Litnet

Vuyokazi Ngemntu is a writer-performer based in Cape Town, South Africa, whose praxis uses poetry, song, physical theatre, storytelling and ritual to navigate ancestral trauma, confront inequality and inspire healing. Recent highlights include having her short story “Binnegoed” selected as the overall winner of Ibua journal’s 2022 “Bold: Food” regional selection. Another milestone includes having her short story “The serpent’s handmaiden” shortlisted for the Share Africa Climate Change Fiction Award. She says of her story “Mirror, Mirror”: “In my story, I was trying to unpack the normalised colourism and ‘light skin privilege’ that were a part of my childhood, grappling with the complexities of hair and its negotiations as an aspect of black identity. The idea of the heteronormative nuclear family is also challenged; so are the nuanced experiences of love, kinship and motherhood, which all allow room for fluidity even in the face of tension and tragedy.”