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Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, "The Creation of Half-Broken People" (House of Anansi, 2025)
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It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more at WhatsApp.com welcome to the new Books Network.
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Hello everyone and welcome to nbn. I am your host Paul A. Ghattory and I am absolutely overjoyed and excited to be joined today by Sapiwa Nandu, who is a Zimbabwean writer, scholar and filmmaker and who wrote one of my top gothic novels ever, ever ever. And this was so highly recommended to me by a friend of mine and I picked it up, I devoured it in the night. I still remember being really moody the next day because I was so tired and it was worth it. It's called the Creation of Half Broken People and it is an extraordinary tale of a nameless woman plagued by visions. She works for the Good foundation and its museum filled with artifacts from the family's exploits in Africa, the Good family members all being descendants of Captain John Good of King Solomon's Mind fame. Our heroine is happy with her association with the Good family until one day she comes across a group of protesters outside the museum. Instigating the group is an ancient woman who our heroine knows is not real. She knows too, that the secrets of her past have returned. After this encounter, the Nameless finds herself living first in an attic and then in a haunted castle, her life anything but normal as her own imagined intangible inheritance unfolds through the women who inhabit her Visions. With a knowing nod to classics of gothic genre, Sepia weaves threads of complex colonial history into the present through people half buried, broken by the stigmas of race and mental illness, all the while balancing the humanity of her characters against the cruelty of empire in a hypnotic, haunting account of love and magic. Welcome to the show, Satiwe.
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B
Thank you so much for having me. It's so wonderful to be here.
- [03:29]
A
Oh, it is so wonderful to have you here to talk about this marvelous book. And as I said to you before we recorded, started recording, and as I've said probably a thousand times on this podcast, but I don't care. People will start listening to me, is that I think women are uniquely positioned to write gothic, which is my slightly diplomatic way of saying women are the best writers of fiction. And this book is a brilliant example of that. So tell me, where did this novel start for you? There are so many beautiful and distinct voices that are weaved throughout the story, and I'm curious specifically about which one snagged you first.
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B
So the first voice that came to me was Elizabeth Chalmers. She is the, I think, the linchpin for most of what happens in the first half of the novel. So she is a woman of mixed race. And I remember I was in graduate school, and I was reading a lot of Southern African history, feminist Southern African history, and about women and movement and how women of color especially, couldn't necessarily move around as freely as they would have liked in what were seen as urban areas, because urban areas were very much male and white. And so I imagined this woman who would walk around and be labeled as maybe insane or maybe dangerous in some way, all because she was not. She did not have a man at her side. Because if you were moving around alone, away from male authority, that meant that there was something wrong with you. And a lot of women would be jailed, a lot of women would be institutionalized, a lot of women would be made to go back to their home. So there was definitely a way that the colonial governments of the time would sort of, like, criminalize a lot of women's movement and a lot of women's just mobility in many, many ways, social, physical. And so I was very interested in this character. And she came to me, like I said, like, 10, 15 years ago when I was in graduate school. And I just wanted to tell a story about her, obviously, that evolved as the years went on. But she was the first character to come to me. And what was also interesting for me, sort of encountering her as a character was that she was obviously being read as being mentally unsound. But I was never sure that she was mentally unsound. I just sort of like felt like she was being seen from the outside. But eyes that just did not understand what they were seeing.
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A
That is such a great explanation and such a great answer. And I am always captivated by books that position neurodivergent characters as reliable narrators or at least try to convince you they're reliable narrators. And when I try to convince you, I like books that don't scaffold neurodivergent perspectives with neurotypical framework where this is, you're going to get this person's life because they are as reliable as a narrator of their life as you're going to get. And we don't, we don't need these, we don't need this framework to make sense of them. You're going to meet them on their own terms. And that's one of the things that immediately I honed in on with this collection and one of the things I absolutely loved about it. So my next question for you is because we have this really gorgeous chorus of voices, I'm wondering what some of the challenges were that you faced creating a poly vocal story. Because to be clear, I've only written one novel in my life and it is narrated entirely by a sock puppet. So I did not have to deal with anything. And when I was looking at all these voices, I was like, this is so face meltingly intricate to me. And I was just blown away by how well you handle it.
