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Thank You, Dear Reader.

I spent this past Saturday morning at the Johannesburg Family Gathering, a monthly event organised by Ashley Whitfield at the Museum Africa that centres on children and families. (The details are on the poster and I encourage everyone to get their babies involved in cultural activities outside of school.) This time, we got together for story time with Mpumi’s Magic Beads.

One of the best parts about what I do is engaging with little readers and their parents. I am so grateful each time a child let’s me know that they have hair like Mpumi or when parents share what this story means for their families. I’ve had a mom tell me that the book is her son’s favourite nightly read and that something about the rhyming in the book and reading it aloud together has also helped with his speech issues. I’ve had a kiddies hair salon owner reach out because there’s a little girl who came in with my book and requested the style on the cover. I’ve had mom’s send me videos of their children reading. Each time this happens, my heart absolutely beams to know that this book is doing what I hoped it would do in the world. Little children love this story just as I loved so many stories when I was a child. Beyond that, little children feel at home in this story, and isn’t that just the best thing?

I’m always in awe when I see children who are super confident with asserting themselves with adults and peers, alike. I always make a mental note that I would love to be the kind of parent who nurtures that in a child. I think it’s quite a remarkable thing to see a child who owns their space and articulates themselves boldly. The portrait above was drawn by one such a special little girl. While I was “performing” the story, she was reading along loudly with me and afterwards everyone drew some self portraits and she came over to give me hers. I was so touched by her gift, I’m going to be framing it soon.

The part that will always stay with me is how her mother shared with me that ever since she got the book, she draws herself with this hairstyle. We also spoke about how she will be challenging the school’s hair policy using the book as an illustration of the kind of cultural awareness that the school should be seeking to foster in how they move forward in creating an inclusive environment for all their learners. Considering that this book is partly inspired by my own academic work in the sleight of hand employed by schools: using neutral language in hair codes of conduct yet clearly being discriminatory in implementation – I am really all for parents furthering that conversation, especially at a young age so less children have to suffer the trauma of being vilified by the school system for the way they look.

So, the portrait here, by a very special girl is a reminder of all the people who continue to give this dream wings. I have always wanted to do my part to make it just a little better for children in this world and I’m so grateful that this work, by Masego and I, is adding a little sprinkle of magic, confidence and self-love in your lives. You keep my heart full.

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Thank you to all the parents and guardians who reach out in person and online to share with me how the story continues to move in your lives, beyond the book.

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SA Library Week with ‘Help 2 Read’

It is SA Library Week (19 – 23 March 2018) and I have been doing my part by reading Mpumi’s Magic Beads to primary school learners. As you know, my book is about some girls who are also school pupils and I hope that my audiences this week will be able to relate to that special detail.

I started the morning at Kgololo Academy in Alexandra where I read for two Grade 2 groups. What a special little school. Some of the kids were really into the story so, they would mimic my gestures (which I loved because they’re all so adorable!) so I incorporated it into how I tell the story from now on. Thank you, learners!

As part of the ‘Help 2 Read’ organisation’s reading tour, I visited Iphuteng Primary School in Alexandra. I had so much fun with this vibrant group of learners. My bit of improvisation from earlier worked really well because I don’t believe in making children sit dead still while listening to a story. Let them wiggle and giggle and listen with their bodies too. It makes learning memorable, I think. I certainly believe that this was memorable. They had a lot of energy and I had the best time with them.

Next stop. Diepsloot Primary School!

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Thank you, Kgololo Academy, Help 2 Read, Iphuteng Primary School.

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The Reading Club presents Mpumi’s Magic Beads

The Reading Club meets regularly on Saturday mornings at African Flavour Books in Braamfontein. The sessions are interactive and the children are encouraged to engage their imaginations (and confidence) to also stand at the front and make up stories for their peers. I think this is a great way to spend the morning with your little ones.

Thank you to Lorraine Sithole of The Reading Club for hosting Mpumi’s Magic Beads. Thank you to all the grown ups and little ones in attendance. This dream gets to have wings because of you and I appreciate you all for being there yesterday.

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Thank you for your support!

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Here’s to believing in the beauty of my dreams.

Photographed by Hagen Engler.

I chose this life.

This is what I remind myself of everytime I step out. It is why I will always give my best. It is why I will always think of how to do it in a way that has never been done before. It is why I will always just try my damndest.

