Common House Magazine

Grace: We’re back with our interviewee from our very first issue of Common House! Kagiso Lesego Molope, an Indigenous South African-Canadian novelist and playwright, has returned to catch up with us since 2022. Kagiso, your writing has been described as immersive due to your talent for clear and effective imagery. Do you have a specific method for conveying settings so clearly?

Kagiso: My thinking is very visual because my writing is really inspired by cinema and the form of storytelling that you get in cinema. I used to write screenplays, so when I write prose I think about imagery a lot because I visualize what I would see on screen. 

Grace: That makes a lot of sense. I was going to ask about the play you’ve written, Maya Angelou: Black Woman Rising—which details the life and work of Maya Angelou. How has your background in novel-writing influenced your work as a playwright and vice versa? Considering your background in film studies, would you adapt for the screen?

Kagiso: I wouldn’t adapt for the screen because I actually ended up really hating film school. I realized that I thought I wanted to be a filmmaker because of my love for film, but film school is quite soul-sucking. It’s not so much for artists like me. Being a novelist makes it very difficult for me to be a playwright. It doesn’t actually inspire playwriting so easily. I find playwriting quite difficult because it is closer to poetry. You can’t ramble on for a long time; it’s all about an economy of words. As a novelist I can write 300 pages, but for a play it’s mostly dialogue. I find it hard to bring my words down from 100 to 20, so playwriting has been very difficult for me. I’m supposed to write another play… I don’t know if or when it’s going to happen laughs.

Grace: It sounds like it would be hard! Is accuracy-to-life an element you prioritize in your narratives? Do your personal experiences typically play a large part in your conceptualization or formulation of narratives?

Kagiso: I have said this before and it might sound weird to people, but I always think that real stories are a waste of good fiction. You can go wild with fiction, so I don’t get caught-up in factual writing. I think it’s more fun when you can play around with how much you can embellish. That makes me sound like I like lying laughs but that’s not really what it is. I really enjoy adding my own voice to a real story. As an example, right now I am writing about the student riots that happened in South Africa in 1976. I don’t name the date—I write about the riots, but I don’t specify that those are the actual riots I’m talking about. That gives me a lot of room to play around with time, space, and character. Yes, my experiences have informed my writing, but it’s not only that. It’s what I’m able to do with those experiences on a page that is more fun for me. Things don’t have to happen exactly the way they did in reality. 

Grace: Yeah, writing fiction is a good way to expand on your imagination in a lot of ways, and I think that creates really interesting stories.

Kagiso: I think the other thing is that writing can be a good healing process. So, if something terrible happened, you can actually find some kind of closure or resolution to that thing by writing about it with a different ending.

Grace: For sure. And your work doesn’t shy away from addressing social and political issues. How do you feel about the role of literature in shaping political discourse? Do you think storytelling can influence real-world change?

Kagiso: I think it can, absolutely. My writing is my way of being in conversation with what’s happening in the world, so I think of it as my contribution to social change. I’m potentially bringing something valuable into the conversation that can lead to a different outcome in our collective thinking and actions. Stories are written by real-world people, so our experiences come onto the page. That can influence real-world change, especially if you think of yourself as a very active citizen in the events of the world. You’re not just writing for yourself; you are always writing to communicate with the world. It can influence change, because you are in constant dialogue with the events of your day.

Grace. That’s a great answer. How do you feel about the ways South African literature is experiencing global attention and the increasing recognition of African authors? Do you think this is shifting the cultural conversation, both locally and internationally? Is there a direction or aspect that hasn't received as much attention that you think should?

Kagiso: Let’s see. Indigenous South Africans have been writing forever—writers like Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee have always had attention. But I think South African writing has always been associated with white South African writers. It’s taken a long time for Indigenous South Africans to get their voices out into the world and that’s mainly because Indigenous South Africans don’t write for the world. This is a generalization, I realize, but I think African writers, especially West African writers, have always had the world in mind when they’re writing, so there’s a lot of translating that happens. But Indigenous South African writers have always written to and about each other, so we don’t really translate what we’re saying to the world. We’re concerned with having a conversation with each other. A lot of African writers, like NoViolet Bulawayo from Zimbabwe and people like Chimamanda [Ngozi Adichie], write about the interactions of Africans with Westerners, which means that the Westerner is able to find themselves within African literature. But South African Indigenous writers don’t do that, which has made it difficult for us to be understood by the rest of the world. I guess that’s been intentional, but I think the world is now starting to bring itself to us, which was always the hope.