- [07:48]
B
Thank you. So for me, I think so the creation of Half Broken People is my fourth novel and I always write from multiple perspectives because for me that makes sense. I don't necessarily as a woman, as a Global south woman, as a whole host of things, I'm very suspicious of a narrative that just focalizes one voice. That's not how I experience the world. So it doesn't make sense to me to then replicate the world in the books that I write through one voice. Especially since usually in my experience of novels that one voice has usually been not my voice, to put it in a very delicate way. It's not been black and female for the most part of my reading life. And so I really wanted, I always want to have many different ways of seeing and experiencing things with the creation of havebroken People. I think, like I said, Elizabeth was the first person to appear to me and first character to appear to me. And I honestly thought for a while it was just her story. This was many years ago and as I started writing, it became very clear that her story was just part of a much bigger story. And I wanted to tell the story of several generations of women who have had to live and, like, understand themselves within a context that really isn't theirs. Right. And so from colonialism to capitalism to patriarchy, like the. The collusion of those things on their lives and how they, in different moments in history, sort of like, negotiate. The terrain is. It's not the same. And so I felt like, in order to understand, sort of like when our protagonist, the unnamed woman, starts in sort of like the modern, very 20, 20 something era, she is reacting to things because of the time that she's living in. But women have come before her who've also had to exist with, you know, in the world created by the collusion of these particular forms of power. And how do. How do they negotiate their way through it was fascinating to me, and it was fascinating to me to also understand that it wouldn't be the same ways of, like, negotiating their way through it wouldn't be the same experiences. And because of differences in race and maybe class, that would create other layers of different kinds of experiences in addition to historical and geographical moments and places, these forces.
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A
This collusion feels so perfectly insidious to me throughout the book. And it's just kind of there. It's a plague. And one of the things that I really enjoyed is how you address the themes of madness and mental illness in particular. Now I am one of those people who lives with various co. Morbid. Morbid mental illnesses. And I really embrace the term madness and mad. Other people I know don't. And that. That's fine. I'm really fine with us using whatever language we're capable with, like, or we find comfortable to apply to ourselves. But one of the quotes for. In. In the story, one of the, One of the sections talks about the yellow wallpaper. And I literally yelled when I. When I read that, because I was. I was delighted to see this because I thought of this story and when. When I was reading your book. But it was, if you don't know the yellow wallpaper story, it's not like it's. You don't need to know the yellow wallpaper story. But if you know the yellow wallpaper story, it's this. It's this added depth. And the yellow wallpaper was being described in the Elizabeth story. And I was wondering, what considerations did you give your representation of mental illness as it intersects with colonialism?
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B
Yeah. So for me, you know, so the entire novel is Very much intertextual with other novels or short stories that are really about women who have been written. And I will use the word mad because I think, you know, the. The trope has been the mad women in the attic or the mad women here or the. So these women who are either driven to have a nervous breakdown or are already in themselves challenging a system or whatever. So I wanted to have that kind of conversation throughout the novel with those kinds of people who came before. And I remember when I first read the Yellow Wallpaper, it was very much. It was an undergrad. And I think for the first time in my life, I actually had a word or I understood the experience that I had felt of having been born, you know, and grown up and raised a certain way in a. In a very patriarchal system. And that the fact that I didn't know that it was patriarchy didn't mean that it was not oppressive. Just because I didn't have the name for it didn't mean that I was suffering from it or suffering through it or suffering because of it. And I think the Yellow Wallpaper was just a very wonderful indication of this is what's happening. You know, it was just a very. For me, like a light bulb went off. It's a very seminal text for a lot of people. But I just liked being able to have these novels and stories that were part of my own understanding of that very, you know, violent and oppressive coming together of these things that bell hooks wrote a lot about, which is capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism and empire and how this works on the mind, how this works on the body. And what I'm doing in the novel is sort of like being in conversation throughout with the text that I thought really helped sort of like illuminate these things for me on my journey to understanding that these were the things that were working in my own life in very particular ways and that I had to be aware of, but that these things, these forces had always been there. And that primarily these forces can be extremely violent. And usually because they form such. Such a large part of our lives. And for. For most of us when we're growing up, we don't actually have the words for them. And so the text that I'm in conversation with in the. In the novel, including the Yellow Wallpaper, Beloved by Toni Morrison and other novels, are really my. The way I came to have the language to understand these kinds of oppression and how they work on women's minds and bodies. So it was really sort of like my thank you to this sort of like these other people who had come before me and written about this stuff and really allowed me to have the language to understand what was going on in the world.