The reading for Mpumi’s Magic Beads at Sandton Library was full to capacity! I arrived and immediately had to get into media interviews: one for the Chinese Global Network and one for Vuzu. I think that it is really cool because it’s a big deal and I didn’t know that Vuzu, specifically, cover literary events. Right after that, the show began with a puppeteer who told a great story and had the children singing and laughing. She is amazing!

Then came the time for Mpumi’s Magic Beads. There’s a saying about innovation that I don’t recall right now but back in April, when I had to fulfill my pledge for the #Today campaign, I hadn’t yet published the book but I had made a commitment to read to children and I intended to honour it. So, I had to improvise. I used an easel and huge laminated posters of the story. Ever since that time, it’s my preferred method. It just makes sense to me because you want all the children to be able to see the pictures, follow the story and engage with it.

Photographed by Dr Sindi van Zyl.

It worked wonderfully. I memorised the words to the whole book because I just wanted to give my all to the audience; I didn’t want to be restricted by checking words and pages. Just as I was performing (because that’s what I do), a little boy screamed out: “But where are the words?!” A very valid question. Ordinarily, that would have thrown me off and I would have lost my place and been flustered. However, I took it in my stride and stopped to answer him and we all had a laugh about it and the story continued.

Photographed by Nothando Migogo.

I love that I got through the story without blanking out! I was confident. I was measured. I did justice to my work and efforts. You have no idea how exciting and thrilling it is to watch children’s imaginations working in real time, keeping pace with the narrative and having their faces light up in the moments where you hoped they would – and they did! They did!

Photographed by Masego Maponyane.

After the performance/reading, I had an interview with e TV and signed many, many books and took just as many pictures with beautiful, smiling children who looked just like the ones in my story. It made me feel so warm inside to become a part of their libraries and hopefully, some inspiring childhood memories, as my favourite books have always been for me.

Photographed by Nothando Migogo

A special moment was when I got to meet my illustrator for the first time ever – and she also had red magic beads in her hair! Masego Morulane and I worked on this entire Mpumi’s Magic Beads project, from March 2017 until January 2018 over email, text and very few phone calls. I was elated to see her, hug her and thank her in person for bringing my imagination to life with her gift. We both teared up.

Khumo from Ethnikids, Masego Morulane and me!

After everything, I went to have a celebratory lunch with my father, my little brothers Mpumi and Tshiamo, and my friends Jabu and Monti. So many more friends and good people from Twitter and Instagram also came through to show love at the event and I was so happy!

This is Mpumi, my little brother. All the characters are named after my siblings.

What a wonderful morning! Thank you Ethnkids for hosting me, giving my work a home and for the amazing role you play in supporting the work of African authors and ensuring that children’s imaginations are nurtured on Saturday mornings! Thank you to Khumo for reaching out early on in my publishing journey and always being so lovely.

I chose this dress because it has parrots and monkeys on it. Serving Miss Frizzle greatness!

I am so, so proud of myself. This, right here, is self-love. All of it. It requires hard work. It requires discipline and I don’t always get it right but I do try my damndest. I also suspect that I am really good with children and I like myself a little bit more for it.

In the evening, I went to The Orbit with my friends Xolisa and Khaya. While I sat there eating, a woman came up to me and told me that her sister-in-law had taken her daughter to the reading and she showed me her phone: there I was with her daughter, smiling and holding a freshly signed copy of Mpumi’s Magic Beads! I may or may not have cried a little into my food at that point. Today was just so beautiful. Is this my life, really?

Photographed by Masego Maponyane.

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Thank you you each and every child and parent/guardian in the room for buying Mpumi’s Magic Beads and giving my dream wings!

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Fill Up Sandton Library!

On Saturday, 27 January 2018, I will be hosted by Ethnikids at the Sandton Library in Johannesburg at 10.00.

I am so excited and nervous for what promises to be a special morning of storytelling, book buying and book signing too. I’m looking forward to meeting you and your little ones!

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A reflection on poetry and me. 

Photographed by Qhakaza Mthembu

I didn’t know that so many poetry lovers would find their way to us. With it being the 5th of January, I expected the city to still be in holiday, ghost-mode for at least another week and yet, we had a full house. We held the BornFree poetry reading last Friday evening at African Flavour Books in Braamfontein with the organiser, Belinda Zhawi, Katleho Kano Shoro and I on the line-up. We first performed together at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in May so it was really special to have another gathering in our home country and to watch how beautifully Shoro incorporated her nieces into her set. 

