Interview: Tadiwa Madenga and Her Research on 20th and 21st Century African Book Fairs
Tadiwa Madenga is a scholar of African and Black diasporic literature, gender and sexuality, and print cultures. Her research is concerned with the relationship between literature and sexuality which she traces through 20th and 21st century African book fairs and their subgenres: keynotes, book stalls, magazines, poetry. Across her academic and creative projects, her reading practice centers archival work and site specificity as critical methods for literary analysis. Madenga received her PhD from Harvard University, and her research has been supported by various fellowships and grants at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies, and the Hutchins Centre for African and African American Research.
If we foreground the cultural politics of display, then we can clearly see how book fairs are important sites for queer expression to emerge and circulate in various forms.
Tadiwa Madenga, Assistant Professor, Department of English
First of all, welcome to UC Berkeley and to the department! I’m wondering if you could say a little bit generally about your own research interests, writing, and scholarship. What has inspired the work you’re doing now?
Thank you, I’m so excited to be here. What has influenced my work are the places I’ve lived in and a desire to situate myself in them. When I was an undergraduate student, I lived in New York. It was a great time for African literature, queer discourse, and art. Wangechi Mutu was everywhere, Binyavanga Wainana was still alive, and I remember being an unpaid intern at the Center for Fiction watching Taiye Selasi reading from her debut novel. Is this a moment? The thought crossed my mind then, and looking back it really was. I also occasionally have small country sensibilities and enthusiasm, so eventually I became curious about Harare, where I was born, and its contributions: What was Harare’s place in global literary culture and history?
Fast forward a few years to graduate school. I have less to say about Boston and more about this literary methods class. It was taught by the scholar David Alworth who wrote a book called Site Reading: Fiction, Art, and Social Form. I already knew I was interested in African literature, but the class gave me the confidence to consider a site rather than texts or authors as my primary focus. So, I experimented with his methods and re-imagined them to think about book fairs.
When you visited last year, you framed your project as taking a different approach to the 1995 Zimbabwe International Book Fair than many scholarly readings had previously, and suggested you were foregrounding the bookfair itself as foundational to understanding debates around sexuality. I was really interested in the idea of a project that considers this kind of grounded site of the circulation of books as a way of understanding sexuality (rather than just considering the bookfair as only the site of a political conflict). Am I getting that right? I’d love to hear more about the role this bookfair plays in your work.
You’re right! Book fairs are not only my medium and method, but I also see them as fundamentally erotic sites that help us to explore sexuality. Some of their erotic nature might be more familiar to us. They are hangout spots, cruising grounds, safe spaces for introverts to look mysterious and politically engaged while browsing books etc.
Of course, what happened at the 1995 Zimbabwe International Book Fair was far more significant. It’s infamous as this event where the government first banned the Gay and Lesbian Association of Zimbabwe and is often used as an origin story for more contemporary forms of political homophobia in the region that we can also see in debates here in the United States. But the government’s ban also made a distinction between the possible tolerance of private homosexuality and their rejection of any display of “homosexual materials” or “public sex.” If we foreground the cultural politics of display, then we can clearly see how book fairs are important sites for queer expression to emerge and circulate in various forms. Another important note was that the Gay and Lesbian Association had previously been censored from newspapers and radio, but it’s difficult to censor an unruly assemblage called a “book fair.” I can’t help but be drawn to this kind of place where you can hide all sorts of things, even yourself.
What do you have planned for this semester, academically? Are there any projects you’re working on that you’d like to share with the UC Berkeley community?
I will be spending most of my time planning my spring semester classes. One of them is a seminar on African literature and queerness. Another class is on magazine cultures. For the second course, I’m excited to talk with students about the history of African and Black Diasporic magazines like Transition and Chimurenga, and more recent platforms like Isele. But I am also interested in what’s circulating in the bay area that the class could look at. There is a new magazine coming in spring 2025 called ELASTIC on psychedelic art and literature that I’m curious about. So, I am calling on the community to let me know what they are reading here.
Are there things outside of the academic world of UC Berkeley that you’ve been enjoying in the bay area (or that you’re looking forward to exploring)?
I arrived very recently, but the bakeries have been good so far. I am usually eating well, then walking up more hills. Maybe exploring the music scene will add something to the experience.
What three books would you recommend?
Marilyn Nance, Last Day in Lagos
Yvonne Vera, Butterfly Burning
Dawn Lundy Martin, Instructions for The Lovers
English Department
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