Category: fiction

I miss 2016. It brought a lot into my life. I had a blast. I became a mother. And, after a very long time, my fiction appeared in print. Go out and get a copy of the ‘Rising Stars’ edition of New Contrast (see details on their website). Here’s a little teaser from my short story, ‘A Change of Name’:

I understand that it’s hard to appreciate downtown Pretoria. Hair salons, moneylenders and government offices are all that remain after the flight to suburbia. Officially, the city has been renamed Tshwane, but almost everyone still calls it by its old name. But for me, Sunnyside is a lot like my old haunts in Johannesburg in the late nineties when I was a student at Wits University. In those days, my hair got its loving from a famous salon in Yeoville. I also liked to visit a wicked locktician in Hillbrow. I would hop off a taxi at Noord; navigate through the overflowing streets, before turning into a long-forgotten building where the master of dreadlocks reigned. Esselen is practically suburban in comparison to my parts of Joburg. But not to Mama Jane, who spends her days in the Eastern suburbs of Pretoria.

Mama Jane. How I came to call her that is a long story. At first, she wanted me to call her Jane. But I wanted her to acknowledge me as a daughter-in-law. I wanted the world to know it too. And where I come from, you just don’t call your mother-in-law, Jane.