By Prisca Sam-Duru
CAPE Town- based Penny Busetto is a writer known for her novel The Story of Anna P, as Told by Herself which won the European Union Literary Award 2013 and got to the finals of the Etisalat Prize for Literature 2015. Busetto’s struggle to reconcile with South Africa’s past is encapsulated in Anna P, a black woman living in Italy whose unconscious trauma dominates her actions. She tells us more on how her book investigates the nature of memory and the importance of identity, and much more. Excerpt. GIVE us a hint about your book? My book, The Story of Anna P as Told by Herself is in three parts essentially and its the past present and future of a woman who lived on an island in Italy.

She’s from South Africa but dosent talk about where she comes from, she doesn’t connect with people though she teaches English in a primary school. She is mystic. Is the book based on real life situations? No, its a fiction What are you trying to bring out here? Penny Busetto Its very much a South African story but its about trauma which is a very much South African reality. Its a reality, we’ve heard a lot of stories about trauma among black people in South Africa but there’s never been much investigation into what the whole situation has done to everyone in South Africa. Everyone is traumatised in this country and I think this is what am trying to get across, that people are traumatised in the long run. How it isolates or breaks up relationships in fragmental reality. As a writer would you say there’s a big difference between the Apartheid period and South Africa today? That’s a difficult question but I believe there’s a big difference. There’s been a massive change since 1990. We have a constitution, we have rights but there’s trauma which is why if we don’t deal with trauma we will keep repeating the same thing. People will keep murdering, keep doing terrible things and projecting it to other people. Xenophobia is a direct result of the trauma of South Africa. We will keep doing this until we spend time looking at who we are and what we really are. We are quite a terrible nation. We are quite a very brutal nation. The plot? The plot of the book developed very much from a book that I read about the truth and reconciliation commission about memories and identities. We are who and what we remember and if we don’t remember, unconsciously, we will again keep repeating whatever we remember. What inspired your writings? There were so many things that came to the fore here. Personal details, I think to some extent writers write autobiographically but I have never killed a man with an ash tray though, it is still a defining truth about my experience. It is not the actual story but in many ways an autobiographical story. Are you satisfied with the outcome of the book? I never knew what the outcome of the book would be until I finished it. Things I never expected to include in the story found their way in and became part of the plot. Its like a pack of cards falling into place and actually making sense at the end. I never knew where it was going to end. How do you feel about the attention the book has earned you? I think talking about attention, the book already has won a couple of awards and it has made me begin to explore myself as a writer. I had to accept that I am a writer. You know it is until you publish your first book that you are really a writer. I had to start looking at what it means to be a writer, a white writer in South Africa at a time when there is a lot of racial change in South Africa. Your role as a white South African writer, in building South Africa? When I was invited to Nigeria, my heart jumped. This is one of the most important events in my life because I saw that for the first time, while I’ve always had a rather dubious identity as an African I suddenly saw that I would be allowed in. I was beginning to find a little bit of that community I never had which is what I tried expressing in Anna P. Does the book add extra pressure on you? No, its been wonderful. Its such an extraordinary experience. It has helped me to grow so much. At this age, I’ve started doing a Doctorate. I’m trying to know how one could understand the cross diversities, working with white psychiatrists who worked with black patients in the 1930s and bringing in a whole lot of questions and so much critique around African literature.
No comments:
Post a Comment