admin
Beaven Tapureta Bookshelf
Style counts in all kinds of writing and the young generation is gradually becoming aware of its importance. In fact, writers understand style as part of their distinctive code which they should observe in order to creatively get their message to their readers.
Charles Mungoshi Jr is a young, glamorous and well-travelled motivational writer with five books to his name. And having read all titles by him, there is a compelling desire to share a certain discovery about his outstanding style.
The young man’s gift of description offered sparsely in the books surely leaves you suspended and wanting to look somewhere for a poetry anthology or novel by him in which you could enjoy a huge independent gulp of his descriptive power. Yet there is none!
If Mungoshi Jr is not thinking of publishing some fiction or poetry, then he is surely stifling his own talent and letting some readers down. Reading all his five books was indeed interesting because one rude question kept looming up in the mind: why doesn’t he (also) write poetry or fiction?
Yes, apart from the truthful messages the author puts in his books, style shines more. Mungoshi Jr’s hand at describing character or scenes is powerful and glitters in some of his writings. In his 2016 book “Falls For The Top”, he creates a character and situation in each chapter and then directly counsels the character who would be an embodiment of a subject. A captivating paragraph in a chapter on ‘Convincing Confidence”, goes as follows, “The sun split the world apart with a scourging heat, melting and messing the make-up on her face. The hours spent on that bedroom mirror vanished in a few seconds of exposure to sunlight.” And soon after this, the author re-directs voice and starts counselling “her” (named Emily) whose source of confidence is the mirror, and not from a reliable source within her. Another whole chapter (Across The Forest) in the same book reads like a short story though the strains of “preaching” peep through. Mungoshi Jr captures “fear and courage” in the following paragraph: “The sun got tucked into the thick dark blanket of the night, and the music of the chilled evening dressed us in our jackets. I held the torch she held my hand — the shrubs of the forest slowing us down but not stopping us.”
It is the 2015 book “Madhiri eCash” which displays Mungoshi Jnr’s awareness that an author sometimes ought to stylise his language to move with the times of his/her target audience. In this book, today’s Shona slang and English language are mixed in order to capture the attention of the urban or ghetto youths. The slang he uses is exactly how the urban youths speak these days and Mungoshi Jr decided that communicating with them in their language would transform their lives.
“To have the attention of an individual you need to speak their language for you to teach them your language,” the author says in his introduction to the book. And the Shona slang in his book is both exciting and hard-hitting. For instance, in a chapter titled “Mafungiro Ndoakasiyana” in which he urges the youth to change their “short-sighted” mindset, he writes: “Chinokutsikirira ipfungwa dzako dzaka dhomoka blaz! Unoonera hupenyu padhuze hauna pfungwa dzino gamuchira huono hwekure!”
In the book “Snippets Of My Versatile Mind” (2014), he employs a thoughtful, poetical language. An opening passage of the fourteenth chapter which deals with the invisible power in each of us “to go further” shows that Mungoshi Jr could indeed be a poet.
“The world just shut me out of existence. It’s like I’m there but not there. The shocking effects of nature in motion — when I become deaf and dumb but sound and well. That time I am snatched from this life into another realm of life, but bound in my fleshly garment. That experience of separation, between body and soul. It’s not sleep, my eyes are wide open — it can’t be sleep.”
Online Reporter