The James Kilgore Interview

*Fascinating note: James Kilgore (author of We are All Zimbabweans Now, 2011) agreed to an interview about his life and work

Question: How did you come to proclaim “We Are Zimbabweans?”

Kilgore: It is merely a literary device to show how leaders expropriate the liberatory language of the people. Early in the story, a black man offers Ben Dabney, the white protagonist, a seat in a restaurant. The man makes the offer with the statement, "we are all Zimbabweans now," For this black gentleman the words, "we are all Zimbabweans now," means burying the racial divisions of the past. Then later in the book Mugabe invokes the phrase. For him, as President, it means the people must stick together and not complain when a few leaders, who are after all Zimbabweans, abuse their power and gobble up all the wealth. But the phrase can have yet another meaning, one of solidarity in the sense that as people in Zimbabwe suffer, so to do the rest of us across the world suffer with them i.e. we are all Zimbabweans- like the old labor saying, "an injury to one is an injury to all."

Question: How would you describe your residence (literary and political) in Zimbabwe?

Kilgore:I worked as a high school teacher for about seven years. It was a wonderful experience for an educator. Students, at that time, had such an incredible thirst for learning. They would beg me to teach extra classes on weekends and during school holidays. It was a teacher's dream. At the same time… though… the ecstasy of independence was slowly dissipating as Mugabe and his circle of friends consolidated their power. It was an intense time, a contradictory time, a great learning moment for a young person. I had supported Mugabe during the liberation struggle. I learned that liberation was not a simple process, not an event or a moment… but something that took time and could also be derailed.

Question: What dooms your protagonist Ben Dabney as a researcher, an American, and as an academic?

Kilgore:I don't think Ben is doomed. He just can't become the person that he set out to be…. the historian who writes the definitive history of the triumph of racial equality in Zimbabwe. He can't become that because….. even as naive and foolish as he is at times…. he has the courage to ask some impolite questions. Early on….he also comes to the realization that if he wants to really understand Zimbabwe, he can't hang out with the white expatriates and enjoy their comfortable suburban dinners and fine wine. He has to break out of his comfort zone. He must socialize with black Zimbabweans and visit the rural areas where most of the people live. So, his journey becomes more complicated…and at times tragic. But, ultimately, I think he is a better person. He is a person that appreciates the role of ordinary people in history (though they aren't always so ordinary). When he arrived in Zimbabwe, he was taken with the idea of heroes as the drivers of history. He discovers that is not the kind of history he wants to produce.

Question:Were the characters Professor Latham, Wonder, and Elizabeth drawn from real life and experiences?

Kilgore:None of these characters were precisely someone that I knew with different names. Yet, I certainly met people like them. So…. in that sense…. They (the characters) did emerge from my experience. I could never have conceived of such people without having lived in Zimbabwe…. or at least…. somewhere in Africa.

Questions: How did your incarceration change/alter you?

Kilgore: On the positive side, I guess it taught me to be more patient and tolerant. In prison, I lived ‘cheek to jowl’ with a vast array of people. Most of the people, I'd never dream of associating with them on the street. I mean, how often would I have a conversation with a pimp or someone who's got a big swastika tattooed on his forehead? So…. it was a good education… in terms of expanding my sense of humanity. Also, prison teaches you a lot about justice… or maybe I should say injustice. In my case, going to prison changed my sense of how all that functions. The criminal justice system in the U.S. has become a monster, an albatross dangling around the neck of our society and pulling us down. It's so unjust, not only in terms of the oppression of African-Americans. Prisons denigrate poor people, in general. It's almost impossible to imagine the depth and complexity of all this, unless you've been inside… surrounded by thousands of people doing ridiculously long sentences for relatively low level offenses. Every time I drive by a prison now, I feel the weight of all this churning in my stomach. This whole thing of mass incarceration is shameful. I can never let it completely out of my mind.

Question: How do you reflect upon your past life or lives?

Kilgore: Probably pretty much the same way as everyone else does…. by thinking about what I've experienced…. trying to learn from it and carrying on.

Question: What is your second novel about?

Kilgore: My second novel, Freedom Never Rests, came out in South African, in September of last year. It is about the struggle of poor people in South Africa to gain access to water after the downfall of apartheid. The lead character is a former shop steward revolutionary who tries to remain true to his ideals in a time when most of his former comrades are going in other directions. I wanted to tell the story… not of a revolutionary who abandons his past ideas…. but of a revolutionary who battles to keep the dream alive in a situation where it seems that history has passed him by.

Question: What are your current literary plans?

Kilgore: My third novel will come out in April of 2012. It is a murder mystery set in Oakland, California with a Zimbabwean connection. It's entitled Prudence Couldn't Swim. In the opening scene, Prudence, a young, undocumented, Zimbabwean woman, living in California turns up dead in a swimming pool. Then, two white ex-convicts assume the quest to solve the mystery.

Question: What (if anything) might America do to enable democracy in Zimbabwe and Africa? Kilgore: Stop promoting free market ideas…. as if they were some immutable gospel that really holds out any hope to help poor people advance in Africa. Free market ideas, as embodied in things like structural adjustment programs and free trade regimes are at the heart of the continent's underdevelopment and inequality. They've created a 1% and a 99% in Africa…the same as here in America. However, in places like Zimbabwe that 99% is worse off than the 99% in America.

Question: Will you ever return to Africa?

Kilgore: Definitely. I plan to go there this year.

Still need more info? Check out James Kilgore's website: http://freedomneverrests.com/