to understand writing does not mean you write in simplistic ways, Chigumadzi’s writing
does not lose its complexity just because it is understandable.
• Throughout Chigumadzi’s writings, she draws from situations from the USA, South Africa
and Zimbabwe to make her point.
• Chigumadzi notes how the #MeToo movement, founded by Tarana Burke influenced her to
focus on the silence. The decision made black women to be silent in the heat of this
movement, she found herself grappling of what silence meant, and especially what the
silence of black women meant.
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