- [15:44]
A
I remember in just the first few pages of the book, I kept on thinking about why Sargasso see, and then, and then it is, you know, directly quoted. And I was like, oh, okay. Like I said, Gothic literature is my jam. Gothic literature, my women is my peanut butter and jelly. Like it's, I'm so into it. But what I remember thinking, like when I first read Wide Sarcostacy, it was like it was life changing for me as someone who identified very much with Bertha, the mad woman in the attic and not so much ever with the light skinned, beautiful blonde hair, blue eyed. Like that was that, that was never me. Like I wasn't, that wasn't something I experienced. You know, my experience of life was why is your nose so big? Why do you have facial hair? It's like, well, this is what Middle Eastern women look. And like. So it was, it was definitely a different experience. I really identified with Bertha. But then when I, when I read White Sarah Gossip later in life, I read it first in my undergrad and I read it a little bit later in my early 30s. And just later compared to where I am now, I, I remember thinking to myself, okay, this doesn't push as far as I want it to push. And I thought, do you know, if you know what I mean? Like it's, it was, I'm sure, revolutionary for its time and I think it definitely did some cool things and it made me think differently about the world and it made me feel seen. But I didn't feel, maybe it's because of who authored the book, Gene Rise. I really didn't feel like it was like scratching the itch. I needed it to scratch, but I did find that itch scratched in your book. Even though of course I don't have the same lived experiences as your character or you, but sound like it was getting closer to what I needed expressed and was incapable of expressing myself. Does that make sense?
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B
Yes. And I think this is why sort of like the genealogy matters. So I think, you know, I had to read Jane Eyre for a level English and I remember, you know, the novel encourages you to obviously feel and empathize and all the things with Jane. Right. And Bertha is the thing that you're supposed to be afraid of, the thing that goes bump in the night. And I remember reading it like that because, you know, I was 17 and 18 and I had to write an exam and pass. But something was off. And I think it's reading white sagasses and reading Rebecca and just being like, oh, okay. You know, like, it's that, you know, like you kind of have to read them in conversation with each other, right? Because then you're like, oh, okay, so this is really what's wrong. Because I think one. One of them cannot contain all of it. Right. And so, and thank you for saying that my novel gets to that a little because I think that's what I was trying to do, which is why I was in conversation with so many of them, because I think it's the race, it's the class, it's the gender, obviously, it's all the things. It's the intersectionality of all those things. And I think now we can talk very easily about intersectionality and how it works and da, da, da. But I think if you're writing in the 60s, you may have an inkling, but you don't have the language yet again. And definitely, if you're writing and your Charlotte Bronte, I don't even think you begin to even understand that what you're creating is, you know, like this is, this is a mirror that you're supposed to be thinking critically through and not necessarily afraid of, or this is a mirror that shines a light on you that you're supposed to then reflect on, you know, like, you know, for me, Jane is wonderful, but it's also like an understandably missed opportunity. And I think other, other novels then try to find ways to sort of like bridge the gaps. But I think all those novels are written from particular positions because of the authors. And so like you're saying we only get some of the way, but not all of the way. And which is wonderful then because then becomes like a collective effort to get all of the way. You have to have different people coming into the conversation at different times to get all of the way.