This was my first reading in the country in a long while. I’ve been immensely busy with my other projects and I have wanted to just take a break from the spectacle of it all. I had become weary of being seen. Many of my poems are about sadness and romantic relationships gone horribly wrong. It had become harrowing to be on social media and have people tag me in quotes of their favourite lines because it could easily alter my mood negatively, because of the memories. I was trying to breathe through my life and just become well in my mind and heart and the biggest deterrent to that were my own words. Funny how that works. I had sat in that exact same spot a few weeks ago and had an interview in which I spoke about how I’m starting to be at odds with reading work that I wrote a few years ago, it’s themes and the effect it has on me to constantly reach back and reiterate the dark moments. At a time, this poetry saved my life. I just think my spirit is starting to move beyond, in this time. 

The audience was kind, attentive and affirming. We shared a few laughs and it was immensely enjoyable yet it was a somewhat difficult reading because the words hurt leaving my body. It was strange. I was seated throughout. I appreciated each moment and how the words would travel around the room, reaching people in particular places and yet I was visibly uncomfortable. I told the audience a few times how tiring it was because it felt like a space in which I could be honest in that way. I was fascinated by the physical exertion it took for those words to make it out of my mouth. I felt like my body, mind & spirit had fortified themselves in service of my wellbeing or, it was just a signal that ya boy should write new poems. Either way, I’m listening.

Photographed by Thandokuhle Mngqibisa.

The Q&A section was interesting. I’ll expand on the responses that I gave, here. The one question that was addressed to me was about my devices; how music is one of them, how lyrical my work is and whether I’ll ever use any other devices. My work reflects music because that’s what I use to survive this life. My poetry has always been a way for me to get over, primarily. I write because I need to; often no more and no less. Music is a device in my work because it is a device in my life. Will I ever find anything more powerful? I’m open to discover that. I also think that writing for children is a way of writing differently. In my world, all of my writing comes from the same place so the children’s book is the next frontier within the same vein of poetry. Lately I have been thinking on this great desire I have to be productive: to go beyond my work being a space of shared pain and healing, and to manifest other more joyous and celebratory ways of gathering. That’s exactly what Mpumi’s Magic Beads is. The entire project is my way of being more imaginative, daring and expansive than I have ever been. This is how I ascend.

Another question was about language and whether I do not feel “mentally colonised” by choosing to work in English. It’s a question that irritates me (I have been doing poetry Q&As for a long time, trust me) but I answer it any way.  Colonisation has done many, irreversible things to Africa including changing the dynamics around what credence particular languages are given in the public. I write, dream and work in English – this is a fact of my upbringing. This is a fact of my primary school that hired a white woman to teach us Sepedi and refused our corrections because she was raised on a farm with African workers. I speak my home languages easily but having the proficiency to write in a language to the extent of being a poet is another matter altogether. I’m not willing to short-change myself or my work with those deficiencies. Am I embarrassed in any way? Absolutely not. I’m proud of my work and my abilities. I am exactly where I am supposed to be, doing exactly what I need to be doing. 

Funny thing, after the reading, someone stopped me and spoke in a tone that heavily conveyed his disappointment at my lack of shame in not working in an indigenous language. The truth is, I don’t care. I don’t lose sleep at night. We all have our purpose and our paths. There are those who have an unyielding passion for preserving our languages through their work and just as they have their place in this vast creative landscape, so do I. I am very intentional about my work reflecting my reality. It’s necessary that I always remain authentic instead of being a parody of an essentialised version of other identities. There is no one way to be an African poet. There are many and this is mine.

I concluded by reading from Professor Keorapetse Kgositsile‘s This Way I Salute You, a book of poetic odes to creative peers such as Hugh Masekela, Nina Simone and John Coltrane. The great, intellectual left us on 3 January 2018. He was a bridge between the generations of creative thinkers in this country. He was always supportive while also remaining critical of bad work. He was an important force in Hip Hop, in the struggle for liberation and in South Africa as a whole. May our National Poet Laureate rest in paradise.

