Thenjiwe Mswane: "There are no new Jerusalems here"

All Gomorrahs Are The Same by Thenjiwe Mswane (Blackbird Books) is shortlisted for the Sunday Times fiction prize, in partnership with Exclusive Books

CRITERIA

The winner should be a novel of rare imagination and style, evocative, textured and a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction.

Makhosi is angry with the world and struggles to communicate her rage with her mother Duduzile and younger sister Nonhle. Through these characters the reader is allowed into complicated conversations within black families about womanhood, navigating masculinity, parenting, sexual abuse and mental health, addiction and loss. The judges said of the book: “An intricate and gripping story told by three different generations, all trying to make sense of South African life; from apartheid into liberation with all the ambiguity, volatility and uncertainty that this encompasses.”

Thenjiwe Mswane on the genesis of All Gomorrahs Are The Same

Depending on where and what context I am in, the answer to what the book is about has evolved over time. All Gomorrahs Are The Same is one of the few works of fiction in SA that centres on queer people in the township. The book portrays how, and what it often means, to navigate life, particular sexually, making sense of one’s own double consciousness, mental health, depression, impostor syndrome, and all these other layers of what it can be to be human.

‘Gomorrah’ in this book is used metaphorically. It approaches the experiences with a more communal lens, rather than that of only the main protagonists. There are no new Jerusalems, just the same old Gomorrahs like Alex,  Diepsloot or Imbali. In my debut novel, I make an attempt to start a conversation that demystifies the problematic capitalist narrative that often poses queerness as something that only exists in urban contexts.

Extract

Yes, they know. You lived, breathed and existed before they existed. Of course, as they grow older, they come to understand the cycle of life. Birth-School-Work-Pension-Death. All of them, eventually they understand. That it is the same for the ones before, as it is for them, as it will be for the ones who will come after.

You sit and watch as a few try to break away, but there is always another system awaiting them. Different systems. Different lessons. Different pains. Different traumas. All living is traumatic. From the start. No-one asks you if you want to be here. How you want to be here. No-one asks you how the rest if it should go for you. It’s just this path before you. With little option to deviate. Unless you have extraordinary talent supported by severe ambition, and then maybe you can try it eGoli. Even then, it is work. But maybe eGoli you can do nicer work, which also comes with its nicer problems. All living is work, for yourself and others. No living is isolated.

You are here, doing what you need to do. Some of us do it better than others.

I have listened to boys in the back of vans, in holding cells, in court corridors, inside courts. I have heard girls, too. In life-threatening situations in trucks and cars near the N3, on the way to Harrismith or Durban, the ones we pick up in taverns, somewhere between a fight and being beaten. Often they are outnumbered by the men, who want them there to project onto them all their insecurities. One mistake is a goal for the men; they gang up on the woman, sometimes physically. Best is if we arrive before it has escalated there. ‘It is her fault’, they say in unison. Many of the taverns are run by women, it is in their eyes where I often see the truth. But men are their customers. Their livelihoods. They are not completely safe either. Shebeen queens get abused, regularly. When the men who came pretending to have money eventually don’t have the money to pay. Or, if you’re really unlucky, the wives of these men start calling you names. There have been ‘witch hunts over the simple accusation of a shebeen queen being isifebe, then a witch. The men do not protect her. They do not care. There will be another shebeen soon, if there aren’t a few options already.

We hear the stories. The pains. They are everywhere.

Eventually they, too, learn. The ones who come after you.