New Century News & Reviews

Many people have said 2009 is the year of the short story. And a lot of the short story collections published this year have won awards ranging from Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award (which, of course, wouldn’t be awarded to a novel or poetry collection), the Guardian Fiction Award and many others I can’t think of right now.

Only yesterday (Friday, November 6), CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Oprah’s Oprah Winfrey admitted that this had been the year they fell in love with the short story through their reading of Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them. For this reason, they have decided to co-broadcast a discussion of the book on Monday (9pm Eastern/8pm Central Time). This is a huge event for a short story collection. If all goes well, I may participate in some small way in the Webcast.

Say You’re One of Them has already been on the New York Times best seller list for weeks, and what that means is that Americans are buying (and reading) this book in great numbers. I have even begun to receive emails from old friends and former co-workers saying they are reading Uwem Akpan’s book. That’s good for the short story genre, but most importantly, for the exposure of literature set in Africa.

This year I have focused my reading on the short story because my own writing is also centered on the genre, but I have found myself saying things like, “I want to discover the secret of the short story.” That’s just because once I started, I couldn’t stop.

I haven’t discovered the secret yet, but I am enjoying the discovery of writers (contemporary and classic) I never thought I would be reading this year. Short stories are addictive (especially if you make a point to make 90 per cent of your pleasure reading center only on them); reading one author has led to the discovery of another, and this has been going on non-stop since February.

Short stories have become fashionable. As I browse new titles in book stores, I see all these things publishers are doing with the genre. There are more collected stories by single authors, huge volumes like those by Ballard, Trevor, and Carver. Then estbalished novelists have also caught on to the short story bug (or opportunity). Kazuo Ishiguro just released Nocturnes, a collection of short stories; Ha Jin is coming out [in December] with A Good Fall (which I recently reviewed. Lives of Chinese immigrants in the United States),John Grisham’s Ford County is a short story collection, and someone just did the most voluminous Raymond Carver collection, displaying multiple versions of the short stories side by side to show Carver’s revision process (It’s been termed a treasure).

The most fashionable thing now (or we can call it profitable), is publishing short story anthologies that contain works by different authors. The collections have hot themes (”one world”, “new voices of the world”, “our changing world”, “new generations”). Short story collections everywhere, from anywhere. I am even scheduled to co-edit a book of short stories by Indian and Zimbabwean authors, and work is in progress on one of the most gripping collections of contemporary African
short stories, a collection entitled African Roar.

I am noticing that some of the collections by single authors are like novels, with stories unified by a central concern. Ha Jin’s stories, for instance, are all set in Flushing, New York. William Styron’s new collection, The Suicide Run, is about the Marine Corps, and the different stories center on the same protagonist, and Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them deals with the plight of children across Africa, with all his stories told from a child narrator. So there is always an amazing unifying element in the collection, which gives it a sense of continuity that readers can appreciate.

Perhaps what’s happening to the short story genre has been happening all along; I just haven’t been paying much attection. But the articles keep pointing to the revival of the genre. Steven Millhauser, for instance, has written on the ambition of the short story in his famous New York Times essay. Then the awards too: most of the books getting short-listed and winning awards are short story collections. For once, I am seeing short story collections on the New York Times Bestseller list. And my search for the secret of the short story continues, as I take it beyond Borders & Barnes & Noble to Amazon, used bookstores, library booksales, to Goodwill and garage sales. Call it a bargain hunt, and I can tell you, the trips have been worthwhile: I have discovered names I never thought I would: Now I don’t have to turn back to the same Dubliners each time I crave a short story.

2009, the year of the short story. And if this continues to 2010 and 2011, those too will be years of the short story. But do I hear poetry calling for attention too? Perhaps 2012? Then we give 2013 to the playwrights? As for the novel, well, what can I say, hang in there.

At the end of 2008, and early this year, I was blogging about Ruby Magosvongwe’s labelling of Zimbabwe as a short story country, and there was a little bit of debate on the issue as some writers argued it could also be called a novel or poetry country. But the debates made me pay more attention, first, to the Zimbabwean short story, then before I knew it I was reading Flannery O’Connor, Flaubert, and Maupassant. Perhaps now, as the year ends,I am tempted to say that our [literary] world is a short story world(this moment at least).