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B
Yeah. So for me I think it, you know, it's very interesting to hear people respond. So the creation of half broken people has been out in southern Africa For a year now. And a lot of people of, you know, they're like, oh, you know, the beginning, you know, it's very traumatic. It's very uneasy. It's very. And I'm like, yeah, right. Because the person who's. Who's narrating the story has no idea who she is. She. You kind of meet her in a moment where she's having a breakdown, and so a nervous breakdown. And so, like, all the things that she is feeling, all the things that she is very unaware of, all those things are exactly what the novel is doing. And so, like, she is so divorced for, I think, reasons that the novel explains, as you read the novel, but she's so divorced from who she is. She's so divorced from knowing who she is. She's so divorced from her history. And for me, this was important to have her then be nameless, right? So she is that lost as a character. And I think, you know, Rebecca, obviously, Obviously, obviously was an inspiration there. And I remember, you know, thinking, oh, Rebecca, you know, when you. When you. Before you read the novel, you're like, oh, it must be about Rebecca, because it's called Rebecca. And then it turns out, no, Rebecca is the foil, the other person, you know, and then you're like, so who's the narrator? And then you realize you have no idea. And so wonderfully done, but also so wonderful a way to portray this character who is like an empty vessel, right? She is so willing to be molded, to be shaped, to be filled by what other people think and say and do. She doesn't know who she is. And it was such a great device. And I think, you know, it was one that I borrowed very readily because I feel like, you know, with some people, because of the violence of certain histories, you are divorced from certain parts of your history. Your own understanding of yourself, your own history, familial, cultural, you know, whatever it is. And you are walking around without a very deep sense of self. But also in the novel, you know, there's a very, very real reason why she doesn't have a name. And it's because, you know, a sort of, like a change happened. And her name was literally taken away from her because her name no longer reflected who her father thought she was. And so it's that kind of very. It's. It's a loss on a fundamental level. So it works on many different levels, the being an unnamed character. But for me, it was just a very, very powerful way of, you know, having this person focalize an entire novel. And you do not know their name, and you do not know what they look like, you know, because at no point does she say, oh, look, I'm looking and standing in front of a mirror, and this is what I see. So you actually. There's like a void that is sort of like, propelling you through the story. And as that void becomes a person and has thoughts and feelings, we are progressing through the novel and the characters becoming whole, and they're finding themselves, and they're able to finally stand up for themselves. So it's a whole journey that we have to go through with them. And I feel like we wouldn't go through it with. With them if from the very beginning they knew what she looked like and she had a name, and it was very established that journey would be very different.
- [27:29]
A
Yeah, it's amazing how you have like. Like Du Maurier and Rebecca with the nameless, nameless protagonist. How you have. Again, I didn't. I didn't realize the character didn't have a name until the end when I was thinking, oh, I have to write. I want to write down this question, what was that character's name? And I realized. I realized it was. Because to me, even though I understood immediately why a name wasn't there, I didn't question it at all. Once it dawned on me, is that, to me, the character was still fully realized in her incompleteness. Like, so she's incomplete. But that. That was, like, to me, it was fully realized that complications, those tensions, that that void was a fully realized void of a person. And I didn't question it. So. And, you know, that's the same reason how I. That's the same way I felt about the main character and Rebecca is that, you know, of course she doesn't have a name, because Rebecca overshadows everything, and she's no one. And, you know, so, you know, it made sense. And so I really. I really enjoyed that, and I enjoyed how it snuck up on me. And when you said that, some people found, like, the opening quite unsettling. I mean, this probably says something about me. And I know books are mirrors and they show us different parts of ourselves, but when I started reading it, I'm like, yeah, this is home. This feels. This feels right to me. I didn't find it unsettling at all. Like, yeah, I'm here. I'm here for all of this. Got it, got it, got it, got it. Like, it was not for one minute unsettling. I didn't feel like I needed to, like, recalibrate myself to be in the world. I was like, I have never read anything like this before, and yet I feel like I've been here before. So I love that.
