Shamiso by Brian Chikwava
An intimately told, raw love story between a Zimbabwean girl and a gender-fluid British person marks author Brian Chikwava as one to watch
This coming-of-age story of a Zimbabwean girl who meets a gender-fluid Afro-Brit boy is raw and powerful. At its centre is an intense flash of young love that makes sense of everything, only to burn hot and collapse as it shades into misunderstanding and disappointment.
As a young girl, Shamiso moves from rural Zimbabwe to Harare to live ill-fittingly with her father and stepmother. An elderly cousin, Jimson, recognises the spark that others see as her mother’s craziness. He gives her a pendant of the river god Nyami Nyami, and the fish-headed snake offers a new way to survive the world. Shamiso starts carving with Jimson, and wins a scholarship to Brighton, where she meets George.
Shamiso’s grown up in a world where gods are genderless and elders are referred to as ‘they’ as a mark of respect. Author Brian Chikwava uses these details to question Western gender norms with the sharp eye of the outsider. It’s not a big deal for Shamiso to see in George all the richness of a fluid identity, and the most electric moments between them are when George is in a dress. Chikwava’s a master of brevity, which makes it easy to miss things: short scenes that turn out to be significant later can be easily missed. Mostly though, Shamiso is dazzling, exhilarating, funny and sharp.