Sunil Sharma, a writer and scholar based in India, has published his first novel, The Minotaur. I featured Sunil’s short story, “The Cacti”, in the July/August 2009 issue of Munyori Literary Journal. He was also instrumental in the conception of the idea of the Indian-Zimbabwean short fiction anthology, which I am going to co-edit with him. Here are more details about the new publication:

The Minotaur is a chilling but familiar account of the rise and fall of a third-world despot. Riding the tidal wave of popular support, Caesar the Marxist, soon turns into a dictator and plunges his impoverished, exploited nation into a bloody civil war. Fleeing from his burning nation, he lands up in a remote island and declares himself the King. Then the personal descent of a once charismatic doctor-turned-guerilla leader into personal hell begins. The Minotaur is born and finally finds his nemesis, in the form of a radicalized native, on that remote island… A dark tale of power-crazy leaders, as relevant in today’s Africa or Latin America or South Asia, as it was in the ancient world.

About the Author

Sunil Sharma (b 1958) is currently Vice-principal, Reader and Head, Department of English, Model College—an A-grade college affiliated to the University of Mumbai—MIDC, Dombivli (East), in District Thane, Maharashtra, India. He is a bilingual critic, poet, dramatist, literary interviewer, editor, translator, essayist and fiction writer. Some of his short stories and poems have already appeared in prestigious e and print journals of global repute, like: Indian Literature (of Sahitya Akademy, New Delhi); Munyori (USA online); The Plebian Rag (USA online); New Woman (Mumbai); Kritya, Creative Saplings and Muse India (all three e-zines); the Seva Bharati Journal of English Studies (West Bengal); Prosopisia (Ajmer); Indian Literary Panorama (Mumbai); Contemporary Vibes (Chandigarh), and Indian Journal of Post-colonial Literatures (Kerala). Some of his stories have been anthologized also.

He is also a freelance journalist in English. His areas of strength are Marxism, Mass Media, Literary Theory and Cultural Studies. His book on the Philosophy of the Novel—A Marxist Critique is already published. The Minotaur is his debut novel that deals with contemporary socio-political realities.

In “An Ex-mas Feast,” Maisha leaves her family to become a full-time prostitute. Do you think she chose to depart, or did her family’s poverty force her to flee? Is it possible to have complete freedom of will in such a situation? Is it reasonable to judge a person for her actions if her choice is not entirely her own?

Answers: First, we need to realize that Maisha is only twelve and already a prostitute; the issue of choice should not even come into play. She is a kid who should be receiving the care of her parents, but is born in a situation that does not allow her to be a child. She didn’t choose to depart, but that was the only way she could liberate herself later in life, and enable her brother to attend school. The parents also have their hopes anchored on her, now that she has attracted the tourists.

The shows tha victims of something larger, be it the politics of the country (which is hinted at), or the parents’ failure in life. Yet even in their desolate state, they have dreams and hopes, something which forces the reader to blame their condition elsewhere, just as we cannot blame Maisha for what she ends up forced to do by her circumstances; choice is out of the question…she is twelve. It’s a shame that wealthy men come to these streets looking for the child prostitutes; and some of the “clients” tourists from places like the United States, Jaguar-driving men who promise hope but deliver life-long scars…

WINDHOEK, NAMIBIA– Artsinitiates-Zimbabwe and Township Productions of Namibia will from 25 to 27 September host poets from the region for the inaugural Sadc Poetry Festival. The festival is being funded by Prince Claus Fund while the Franco-Namibian Cultural Centre, Township Production as well as Gentlemen’s Club are partners.

The festival seeks to foster a culture of networking among poets as well as producing a poetry anthology after the event. The three-day event will open on Friday, 25 September in the evening before the workshop scheduled for the FNCC on Saturday 26. On September 27 the poets will perform to the public in selected areas.

Some of the poets attending are Tebogo Makgetla and Keselofetse Ditsabatho (Botswana); Moffat Moyo and Milensu Kapaipi (Zambia); Cynthia Marangwanda (Zimbabwe); Khadija Tracey Heeger (South Africa) and Phinda Mkhonta (Swaziland).

Memory Chirere, Zimbabwean writer and university lecturer, will be one of the resource persons, coordinating the workshop on 26 September when participants discuss poetry development in their countries as well as how to treat poetry ‘construction’. Another workshop coordinator is Jairos Kangira, a lecturer at the Polytechnic in Namibia.