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B
Yeah. And I think, you know, it goes back to what you were saying a little about you don't want to have, like, people who experience the world differently or neurodivergent or any other kind of different way of seeing. You don't want to then sort of like, put that through the prism or through the lens of, oh, you know, let's make them see things the way we all see because that will make us, or whoever we are, make us feel more comfortable, whoever the imagined reader is. It's like, no, you know, this is how this person sees the world, and, you know, this is how they experience it. And quite frankly, it's. It's. It's. It's. It's not, you know, it is how they see it. And so, like, there's. There's. There's nothing scary or frightening about it once you're in it, because they are making sentence of the world that they find themselves in, you know, and I think we tend to shy away from that also. I think we tend to shy away from things that seem emotionally difficult because, you know, we don't know exactly where they'll lead or what they'll trigger, which is understandable. But again, I think, you know, obviously, the work of art and the work of literature is to be honest and to hold a mirror and is to show us ourselves as ourselves in all our many different guises and ways of being. So, you know, I am. I am. You know, like, I feel like when. When I'm. When I'm a book, for instance, I think a book that makes me very uncomfortable, and I was only able to read it once, and I have to probably try and read it again very hard, even though I know I love it is Toni Morrison's the Bluest Eye. Because I read it, I was like, okay, you know, like, brilliant storytelling, very tough subject matter. I cannot visit that again. Right. And I think it's. It's. It's like you said, it's. It's a reflection more about me and, you know, the way I process and maybe some things that, you know, maybe you've gone through or maybe, you know, whatever it is. And so I absolutely understand that as a. As a way of responding to something. It doesn't take away from the story and what it is and what it's doing. It's just that I think we all meet stories at different moments, and sometimes, you know, we're like, oh, ouch. And sometimes we're like, okay. And I can go along with this. I understand what's happening. So it's all, Yeah. I think he meets stories, you know, in your journey. And you don't always, you're never going to read it the same. You never, you're never always going to be prepared the same. Sometimes you have to grow into a story. Sometimes it finds you at the right time in the right place, you know, and that's just the beauty of storytelling and reading.
- [32:18]
A
Yeah. What you're saying reminded me of the first time that I was forced to read very much against my will. Crackpot by Adele Wiseman, which tells the story of a sex worker and very loud and brash and overweight. And her and the overweight is important to what I'm about to say because it's something about me and not about the character. But Adele Wiseman had her being a very, like, big person. I mean, big in every single way. Like, loud, brash person, you know, her father, I think the father's name was Daniel is, you know, blind. The mother passed away when she was younger, and she was, she had this, you know, business where she was a sex worker right under her dad's nose as he couldn't see what was going on. And I can remember, I, I despise this book. I ran. It's a My Contemporary Canadian Literature Prof. About what an awful book it was. And I can't believe you made me read it. I did not like Hoda. And then I who is the main character? And then I read it again about 10 years later simply by virtue of not having anything else to read and having an insomnia with one of my pregnancies. And I picked up the book again, and I loved it. I loved Hoda. I loved everything about it. And I really reflected that my problem with Hoda was nothing to do with Hoda. It was because I've lived with disordered eating and eating disorders and addiction. And I've, you know, as a woman who's grown up in this era, or arguably any era, I've been taught to hate my body and been taught to be quiet and be small. And I couldn't appreciate the wonder that was Hoda. Whereas now I'm like, yes, girl, you go. You make that money. You be loud. Like, do it. I love this for you. And when you're talking, I was thinking about that, is that it just wasn't the right time for me to read that book. But I'm so glad I Picked it up again because, I mean, I talk about it to anyone who will listen now. Like, you have to read this book. Is, you know, it. It. It hopefully should make you uncomfortable because no matter what, while I'm all like, I'm. I'm for Hoda. I'm team Hoda, but she does. She does do at least one thing that's like, oh, girl, no.
- [34:30]
B
You know.
- [34:30]
A
Like, she still makes me uncomfortable. Her other. Yeah, I was like, oh, that's very interesting. But while we're talking about, you know, I know I said that was going to be the penultimate question, but one thing you said made me think about something else, and that's how. So for listeners out there, you know, this book is clearly and as you said, intentionally influenced by other gothic novels. But as I was reading it, I was all thinking about another gothic novel, which I really enjoy, which is Castle of Ortranto. And I was thinking about how while there are definitely influences and there are certain tropes that are played with, I don't actually argue with you. I felt like they were more subverted in many ways and that you, You. You took it a step further because in Gothic literature, there's sometimes very clear divides between, you know, right and wrong and good and evil and all this stuff. And I feel like, you know, if your book was a person, it would be an adorably creepy child splashing in a puddle of mud. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's kind of throwing everything all over, but you can't take your eyes off it. That was meant to be a compliment. I feel like it defies easy explanation. I think it felt like such a wonderful, whole complete novel. But I also feel like it was. It was playing with a lot of different intersections at once and showing how these things are connected, that the forces that, you know, oppress, you know, these characters and how they push back against them and how they change them and how they change them into things. I'm trying not to give anything away. That's why I'm being very careful. They. They can. They can make them become things that they don't like. And the thing. They can become the force themselves and embody the forces that they're fighting against. Anyways, I found, like, it. It really deepened the. The. The typical gothic novel tropes. And I, I love that. And it seemed like it was doing. Yeah, I felt like it was doing so much. I was like, ah, if anyone loves Gothic literature, obviously you should pick this up. But I think. I feel like this book is a Masterclass on how to take something and then make it your own.
