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Nancy Farmer, the critically acclaimed children's writer, won a Newberry Award for her book A Girl Named Disaster. (Recently, she won the National Book Award for a children's book set on the U.S.-Mexico Border.) Farmer's first experiences in Africa were working as an entomologist in a lab on Lake Cabora Bassa in Mozambique. When her contract ran out, she moved to Zimbabwe, where she met and married her husband. They lived in Zimbabwe for twenty years.
Nevertheless, it disturbed me that Nancy Farmer wrote the book in American English. Nhamo herself is Shona, so of course, she's not actually speaking in English even though Farmer gives us her words in English. A more authentic English, it seemed to me, would be Zimbabwean English. I also wondered how American and British audiences had responded to some of the book's more disturbing elements, including the fact that Nhamo becomes possessed with a spirit during her time on Lake Cabora Bassa. So I wrote to Nancy Farmer and requested an interview. She responded much more honestly and bluntly than I expected, and I respected her all the more for it. Below are her responses to my questions. Q. You've chosen to write several of your children's books from an African child's perspective. I'm sure you've caught some flak over that. Can you tell me why you decided to write from an African perspective and how people have responded to the fact that a white woman is writing books with African protagonists? My first book, published only in Africa, is about a family of California hippies. This was considered wildly exotic and thus interesting, but it wasn't a very good novel. I realized then that I had been out of the U.S. so long I didn't have a feel for American characters. And so I did Africans. Nobody has ever given me a hard time about this. Do You Know Me; The Ear, the Eye and the Arm; and The Warm Place were reviewed in Zimbabwe as sly political commentary. A Girl Named Disaster was not published there because by that time the publisher was in financial trouble. It was always a cliff-hanger getting enough ink and paper.
The copyright of the article An Interview with Nancy Farmer in African History is owned by Jessica Powers. Permission to republish An Interview with Nancy Farmer in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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