Captive: New Short Fiction From Africa
Rachel Zadok & Helen Moffett, eds.
Paperback
ISBN: 9781946395948
Catalyst Press & Short Story Day Africa, April 2024, 453 pgs

Back in the May 2022 issue of Lightspeed, I reviewed a book called Disruption, which brought wonderful fiction by African authors to audiences in the US and beyond. Catalyst Press and Short Story Day Africa have done it again, offering readers another marvelous anthology, called Captive. This is literary fiction at its best, with over 400 pages stuffed with important themes, entertaining motifs, and heart-wrenching events. The book is separated into three sections: “Claustrophobia & Inescapable Obsessions,” “Metamorphosis, Cycles and Identity,” and “Self-Awareness, Illusion, Delusion and Deception.” Eleven remarkably gifted authors provide a story for each section, for total of forty-four incredible tales¹. I’ll highlight a few pieces as examples, but sometimes it’s hard to pick “stand-out” stories when so many of them are top tier.

Salma Yusuf opens the book with “If the Honey Is Sweet, Why Does the Bee Sting?” A young woman faces a conundrum when she and her husband realize that they are no longer happy in their marriage. One of the more imposing questions at hand is whether they should stay together for the sake of their daughter. The husband goes away for school and not long after announces that he plans to take a second wife, which throws the protagonist, Swafiya, into an existential crisis. She must face the possibility of a lifetime of misery, of continuing to serve as wife and mother, which is the tradition, and which is also what her relatives want her to do. Then . . . she encounters one of the seven daughters of the sea. Literary flair and stark honesty give this piece life, from the striking imagery at the outset to the startling revelations throughout, all leading up to Swafiya’s encounter with the fantastic. This is a masterful meditation on gender, sacrifice, identity, and happiness. The essential question of whether we should fulfill the roles the people around us want us to fulfill may be relatable to many, but the sharp sense of the protagonist’s specific situation comes through brilliantly.

“Vanishing” by Kabubu Mutua is completely engrossing, right from the start. The narrative feels like it’s constantly shifting, and in lesser hands, stylistically, this kind of structure or energy might throw a reader from a story—but Mutua’s hands are by no means lesser. The author pulls in gossip, the influence of family, emotions, religion, tradition, and so much more to build a tale that feels slightly hectic but also kind of magical to read. It all starts when Rabeka flees her wedding, which scandalizes the folks in town. But this is just the beginning, and even the nature of scandal is interrogated through Mutua’s sly storytelling. The piece is packed with nuance and subtext, which rewards a close reread. Among the broader thematic strokes, in my read, is the way that things are not always what they seem. Dig deeper, pay attention, and I believe you’ll find powerful themes on desire, gender, expectations, and even autonomy. I devoured this story and enjoyed it immensely.

Zanta Nkumane’s “Sometimes You Make Me Smile” is, simply put, extraordinary. It’s a brooding meditation on the dissatisfactions and pains of life, grounded in plausible characters and situations. Beautiful lines counterbalance the grimness, the almost noir vibe. Shifting perspectives and times give the author flexibility to build a story with both intrigue and feeling. The piece opens with a dead body and a detective but is more about human relationships, desire, and perhaps even inadvertent or unacknowledged self-destruction. The dead body at the outset can be seen as a symbol of the violence we enact on each other and ourselves.

“Good Things Come” by Josephine Sokan begins with an evocative and visual paragraph, enticing the reader with vivid writing, promising more to come. Sokan uses the senses to completely absorb the reader in the story. Sokan also paints an interesting character in quick strokes: an individual at odds with those around them, in ways that many will find somewhat relatable while also riveting; in this case, being at odds is perhaps more extreme than most. The storytelling feels like a stream of consciousness piece at first, but the shifts and pieces are compelling, glittering with observations, and there is still an underlying sense of a direction, all of which lures the reader to continue. Besides this, each piece is interesting on its own, each moment and thought worth contemplation. Before long, things start to take clearer shape, and Sokan leads you by the hand right into shock and heartbreak. One of the stronger themes that comes through for me is the way that people who think or behave a little differently from the so-called “norm” are (mis)treated and categorized, including attempts to “correct” rather than to understand or meet halfway. Well-intentioned parents are mixed into this idea, who would try to force hexagonal pegs into round holes; or perhaps pretend that their children are round in the same ways as all the other round children, rather than seeing and nurturing their specific kind of roundness. Sokan also makes clever use of irony, enabled by giving us a narrative from a different perspective, while simultaneously, in a more subtle way, examining the unbearable weight of expectations. Underscoring it all is a profound loneliness and a need for some kind of connection, for a sense of love, leading to sharp, penetrating tragedy.

Parents and children are central to many of the stories in this book, and not all the stories have some kind of speculative or fantastique element. “Section 47” by Sola Njoku begins with Wonu as a child being homeschooled by what many of us would consider an aggressive and perhaps even abusive mother (depending on how we were raised and our own cultural contexts). She is fixated on seeing specific results, which instills in Wonu a deep, life-long emotional hurt. As with so many entries in this book, Njoku’s writing is effective; evocative. The prose and the situation work together to create an immediately engaging narrative. Wonu as an adult, despite her past, delivers to her own child some measure of the anger and impatience she experienced, as he likewise struggles to learn at the pace she wants. But it’s also not as simple as that: Wonu has learned about the inequities of education for Black kids, especially for children of Nigerian immigrants, and feels she must push Mayowa, she must give him any possible advantage before he matriculates into a system designed to disadvantage him. This awareness is exacerbated by the treatment she received at the hands of hospital staff, just after Mayowa was born: rough-handed nurses who seemed to see her as a chore, medical personnel who acted as if she were ignorant and perhaps even unworthy. And this is just the beginning of what is, ultimately, an experiential examination of the panic and dread that can be a big part of the lives of parents of color who submit their kids to a predominantly white culture. The effect of the culture clash is exemplified by the fact that after he starts school, her son soon begins to pronounce his own name incorrectly, because it is the way teachers and “peers” pronounce it. Then, Njoku injects even more momentum into the story, drenching the reader in anxiety and tension. We see the struggles of a woman who is constantly looked down upon, the variety of unceasing racist interactions, and we feel, intimately, the ever-present threat and pressure of her life. And then, when you can barely breathe, when you think, can things get any worse: the white folks at Mayowa’s school start asking him if his mother hurts him. This story interrogates the ease with which many of us center our own perspectives and worldviews, assuming we own the “Truth;” readers may even end up reflecting on their responses to the beginnings of the story. Y’all . . .this is a heartbreaking, unrelenting, and powerful story, one which is too real in its horror.

If you are into thought-provoking, high-quality fiction, you will really enjoy Captive. Zadok and Moffett have gathered some seriously skilled, insightful authors. Those authors have poured unflinching and intense visions into these pages. The journeys awaiting you are profound.

¹. At the time of this writing (Dec 30, 2023) these are the numbers from the advanced copy I was given by the publisher. The publisher’s one-sheet (an informational page publishers send to certain parties) and the publisher site, however, lists twelve authors—one of these authors does not appear in my copy. It could be that the details of the final version are not yet resolved, which is not uncommon in publishing; it could also be that one of the authors dropped out, and that the site and one-sheet were not updated, which is, likewise, not uncommon in publishing.