They will also discuss why poetry, once regarded as a dead literary genre has suddenly sprung into life especially through the youths.

Since this festival will be a first of its kind, participants will discuss how to make it an annual event.

artsinitiates-zimbabwe focuses on training of artists in various fields and media personnel especially arts and culture journalists. Through its website – www.artsinitiates.co.zw – the organisation promotes budding writers by publishing their poems and short stories. The site also runs arts and culture stories. Award-winning author and former Herald entertainment editor and deputy news editor Wonder Guchu is the editor of the website.

Township Production is co-directed by poet, theatre director/ producer and actor Joseph Molapong and poet, musician Christi Warner. The outfit has produced four anthologies featuring upcoming poets in Namibia. Some of the poets featured on www.artsinitiates.co.zw.

It’s that time of year again when book agents get busier. We have officially entered the submission seasons for most of the magazines and journals in the United States. If all went well, the writers were busy writing in the summer, and now they have works to submit. Most publishers will be accepting submissions from now until May 2010, which is a long time, but it will fly by, especially if you are busy revising several works.

Once you submit something, you join the waiting game. Sometimes responses will take up to three months, so the best thing is to continue writing, so that when something is rejected, you submit another.

Good luck in your writing!

There is a new Zimbabwean writer based in Geneva, whose new novel is launching in the United States on September 8. Her name is Irene Sabatini, and the title of her novel is The Boy Next Door. The book is issued by Little, Brown, and will launch in the UK in February 2010. I look forward to reading this book.

Zimbabwe has been in the news for a long time now because of its political and economic situation. We have read newspapers coverage, have watched sound bites on CNN, BBC, and have heard personal horror stories about Zimbabwe, and most of these stories have been negative. On that front, things are improving, but are in no way close to being resolved, yet the world’s attention seems to be on something else. Guess what, the Zimbabwean story is now being told through the country’s expanding literature. In the past five years, numerous new writers have emerged and amidst hardships, have managed to publish their stories. Writers at home and abroad are publishing works which are putting Zimbabwe on the map in another light. Brian Chikwava, Chris Mlalazi, Petina Gappah, and many others, have published books that have grabbed the attention of the world. And now another name, Irene Sabatini, has been added to the growing number.

For more details about Irene, visit her website.

If you have ever worked in a call center, whether in customer service, collections, billing, and so on, you may find this short short story set in a call center very interesting. The story is entitled “Call Center” and attempts to look at the behind-the-scenes of call center life. As most of you may know, call center jobs are some of the most stressfull, but the employers always come up with way to enjoy themselves, and according to this story, one of the ways to do so is to laugh at customers/callers. Enjoy the story!

Over at Ivor W.Hartmann’s Facebook fan page, some Zimbabwean writers and readers are remembering Dambudzo Marechera (June, 1952-August, 1987). The man has had a profound influence on Zimbabwean literature, and a lot of the contemporary writers in would attest to having once or twice entered the Marechera mode as they worked on their writings. I did it, especially during those University of Zimbabwe years, when we were finally introduced to Zimbabwean (African) literature. Just being seen with a copy of House of Hunger felt great. To be a serious writer was to be like Marechera.

And years later, reading Marechera away from home, I would come to realize that Marechera was a state of mind, a creative mind, but I also learned to separate his art from his personal life. The art remained attractive, and reading it repeatedly had many benefits. Marechera is great literature for the immigrant condition, whatever that is, but Marechera the man ceased a long time ago to be a role model, and now, twenty years after his death, I am reading him as a young man who was profoundly talented, and he would have done better had we (society, Zimbabwe, Britain, himself..)not let him down.

Someone handed me a copy of House of Hunger in August 1987 and said, “I hear you call yourself a writer. Read this!” That was in Mazvihwa, before I moved to Harare for my A-Level. I am grateful to the man from Chakavanda who gave me the book and said, “Keep it. I will get another copy when I go back to Harare.” I didn’t know then that Marechera had died, so unlike some budding writers of my age who lived in Harare and got to meet him, I met only the work and embraced it.

