Media and Sound Bites
So Oprah Winfrey’s producers have called you for an interview about your book. You wish!
It’s very easy because the media asks the same
questions over and over again. They are
not looking for intelligent answers.
They want what they call ‘sound bites.’
I wrote down these questions for a radio interview I had about my novel
Sweetness.
Q: Why Sweetness? Was that the best title you could come up
with?
A: Yes, for two reasons. One, it is set in a sugar estate that hugs
the Indian Ocean in a coastal province in South Africa. Two, it is about people being sweet on each
other today and sour in two months’ time.
That’s life.
Q: Why do Zaba and her husband Phillip live in identical glass houses joined by a bridge?
A: I blame too many movies
about families fighting over one bathroom.
Imagine never having to fight about the toilet seat being up or down
because you have three bathrooms for her and three for him? Zaba and Phillip also live separately because
most rich people have a choice. The
Queen has her rooms. Prince Phillip has
his own space. Mansions in South Africa
have HIS and HERS dressing rooms. Rich
people don’t fight over the television remote because there’s a TV room for
wrestling, cricket or basketball and another one for the news, cookery shows,
soaps, cartoons etc. Some homes even
have a TV set in the kitchen. It’s all
about space. I love you but we don’t
like the same things at the same time, so let’s live in two houses joined by a
bridge. Why not two apartments, 406 and
407?
Q: Why glass houses?
A: We criticize how our friends
and neighbours live but our lives are also a mess. Nobody is perfect. People who live in glass houses should not
throw stones.
Q: The character Zaba accepted
her husband’s daughter with another woman.
Is that realistic?
A: It is fiction.
Q: It can never happen in real
life.
A: It happened in the novel
Sweetness because Zaba is perpetually grateful that her husband’s mistress
Pinkie did not demand to be the second wife.
The tradition of more than one wife is immortalized in the South African
Constitution under culture. Zaba is thankful
because Phillip could have divorced her or taken Pinkie as a second wife.
Q: Why did the family lose all
those sugar cane fields?
A: There is a demand for town
houses and condominiums. South Africans
are attracted to Johannesburg and other cities because there are more
jobs. What also drives the demand for
housing is that black people can now live anywhere they want, provided they can
afford the rent or mortgage. They could
not under the separate development policy called apartheid. They were confined in townships and rural
areas.
Q: Why does Sweetness have such
a sad ending?
A: My mother introduced me to
movies and most of them had sad endings.
I miss that. I think it is a
reflection of life. We seldom get what
we want.
The author generated interview was conducted by Nonqaba waka Msimang
for her book Sweetness.
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