Cheeky Natives podcast challenges the myth that black people don't read

Books are a portal to worlds we may never physically occupy but which are nonetheless within our reach through the sheer power of imagination. We can reimagine not only who we are, but also what we can be. This is at the centre of Alma-Nalisha Cele and Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane's vision for Cheeky Natives.

The literary podcast was founded four years ago with the aim of fostering engagement with black African literature in particular, "reimagining the literary existence of black people", as Cele puts it.

She adds that Cheeky Natives is about "what it means to have literature centred around you rather than when you are written about as this outside force, where even your mundane, everyday existence is treated like an anthropological study that requires examination and patholigising".

This is within the context of a stubborn perception that black people don't read. With almost 10,000 and 5,000 followers on Twitter and Instagram respectively, Cheeky Natives — and platforms like it — has been working to challenge the narrative around black people and literature.

PLATFORM PIONEERS

"One of the main reasons we started the podcast is because we felt black people may not be reading because they don't see themselves reflected in books," Mokgoroane says.

"We've seen that a lot with the people we engage with who say: 'Oh my God, I didn't know about this author. Let me read their work.' The book industry has not really reflected black people's realities and as a result, I think black people were not reading because they were not seeing themselves and their reality reflected in books."

Since inception, Cheeky Natives has addressed this by creating a platform for deeper engagement with African authors, introducing them to their followers and opening up the space for critical discussion of literature beyond race.

The historic lack of such platforms recently came into focus after Joanne Joseph and Eusebius McKaiser, hosts of the Exclusive Books-sponsored podcast Cover to Cover, failed to acknowledge work done by the likes of Cheeky Natives and Abantu.

In the first episode of their show, the two noted former 702 Talk Radio presenter Jenny Crwys-Williams's work promoting literature in SA, but caught smoke on social media for failing to highlight similar efforts by others.

"We've seen the work of book clubs in this country. We've seen the work of Abantu Book Festival. Even before Cheeky Natives, there have been other platforms for critical engagement on literature," says Cele. "For me it speaks to how the work of certain people
is magnified by access. There's backing in a way that people who came before may not have had."

She adds that there seems to be an obsession with "firsts", which results in erasure. "It distracts from the work that black readers in this country have been doing through Abantu and the Literary Alliance, among others. I'm thinking of things like the Book Stokvel that Sarah [Mokwebo] started to address the prohibitive cost of books. The work is being done."

"Why are we even having conversations about who is the first?" asks Mokgoroane. "Why can't we just leave it at: 'We're creating this thing, let's engage'? It really delegitimises the work that's already been done."

It also lends credence to the perception that South Africans, and black people in particular, are not interested in books.

"We need to assess the lens we use to look at black people's reading habits and consumption," Cele says, adding that through the rise of independent book clubs and literary festivals like Abantu, black people — particularly black women — are increasingly driving the culture of reading.

CHANGING LANDSCAPE

Mokgoroane says the landscape is changing: "A lot of buying power probably still rests with white middle-class women but there are a lot of young black people investing their time and money into reading. I think the industry is, in many ways, responding to that. Even though it's not substantial, there are more black writers being published than ever before, but it's still exclusionary in the sense that certain stories that titillate a white gaze will be taken up by big publishing houses and those that don't simply won't be."

Cele names self-published author Dudu Busani-Dube's Hlomu series as a case in point. "It's done so brilliantly. Would a traditional publishing house have published that series? If they wouldn't then we need to examine who decides on what gets published and how they arrive at those decisions."

This probably unconscious bias on the part of publishers and other industry stakeholders has a massive influence on the prevailing literary culture. From the perception that works published by major book publishers are inherently better than those from smaller publishers, to the selection of judges on literary awards panels, a lot of structural transformation is required.

Says Cele: "If you think about the chronic underfunding of public libraries, you think about the excessive price tags on books, you think about the selection of books in the school curriculum - that is the first interaction with books many children have. For most of us, the first time that you get to interact with a black author is at university. Even then, you've probably had to go out of your way to do so."

She says even literary events are rendered an exclusive purview of the privileged simply because of how they are scheduled. "If you are hosting an event on a Friday night at 7pm when the majority of people can't access public transport, or it's on a Tuesday afternoon at 2pm when people are at work, then of course it becomes exclusive."

Working outside of mainstream structures and without any sponsorship, Cele and Mokgoroane have sought to, at the very least, provide a space for nuance, open for black people to reimagine their literary existence beyond race. They see Cheeky Natives becoming a physical space for the sale of books, art exhibitions and staging poetry readings while still being a space for critical literary engagement. Already, through their Cheeky Merchants online store, the duo has extended their operation.