Do I have my Marechera moments when I write? Plenty. He gave Zimbabwean fiction the licence to be obscene (and reading him as a teenager, I found him worth pursuing), the propensity for profanity. But he did more: he gave us a glimpse into life outside of Zimbabwe, a life lived by a marginalized, exiled Zimbabwean. Marechera also demonstrated the power of reading. One of the reasons most readers would just own but not read his works is its frame of reference, the literary icons it invokes, all of it influenced by what he had read. He gave the impression of a “smart writer”, and would probably have won one of those genius awards conferred in America had he been in the right place at the right time. But in his work, some of which is heavily autobiographical, time is of the essence, the nowhereness and everywhereness of the human spirit. American writing had already remaindered his House of Hunger, which sold no more than a few copies. He was coming to America at the wrong time, after the Beat Generation, when there was, in the literature, either a return to some literary decency, or some flight into new forms of the avante-garde; in short, he was not doing anything that San Francisco, in its literary drunkness, had not done. A follower of Marechera, I would be distressed to learn of his total absence in American bookstores.

The influence of Marechera is so strong that most critics try to measure everything published by a Zimbabwean author against Marechera. Labels like “the Dambudzo Marechera of Shona literature”, the “Dambudzo Marechera of Bulawayo literature,” ” the new Marechera”, perhaps “the female Dambudzo Marechera”, and others appear in the criticism. Often, such labels are well-deserved, and as Memory Chirere would say, you can’t complain if your work is compared to someone like Marechera, it is all good.

So to remember Marechera, I pulled out my copy of Cemetry of Mind and went through some of my favorite poems. Not too long ago I was reading Black Sunlight, which I have been reading on and off since 1990. It reminds me of Chimanimani, where I did my first successful reading of the book when I was a teacher at Ndima Secondary School.

With the rise in Zimbabwean writing in the past five years, it is now possible to be wrapped up in the new works and forget about the habitual return to Marechera. Much of the new work carries traces of Marechera (never the full man, because that’s unattainable; each writer is a distinct voice). In Mlalazi, who has been associated with Marechera, especially in his short stories, you get the unashamed depiction of the profane and exposure of vulnerabilities. In Many Rivers, fists fly and flies open on short notice; there is a glimpse into vagrant life, and wanderers abound–life on he fringes of society, as people pursue the South African Dream.

Nowhere is the decay of dreams and the descent into destitution is shown more than in Brian Chikwava’s Harare North. If read right, the story moves way beyond humor and satire and becomes about the helplessness of an individual stuck in an environment he does not understand. Contrary to his beliefs, the narrator is a victim of his circumstances, more so a victim of his lack of survival skills. In immigration terms, he might be viewed by some as a visa wasted, a man devoid of ambition. I him to be more disturbed (mentally) than any of the characters Marechera ever created and the deterioration of importance, his very being, sets him apart from many of the Marechera protagonists.

As I remember Marechera today, I am reading Many Rivers, which has already exposed me to the corruption of Johannesburg, where no one can be trusted. Unfortunate events pile up at a rate unprecedented in Zimbabwean writing, and the book is its author’s official entry into genre fiction, a crime thriller which shocks you at every turn. Characters are introduced and killed rapidly, and our protagonist has barely finished crossing one dangerous river when he has to cross another. Merciless crocodiles infest these rivers, but remember, crocs don’t attack to be malicious–that’s their nature; that’s how they survive ( Thus, you don’t blame them for attacking; you are tempted to blame the victim.) Mlalazi’s Johannesburg is a survival-of-the-fittest jungle, and until Qinisela realizes this, his life is in great danger; and when he does, the real danger begins.

I have also had a taste of The Man, Shaggy Leopard, and the Jackal by Ignatius Mabasa. It is a collection of folktales that feature people and animals. So far I have read “The Flying Hyena” and enjoyed the depiction of hyena’s deceptive character. Mabasa is the master of stylistic innovation, as we have seen in his novel Mapenzi, which freed the Shona novel from the fear of taboo subjects. Well, in this collection Mabasa utilizes the same African folkloric tradition we are familiar with, but goes a step further to “urbanize” it. I couldn’t help laugh when hyena surprised me with a request for scrambled eggs, and in the title story, jackal owns an MP4 player. Tell me a sentence like this does not take you to another place: “Jackal blew a pink bubble from his chewing gum” (15). I can tell you this innovation, directed at a wider audience, seems to be working. My twelve-year-old son, who is reading the book currently, has given the best reader response: “These stories are cool.”

