Online Reporter
Beaven Tapureta-Book Review
The notable rise of new poetry and fiction dealing with mental health in Zimbabwe in the past two or three years clearly indicates the matter now needs urgent action before it quietly and completely destroys individuals, families and communities.
Wizzy Mangoma, author of the novel “Sing for The Falling Leaves” (2024) published by Wing Up Publishing traces the process of a depressed youth’s healing.
Mangoma revealed in an interview that everywhere people are not being open with their inner pain, especially when death takes away those with whom they had a deeper bond.
The grieved young ones, sometimes left in uncaring homes, become unnaturally introverted. It is not death alone that leaves pain in its wake, but also certain circumstances in life as her book shows.
“I wrote the book because I believe many people are going through something. Some have no one to talk to about what is going on in their lives,” she said.
“This is a way to let the world know that mental health exists, and it affects anyone regardless of gender, status, religion or ethnicity. The story is a remedy.”
Her book is a vital contribution to the clamour for a special kind of attentive love that heals those in the grip of loneliness, depression, suicidal ideation, and various other disorders related to mental health.
Other previous books echoing the same theme include Kudzai Maa’s “2 Skins” (2024), a fictionalised personal account of how he struggled, yet coped with depression and thoughts of suicide, Felix Manyimbiri’s children’s story “Will You Tell?” (2023, Essential Books), and a poetry anthology “Not Forgotten: Remembered with Love” (2023).
While the blame for most mental health problems is commonly, and sometimes wrongly laid upon drug and substance abuse, the books mentioned above show that the death of a loved one can also seriously affect both children and adults.
Nobody can avoid death, but when it strikes, the grief could be too hard to handle for some family members.
The writers, therefore, have taken up the responsibility of writing about its psychological aftermath in different settings.
In “2 Skins”, Maa fictionalises his personal experience with mental health, interspersing psychology-based research with anecdotes about what he went through after losing two loved ones to suicide.
The book, according to him, talks about suicide in his family, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and effects of child pornography to which he was exposed as a child, among other things.
“I lost my grandfather and brother to suicide. For a period, I had my own suicidal thoughts and self-harming behaviours,” Maa said.
Although he got help, he felt encouraged to know more about mental suffering, and his research resulted in the writing of “2 Skins” to help others going through the same trauma.
In his book, the narrator is thrown into an emotional storm just as the tale begins — a brother commits suicide at their grandmother’s funeral. Such mysterious double grief leaves him severely heartbroken.
The contagion of suicide haunts him. All other devils that had been hiding in his life come out against him but as the reader can tell, he survives.
Caught in the same pain as the narrator in “2 Skins”, we see 24-year-old Chasi in the novel “Sing for The Falling Leaves” and the 10-year-old Nankoma in “Will You Tell?” yearning for lost love, struggling to comprehend their own lives, and later being rescued by the few discerning people around them.
In fact, by introducing this new dimension of love in mental health stories, the authors inspire readers to seriously consider why it matters to ‘love thy neighbour as you love yourself’.
In “Sing for The Falling Leaves”, young Chasi is confused when her mother, a mbira music superstar, dies in a car accident. The same accident claims Aunt Rue’s husband.
His loving father who is not actually his father disappears before the funeral ends.
The family arranges that Chasi and Aunt Rue stay together in a different town.
The new town has its own biases and some likeable characters waiting for them.
Mangoma delves into this maze with a simple yet soul-touching language, dredging up the true colours of each character.
Chasi begins to daydream during lectures, has hallucinations, constantly dreams about his mother, still hopes his father, who is not actually his father, will one day come back to him.
Unlike in Manyimbiri’s “Will You Tell?” in which the primary schoolgirl, Nankoma lives in a den of abuse and meets more of it at school, Chasi, in “Sing for the Falling Leaves”, is fortunate to have a lecturer, Miss Yaya, and a dean, Mr Taku, who can pick out the agony he is trying to suppress.
The responsibility of the home and the school to comfort young individuals is examined in these two different tales.
The tales are like two rivers flowing in different directions and only later, at a certain stage, they meet to become one happy salute of love, which the authors invoke in the reader so well.
Yet, before the reader gets closer to the end when the recovered Chasi fills the house with laughter and celebration, or before Nankoma finds a new environment in which she feels accepted, these characters have to face multifarious trouble that stings their lives and tests their resilience.
Manyimbiri, a teacher by profession, bitterly condemns institutions, such as homes and schools, which have failed to protect the children. In an interview, he said children are suffering in silence because there is nowhere to go.
“The little, voiceless, innocent ones suffer in silence, with nowhere to run to and no shoulder to cry on,” he said.
“In their eyes, the world is painful, since they know nothing else. In my book, I try to expose and share these atrocities, which, sadly, appear now new to some sections, taking them as none of their business.
“They opt to look the other way. At times, for the sake of preserving marriages and other relationships, such children drown in their misery, while abuses are swept under the rug.”
In his book, Manyimbiri presents the tormented girl child Nankoma in such a way that when other children read the story, they will like Onayi, a classmate, who has loving-kindness.
They will have great loathing for Mbuya Queen, the abusive woman at home, and uncaring Madam Sango at school.
Mbuya Queen beats Nankoma, and sometimes she doesn’t allow her to go to school, loading her with house chores. Madam Sango is too ignorant to look deeper into what could be affecting the young girl.
A strong-spirited Nankoma no longer feels the pain, like the persona in Dambudzo Marechera’s poem “Under Aesthetic”, who declares: “I no longer feel the pain/The house dresses on my wound”.
The title, “Will You Tell?” has a feeling of pleading for confidence, for trust, when you are about to reveal certain secrets of your life to someone.
Nankoma finds that trust in her newfound friend Onayi to whom she then opens up.
Poetry and music make “Sing for The Falling Leaves” more appealing to the soul. The healing power of the traditional musical instrument, mbira, is personified in memories of the late Chasi’s mother, aka Tara the Lioness.
Legacies are good but at times they torture.
When Tara dies, secrets about her life begin to emerge, leading Chasi to have hallucinations and depression.
However, they bounce off because she, like a prophetess, leaves behind a comforting truth and a wonderful material inheritance for her son.
Chasi also inherits the gift of music.
Though Mangoma’s “Sing for The Falling Leaves” (2024), set in Zimbabwe, is centred on Chasi, it also closely follows events in other families in the multicultural neighbourhood, exposing their different pains, reflecting their different perceptions about the true meaning of love and togetherness.
Mangoma once lived in Denmark and the United States of America before she came to settle back home.
Her understanding of how cultures can also ruin family love for those who need it most is clearly shown in her book.
Surely, parents need stories like these for themselves and their children if the future is to be bright for everyone.
For an immersive reading experience, visit Typocrafters Book Shop at Herald House, corner George Silundika Avenue and Sam Nujoma Street in Harare. Contact: Mercy—0771537929, Rose—0776131480, or Leon—0733100191.
