SHORT STORIES/AWARDS

FISSURES OF MEN is the sequel to THE GEOGRAPHY OF KITCHEN TABLES and follows Cebo’s journey after he is awarded a year's scholarship to Cal State Channel Islands. He moves from a South Africa that is still in turbulent recovery from apartheid, to a post-election turbulent America dealing with political and social issues that have exacerbated cultural and racial divisions.

EXCERPT

It starts...

…on a plane.

That is not true because it starts in Johannesburg in a small, dark, sweaty room. Me, just as sweaty because I am standing in front of the sangoma. Without turning my head: smoke and strings of seed pods, beads, bones and long twisted strands of things that were once human. It is not wise to look closely in the sangoma’s house.

She sits in a green velvet armchair, her glasses strung around her neck on a strand of orange wool, a Glamor magazine close to her face. She holds out a palm. I move forward and hand over the MP3 player for her indlamu prayers and the Megadeth songs that she says help to clear her head.

TRIP WIRES travels around the world, with stories, many in children's voices, set against turbulent socio-political backdrops from Afghanistan to Syria to Columbia to America. The terrain is different in each story, but all of these young people face the dilemma of being without resources even as they try to find and maintain relationships.

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Featured in Snowflakes Arise here.

Interview with Cassidy McCants, Nimrod International Journal here.

Interview with San Diego Writers Ink here.

Reading at E.P. Foster Library 5/30/2019 here.

Excerpt from "Against the Stranger":

6am

--You Pathan.

Heartstop and careful finger off the trigger. I didn’t hear him. What’s wrong with me?

Skinny boy, yellow pants dragging in the dirt, head tilted far back to stare down his nose.

It’s one of those quiet deployments on the Afghanistan border. We’re on the outskirts of the outskirts. If we were any further on the outskirts we’d be pants.

One of those bombed-out towns just like you see in movies, except this one has three-leg goats that hobble and chew through the trash, and fat-tailed sheep with deep red furrows ploughed through their fleeces. Some of the little kids say nothing. Some of them shake. A lot of them shake. Their hands, their heads. One kid’s knee shakes like it’s a small flag.

A boy crawls through a tunnel in the Gaza Strip to bring back supplies to his family and neighbors despite the high risk of the tunnel being flooded, gassed, or bombed. On the eve of the Arab Spring in Libya, a girl and her best friend disguise themselves as boys to train for a school sports competition, knowing that if they’re caught they will be severely punished. Four young girls, three of them pregnant, decide to escape their abusive husbands and attempt to cross from Morocco to Spain.

Set against these turbulent backdrops, the children’s voices, apolitical, remind the reader of the distilled best of human relationships. With no resources and armed with only loyalty, guts, and tenacity, they risk their lives for their friends.

Jan, Afrikaaner, and Motsumi, Sotho, marry in the heady post-apartheid days of Nelson Mandela's presidency. Despite their parents' objections, Jan and Motsumi settle into their life and have 2 kids, believing in a glowing, post-racial future. When Jan's promotion gives them the chance to move to a better neighborhood, they face considerable racial slurs and threats. A street gang attacks their nine-year-old daughter, Liseli, and the family begins to unravel. This story examines the roots of where we come from, and the astonishing strength, and capacity for love and forgiveness that children have.

EXCERPT

I stepped over the leaking plastic bag, and wrenched the gate open. A short, bald, red-faced man, startled eyes, dry old mouth open, skittering backwards in his tackies. I reached back, grabbed the bag by the knot and turned back to see him disappearing down the alleyway by our house that lead to the backfield. I ran after him as he tried to sprint, his fake Nikes turned out, his old bowed legs struggling, waving both hands like he was trying to stop a bus. Finally he stopped and turned around, gasping, sweating,

--Go away—

I took two more strides and launched the stinking bag. Gaping astonishment as it split and splattered over shoes, pants, shirt.

--You—you fokken bitch—

--I have returned what is yours. Literally masimbakho. Your shit.

Arjun Kulkani brings his family to North West London, England, after Indian Independence. While he struggles to fit in, his family adapt almost seamlessly. When he is diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, he suffers a further loss of identity. Even as his body fails, Arjun gains more understanding of his youthful impatience, his careless cruelty to his family, and how to love even those he doesn’t like.

EXCERPT

Sometimes Sunila goes to stand at the bottom of the garden pretending to tidy up the compost heap, and allows the forbidden thought to come: divorce. She can only whisper it. It’s a bad word. Bad people do it. But in the Women’s Own magazine at the doctor’s office, she read that Elizabeth Taylor had done it. She’d done it so many times that it was just part of her normal routine. Get up, put on face cream, divorce Richard. How daring it sounds, so chic.

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