Not only are the contemporary Zimbabwean writers moving in the direction of brave, open (as in frank) writing, they are also pursuing more practical means of reaching a wider audience. I am reminded of the detective writings of Masimba Musodza which lend themselves to serialization, the award-winning sci-fi stories of Ivor W. Hartmann, and the growing fork tale rendered in English. There is a readiness, it seems, to maintain serious literary tradition, while venturing into genre. To some readers, these divisions don’t matter, because by nature, reading is a multi-genre process.

Employing the artistic spirit Marechera exemplified, new Zimbabwean writing bravely explores the Zimbabwean experience, at home and abroad. There has been a boost to the literature, thanks to brave little presses–Weaver and ‘amaBooks in Zimbabwe, Lion Press in the UK–that have defied the current economic hardships. There has been a growing popularization of Zimbabwean writing by writers like Yvonne Vera, Petina Gappah, Brian Chikwava, Alexander McCall Smith, and others. Some of the writing is very good, a great deal of it is bad, but the epansion of writing demonstrates a glaring need for artistic expression, and with art comes reponsibility, and with responsibility, the desire to produce high quality writing. The phrase I hear frequently is: this is the time for Zimbabwean literature. But I am also hearing Nigerians, Ghanaians, Kenyans, South Africans, saying the same thing for their literature. Perhaps, what’s obvious is that this is indeed Africa’s time, and the new writing coming out of the continent is declaring its independence and presence in the global literary mix. That’s the spirit writers like Christopher Okigbo, Yvonne Vera, Dambudzo Marechera, Ken Sarowiwa, and others were attempting to exemplify.

There is this enduring question I am always tempted to ask: If Marechera hadn’t died young, where would his writing be today and how large would his influence to younger African writers be?

I have discovered a new African author whose book, Baking Cakes in Kigali, I have added to my reading list. I avoided the temptation for an impulsive purchase, but that was hard, because the author, Gaile Parkin, is Zambian. I don’t remember the last time I walked into a Borders and saw a novel by a Zambian (or another African author) displayed on the front table. Of course, it attracted my attention and I ended up reading the first chapter and putting a copy on hold.

Gaile Parkin’s prose is clean and the story is accessible to an reader of English. The book was originally published in the UK (in January) and has just come out in the USA through an inprint of Random House. It is one of those books that open a window to Africa, and I like how Parkin luxuriates in the customs of her characters, first with the Tanzanian women we meet in chapter 1 who the wives of expatriates involved in the rebuilding of Rwanda. What a great subject the author chose; who is not talking about the rebuilding of Rwanda right now, especially with all the opportunities in commercial farming, real estate, construction, education and other areas that are attracting outsiders. No wonder the characters in the novel are expartiriates from many parts of the world, the United States, the United Kingdom, Tanzania, and other countries. Some come to volunteer, like the two women from America who live together and teach only at female institutions because they are feminists. This rebuilding of Africa means opportunities for both the Africans and foreigners, and in the process the wound of history are exposed.

I liked the dialogue, although I suspect that I may end up not liking it as I read deeper into the book. Here is why. Dialogue is great if it moves the story forward, if it reveals certain key details, but it has to be natural, to represent how the characters speak. And so far it does all of this and more. But because the novel is functioning as a window into aid-receiving Africa to the outside world, there is a danger that the dialogue might be abused, used as vehicles of informations of an expository nature. But let me give examples of the dialogue I liked so far:

“A cake business doesn’t do well in a place where people have nothing to celebrate” (12). This is said during a conversation between Angel Tungaraza, the famous cake maker from Tanzania, whose husband works at a new institute of technology, and Mrs. Wanyika, the wife of the Tanzanian ambassador to Rwanda. The Rwandese, in this time of reconstruction depicted in the novel, have something to celebrate, the rebuilding is sending a positive vibe to the outside world, and gender issues there are reported to be some of the progressive. The message “never again” is loud and clear. But sometimes it takes a work of fiction to delve under layers of superficiality, and this is what I hope that the novel will do; if not, oh well.

I also liked what a pretty Somali character (she had to be pretty) said:

“I don’t tell people here that I’m from there [Somalia]. There are people who say that the Americans refused to come help Rwanda because of what happened in Mogadishu. It could happen that the Rwandans could blame me for the Americans not coming here or it could happen that Americans could hate me for their soldiers dying in my country” (16).

