Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives (Voice of Witness) - Tapa dura

The fifth volume in the Voice of Witness series presents the narratives of Zimbabweans whose lives have been affected by the country's political, economic, and human rights crises. This book asks the question: How did a country with so much promise a stellar education system, a growing middle class of professionals, a sophisticated economic infrastructure, a liberal constitution, and an independent judiciary go so wrong?In their own words, they recount their experiences of losing their homes, land, livelihoods, and families as a direct result of political violence. They describe being tortured in detention, firebombed at home, or beaten up or raped to "punish" votes for the opposition. Those living abroad in exile or forced to flee to neighboring countries recount their escapes, of cutting through fences, swimming across crocodile-infested rivers, and entrusting themselves to human smugglers. This book includes Zimbabweans of every age, class and political conviction, from farm laborers to academics, from artists and opposition leaders to ordinary Zimbabweans: men and women simply trying to survive as a once thriving nation heads for collapse.

Peter Orner is the author of The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo and Esther Stories. He is also the editor of the Voice of Witness book Underground America, an oral history of undocumented people living in the U.S. A 2006 Guggenheim Fellow, Orner is an associate professor at San Francisco State University. Annie Holmes was raised in Zimbabwe, and is now a documentary filmmaker and a writer who has published short fiction widely, both in the U.S. and Africa, as well as a memoir about Zimbabwean independence entitled Good Red.