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Thank you, Belinda for your warm invitation to share stages with you.

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Slay 2017: The Year of Yes

 

It’s fitting to end this year with the same photograph I began it with.

Year in and year out I would look at the big, white sheet of A2 paper collecting dust on my shelf waiting to be made useful. I had bought it three years prior with the aim of making a vision board and had not found the time and discipline to craft one.  It’s only after I finished reading Shonda Rhimes’ Year of Yes at the end of 2016, a book that undoubtedly ignited a flame in me, that I took the opportunity to set some intentions for the year and to remind myself of them every day.

In the middle of my vision board, I placed SAY YES as a reminder to be open to opportunity, discipline and focus. In each other corner of the paper, I placed my four areas of intention: career, body love, personal space and travel. I also had other motivational phrases such as “success”, “inspiration is everywhere”, “claim your space” and “go for gold”.

The centre piece: me in the Cosmopolitan Magazine.

For career, I placed the words “write + publish” and it’s funny because I would roll my eyes or chuckle every time I looked it like: Girl, what even? What could you possibly publish? For body love, I placed “clear skin ahead”, “work out”, and a picture of a woman on a scale. For travel, I placed a picture of an aeroplane. How absolutely magical then to look back at this year in which I travelled to London for work, managed to clear my skin, reached my goal weight, started on an exercise routine that I actually look forward to (skipping!) and self-published a beautiful storybook for children called Mpumi’s Magic Beads! 

A birthday babe at her goal weight.

The book has honestly been one of my favourite blessings this year. I’m so happy that I was in such a great, healthy state of mind that when I approached some publishers and got rejected, it didn’t hinder me in any way because this lovely story was going to exist. So, I immediately said to myself: “I have always had creative and editorial control of every bit of work I have put into the world, so why should this be any different?” With no real knowledge of what I was undertaking, I rolled up my sleeves, grabbed an empty notebook, made notes and Googled my way through months of every single detail of planning, writing and executing that was essential to establishing the Mpumis Magic Beads project and my own company, Thank You Books. I am proud to say that I own every bit of my work and that I am compensated as such. It wouldn’t have been the case had I reached a publishing deal and received some percentages for my project so, it all worked out for the best!

This project was made possible by a community of talented individuals whose love, dedication and hard work ensured that the book looks, feels and reads as beautifully as it does.

A big, big thank you to:

  • Kay Bapela & the Book of Swag team – for the call to participate in the #Today campaign.
  • Masego Morulane- for the gorgeous illustrations and book design. I’m still so impressed at our synergy and we haven’t even met yet!
  • Nokulinda Mkhize – for being mom goals with the refreshments setup back in April, for all your advice and belief through this journey and to the Sibling Trio of My Heart for being my audience.
  • Alexandra Flusk & Montwedi Mosala for being my best friends and always being there for me when I need you.
  • Mama – for the startup capital for Thank You Books, for your love and nurturing my gifts with a fiery dedication over the years.
  • Sibusiso Mkhwanazi – for the Thank You Books logo.
  • Dane Bowman – for your expertise and friendly disposition in helping me navigate self-publishing.
  • Cindy-Lee van Wyk – for being a great editor.
  • Masego Maponyane – for believing in me and helping me to see its possibility very early in the game.
  • You – for your support, positive energy, likes, retweets, affirmations and for buying my book.

There are still some things that I would have loved to achieve this year that I have not yet (hello, Masters thesis and secret thing) but I am excited about how I am responding to these as only slight changes of direction. I actually feel really good about my unfinished thesis and about my disappointments this year because all of them prepared me for the glory that was 2017. They are also just more opportunities for me to make myself proud and to prove to myself, once more, that I am always possible. 

I’m currently on holiday in Coffee Bay and I’m so excited to get back home: start the year, make my vision board, buy myself a new year planner and to work daily to make all of my dreams real, again.

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Thank you for reading my blog. Happy New Year to you and an amazing, purposeful 2018!

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Mpumi’s Magic Beads EWN interview 

This morning, I sat down with the Eye Witness News (EWN) team at African Flavour Books in Braamfontein to discuss creativity, literature and Mpumi’s Magic Beads. 


As I walked into the store for the interview, there was a woman, with the coolest bag, standing at the till while holding a copy of my book. I later signed it for her. That really made my day! 

You can watch the interview here.