Here the author is using dialogue to brief us on this well-known historical fact (Black Hawk Down), and in moderation, such information is invaluable. In fact, I may choose to interpret it as that sad state of affairs that would cause a Zimbabwean to choose to say he is from South Africa because he fears that declaring that he is from Zimbabwe means that people will think that…who knows? But it happens, it really does. Used in moderation, such historical briefings are fantastic, but if dialogue ends up being used to give us loads of such information, to puts the reader off.

Stuff like this is just brilliant: “Angel Tungaraza was the only person in Kigali to go to for a cake for a special occasion” (190). And her cakes could tell stories too. The cup cakes we see in chapter 1, which accompany the tea she is sharing with her fellow countrywoman, the ambassador’s wife, are a mix of the colours of the Tanzanian flag. The ambassador’s wife, worrying about her weight, does not eat even a quarter of her country’s flag, doesn’t even comment on the colours; you suspect that she doesn’t even realize that these are the colors of her country’s flag. She eats yellow though, which represents Tanzania’s mineral deposits.

The only compaint I have so far is the way the author makes the characters use untranslated phrases and sentences of African language, particularly Swahili. If ths is all she did, I would celebrate her, but she goes ahead and follow them up with their English translations in the same breath. No, don’t do it! It makes the character look idiotic, repeating themselves in whatever they say. That does not make linguistic sense. To me the characters are saying the same thing twice:

“Hodi! May we come in?”
“Karibuni! Welcome!” greeted Angel as a young woman and a girl entered the apartment.

I believe if we choose to share our beautiful languages with the world in our fiction, either we write completely in them, which, obviously is impractical but functional, or vice versa. We can give some flavor to our prose the same way sprays of French give flavor to an English text. Then go ahead and assume your readers would know what you are talking about; they have to learn to meet you half-way, but again some readers hate this; then do what Petina Gappah does in An Elegy for Easterly; her characters use a lot of Shona, and the author provides a narrative context that enables readers to understand what is being said. Sometimes I get the sense that some readers may not even notice the Shona, just as you are supposed not to notice the English, either. What you notice, what you undestand is the story.

Baking Cakes in Kigali, a welcome addition to African literature.

Mariana Castro de Ali’s art, now exhibited at the Sacramento Poetry Center. I helped her put up the art yesterday.

It was my first time featuring a poet and a visual artist, and it worked. I called it a little experiment, but it’s something that I will do again in the future.

Terry O’Neal reading at SPC

Terry read her old and new poetry. She has a new poetry collection coming out before the end of the year, and, judging by the few poems she read, it promises to be a big hit. Of course, she read my all-time favorites, “Mama Africa”, “African Child”, and others from her volumes The Poet Speaks in Black, Motion Sickness and Good Mornin’ Glory.

Terry a O’neal

When Mariana’s turn came, I asked her questions about her art, which she explained well. I liked the performative nature of the question-answer session, an interview almost.

Mariana Castro de Ali, talking about her art.

More artistic images:
Some cattle. Mariana explained that she comes from the cattle region of Mexico, and so her art sometimes remembers the barbecues….

Mariana’s exhibition will run at the Sacramento Poetry Center until September 6, but she also has another one running concurrently in Mexico and she is going there next Monday.

The art deals with issues ranging from terminal diseases and topics of freedom, immigration and the American Dream.

A piece depicting breast cancer.

As to the question of why her art uses objects ranging from receipts, corn rinds, tampons and thread, she said she grew up in a Mexican tradition where nothing was wasted.

After Mariana’s amazing presentation, which was being taped for a documentary, we moved on to the open-mic session. Great talent as usual:

Diondre Garrison gave two captivating readings.

Already showing artistic diversity, the event ended up giving linguistic variety. Some poems were read in Spanish:

Maria Shahid reciting a poem in Spanish. I could not understand a word of what she was saying, but I felt the poem.

A bilingual (Spanish-English)rendition by Frank D. Graham and Hector de Avila Gonzalez.

I read two poems from my collection, Forever Let Me Go. One compared the Sacramento oppressive summers to the Mazvihwa (Zimbabwe) ones. The other details the frustrations of a persona who can’t use email for twenty-four hours.