- [37:02]
B
Well, thank you for that. Yeah.
- [37:04]
A
Yeah. My next question for you is, and I'm not sure if you can talk about it, what are you working on now?
- [37:13]
B
Yeah, so I'm working on a very different kind of book. Not really. When I say that out loud, I was like, well, not much. So the entire series of books that I'm working on are all interconnected. And so this is an interconnected. The fifth book that I'm working on right now is interconnected, but it is different in that it is, like, a wonderful challenge to myself. It's a novella. It's very short, and it's written in vignettes. One of my favorite novels, novellas is the House of Mango Street. And I was like, I tend to write, you know, paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs. And I thought, wouldn't it be nice to just sort of, like, have these moments that you just sort of, like, always come in on in a person's life and then you leave and you come in on in a person's life and then you leave? And it's about four friends who know each other over a span of 40 years, and just the kinds of different turns that their friendship takes as they grow older and maybe move away from each other both physically and emotionally. Yeah, I've enjoyed it because it's been a challenge on many levels. And we meet them when they're six years old. It's their first day of school, and then we just grow with them.
- [38:57]
A
The way my eyes lit up when you said novella, I was like. My mouth actually, like, dropped open. I was like, novellas are my favorite. I think they are so perfect. I am. I said, you know, at some point this year, I'm going to compile a list and put it up on my blog of all my favorite novellas because they're. Yeah, they're one of those forms that I just think people need to love on a lot more than they do. I don't know. I don't think I'm chronically a supporter of underdogs. I think I'm just, like, an underdog form. Like, I. I'm a poet, too. So, like, that's in the basement art world. Like, it doesn't get much, at least in the Western world. My father, he's always like, in Iran, we.
- [39:44]
B
We.
- [39:44]
A
We channel great. It's like, yeah, well, dad, that's not the way it is here. Most people laugh at me or ask me if I'm serious when I Tell them I write poetry, so. Or think it's a cute hobby. So I, it's not that I, I just really think that novellas are such a beautiful distilled form of long finch, that's all. And I'm, I, I'm someone who, you know, even with my novel, you know, I hear people like, oh, I had to cut a hundred thousand words out of my novel. I'm like, I fought for my life to get to 50,000. Like, what are you talking about? This is insane. So I think I'm just like, it's, I love novellas because they reflect like something that I'm capable of. So maybe it's completely egotistical that I'm trying to get and I've never written one, but it's just some egotistical drive, my own, some selfishness that I want people to pay attention to. What I think I'm capable of, I don't know. But I'm not going to second guess it because right now it's not benefiting me at all because I have not written ones. But I love that. Thank you so much for joining me today and talking about your incredible novel. For everyone who. I was going to say just joining us, but this is a podcast. I'm assuming you've all been here with us the whole time. Um, we are talking about the creation of Half Broken People. Which one, by the way? I didn't mention this. It's the winner of the Yale University's Windham Campbell Prize and it is available wherever books are bought or borrowed. I got mine directly from the publisher, the wonderful house of Anasi in Canada. Sepiwe. Thank you so much for joining me today on nbn.
- [41:25]
B
Thank you so much for having me. This has been a joy. Thank you.
- [41:28]
A
You're very welcome. ABC Wednesday. Shifting Gears is back.
- [41:45]
B
He has arisen.
- [41:46]
A
Tim Allen and Kat Dennings return in television's number one new come comedy what what? With a star studded premiere including Jenna Elfman, Nancy Travis and. Hey buddy. A big home improvement reunion.
- [42:01]
B
Welcome.
- [42:02]
A
Oh boy, that guy's a tool. Shifting Gears season premiere Wednesday, 8, 7 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu.