ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses how Chenjerai Hove utilises a Shonalised version of Zimbabwean English called Shonglish in his novel, Ancestors (1996). Hove’s move connects him to thinkers like Ngugi and Achebe whose ideas on language, though disparate, point to the need to communicate ‘localised’ experiences using languages that carry the weight of those experiences. While the use of Shonglish did not begin with Hove, Ancestors is a deliberate experiment on many fronts, including language. The title of the novel speaks of a writer who writes in English while reverting to an ancestral cultural eye in order to carry the weight and capture the experiences of his Shona characters. While it is easier to view Hove as a cultural nationalist in the mould of Ngugi, Chinweizu, and others who advocate for a creative aesthetic that pays homage to the culture that produced the writer (as a way of challenging the subversive effects of colonialism and saving the culture), I argue that Hove’s experimentation is actually a product of giving his characters a worldly appeal beyond the limiting shibboleths of a sedentary culture. By doing so, Hove coaxes the reader to avoid the tourist’s gaze and the cliché of seeing the characters as world minorities with a language that is not as worldly as English. Shonglish, therefore, becomes a ‘new’ English whose creative and communicative importance is at par with standardised English, communicating the universal theme of female oppression.
