Author Karen Jennings on her latest novel Crooked Seeds and how social media has impacted our sense of history

You've said that the vision of the lighthouse from An Island (2019) came to you in a dream, during an afternoon nap. What about the story of Crooked Seeds?
I'm afraid it was a lot less neat and tidy. In fact, it is hard to trace the process or progression clearly. Some of the ideas or aspects of the characters go back as far as the 1980s, when I was a little girl and overheard a conversation between my dad and his colleague. She told him about growing up, how her mother had always favoured her son and treated her daughters as inferior to him.
Other aspects of the novel go to my mid-20s when I passed a ditch being dug by the municipality. Each day, when I passed that ditch, they had dug up more artefacts — nothing interesting, just old handbags and bottles and bits of cutlery and rope and plastic. I remember knowing there was something important here, in this digging, the finding of things. I didn't know what, though. Countless other little experiences and thoughts and dreams made their way into the chaos in my mind and came out (hopefully) neatly on the pages.
The South African landscape is almost a character in the novel. Is it at all possible to write about South Africa and Africa without talking about socio-political issues?
Can one write about anywhere without including socio-political issues? I am a proud South African. South Africa is my home. I love its people and places. I am not afraid to say it publicly: everything that is good in this country is because of the South African people. For the bad, yes, we can blame history, but we can also blame a government that puts cronyism before the people. Most days, I want to ask our president: How do you sleep at night? Aren't you ashamed of your spinelessness?
In the novel, there are also themes of memory, trauma and historical reconciliation. How did you approach post-Apartheid South Africa?
A lot of reading. I make sure to read widely when doing research — newspapers, interviews, diaries, letters, fiction, non-fiction. We all understand, of course, that fiction is not meant to be focused on fact-giving. But in order for fiction to have value – in order for it to have an essential authenticity — research must be done. In addition, I spend a lot of time 'in place' — walking, looking, observing. The 17th century Japanese Haiku master Basho said that if you want to write about the tree then you must go to the tree. I believe that completely. Go to the tree — physically and through research.
How has the landscape for postcolonial African literature changed since you began writing?
This is an interesting question. Recently, someone from a different country in Africa indicated to me that young Africans don't know what colonialism is. It is something 'too far back' in history to be thought of — yet we still see the socio-economic consequences of it to this day; we still see knock-on effects such as cultural appropriation. Whatever the young know or don't know about colonialism or postcolonialism, they don't seem to be learning it from books. A few days ago, I was explaining to a student of mine that the only thing she needed to work on in her essay is to write smoother sentences. She asked me if I could recommend a TikTok channel to help her with that. I said, 'How can you ask me that? What you need to do is read, not watch Tiktok!'
An Island and Crooked Seeds have a nonlinear narrative and yet it's effortless to envision the story. Talk us through your writing process.
Short answer: agony. Long answer: lots of agony. The very dismal truth is that I write draft after draft after draft, on and on and on and on until I am sick and depressed. But by the end I know my character and my story completely.
Your portrayal of marginalised characters has been praised for its nuance. What responsibility do you feel writers have when representing voices that have historically been silenced?
This is a tough question. One must always approach one's writing with sensitivity. Even when one comes to it with good intentions, there is always a worry about appropriation or being offensive. Thorough research can help, as can using third-person narrators and avoiding giving characters accents or using patois that can come across as condescending. These are all practical matters. But consider the forgotten people in history — not necessarily heroes, just ordinary people whose role in our country's past and therefore in its present might be forgotten unless you write about them.
Last year, I wrote a number of short stories related to slaves and servants at the Cape of Good Hope/Cape Colony in the 18th century. These stories were based on archival and other research. If I don't write about them, will someone else do it? Will AI remember our pasts for us and write about it for us? Already most South Africans don't even know the truth about South Africa's slave past. Shouldn't they know that history and the people it affected and in what ways? May that inspire them too to explore, to research and to write.
Mazumdar is a Delhi-based independent writer

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