The memoir is annotated with extracts from those fictions and other writing. It is an examination of certain seeds that fell upon, and were developed by, my imagination.

It exposes how my life contributes characters, costumes, debates and narrative fibres to create worlds that do not actually exist yet are credible enough to be exploited as venues for posing existential questions. It shows how urban landscapes and wilderness serve as the neon-spangled theatres of my story telling.

I go back to 1949
After Sharon Olds

I go back to 1949.
I see them board the ship,
clutching two suitcases and my baby brother.
I see my mother,
with her copies of Petrarch and Giacomo Leopardi,
with her knitting patterns and great winter coat.
I see my father,
with his documents and two photographs—
all that were snatched from Holocaust flames.
I watch them sail down the east coast
and reach Beira, where it is all heat
and where the dockworkers’ songs are sad.
I should say—
Go back to the frescos and stucco.
Go back to the floating golden city
and the Bridge of Sighs.
But I must be born on savannah.
I must be born among musasa and muhobohobo.
I must know the resurrection of dry grass after rain.
Even though they will each die lonely deaths
amongst strangers,
with nothing, having lost Petrarch and Leopardi,
I will let them board the train
and go ahead into the interior,
for I must be born to the sound of mbira
and know the weeping of diaspora.