Grace: Do you think there’s a difference in communication when there is a translation from a native African language to English?

Kagiso: Yeah… I mean, I think so. But I think it's really about world thinking. When books are translated from a European language, like French or Spanish, into English, there isn’t that much of a block. People have come to understand that. Obviously a book can be translated from any African language, but there isn’t much engagement with Africa for people to really open themselves up to what a book translated from an African language is meant to do. So then those books don’t get as much attention. 

Grace: Right. So, switching topics a little bit—your most recent novel, This Book Betrays My Brother, along with your previous works, explores complex themes of identity, belonging, and social issues. What steps must be taken to structure a narrative around complex/multi-faceted issues—or similarly, is there a certain level of consciousness for how these narratives might be received that affects how you frame them?

Kagiso: I don’t know if there’s a certain level of consciousness. I write mainly young adult literature—or I have in the past. I don’t know about the reception of the book, but I do always think about not insulting the reader’s intelligence. I know—and this kind of goes back to my point about us writing for ourselves—that a lot of these really complex issues are very familiar to the average young South African, so I don’t think that there needs to be a level of consciousness for them to be very receptive to the message. For example, This Book Betrays My Brother addresses an issue that every young South African is aware of: sexual violence. I always write from the point of thinking that the reader knows what I’m talking about, and because I’m always writing for South Africa, I don’t have to think harder about that. But maybe your average young, 13/14-year-old Canadian is not aware of that. Since I’m not usually writing for audiences outside of South Africa, I don’t really consider the level of consciousness needed to understand these issues as much as I would if I were writing for the world.

Grace: So what advice would you give those looking to carve out a space in the literary world, particularly for young voices coming from underrepresented communities?

Kagiso: I would say write for yourself. People are not aware of how much of an impact your work can have in the world when you are bringing in a voice that hasn’t been heard. Not censoring yourself is probably the most important thing. I think the world is more hungry for new stories outside of the mainstream than we actually realize. The world is open and ready to know what is happening in communities that it’s not familiar with. As I said before, it’s a little more difficult with Africa because sometimes people are not as open to those stories, or they have an idea of what Black Indigenous people of colour should be writing. If you write trauma, it feels real to your average Westerner, but if you write about joy and celebration in an Indigenous community, you might be afraid that people won’t want to hear that, but I think those are exactly the stories that should be written. So my main point would be don’t be afraid of writing what feels authentic to you. You don’t always have to be feeding the world’s trauma just because you’re coming from a marginalized place. 

Grace: That is great advice. Speaking of guidance, you previously taught at Carleton University, and now you’re teaching at the University of Ottawa. Has your experience teaching affected your writing process or style and, if so, how?

Kagiso: Hm… I don’t know if I’ve taught enough for it to influence or affect my writing very much. I do think I’m inspired and encouraged by seeing unpublished writers work so hard and strive to get their voices out into the world. The world discourages artists from being committed to their art. Maybe it does affect my writing because I do get to places where I feel discouraged and stuck, so it’s exciting when I’m reminded of the importance of art and literature. So I guess I would say it has affected my work in that it encourages me to stick with it. 

Grace: That’s great! And I’d love to know about your fifth novel, which you are currently working on, called We Inherit the Fire. How has this writing and editing process been for you? What is the novel focusing on, and when is it set to be published?

Kagiso: Oh my god, that is such a good question because I’m in the middle of writing. The process has been very, very, very challenging—very different from what I’ve done before. I’m used to writing a novel, sending it to the publisher, and going through a short editing process—I usually get published with the second draft. My first draft is the one I send, then I do a little bit of editing, and then I send it back. That’s because, in Canada, I’ve always been published by small, independent publishing houses. They don’t have the resources to sit with me through, you know, ten drafts. Now, I’m with McClelland & Stewart, which, as you know, is an imprint of Random House. Them having the resources to sit with me through many drafts is great, but I have been working on this novel for over a year now because they keep sending it back and saying, “This is what you could do differently,” “This is what we’d like to see,” “This is what we think you should pull back on.” It’s been very challenging, but also very rewarding. I’m learning that I’m perhaps a much better writer than I thought I was because I am able to go back and rethink the story. It’s made me think more about my craft and has helped me know where my talent is and isn’t strong. I’ve grown a lot; it’s been really great.

The book is about a woman who is a former political prisoner. She was imprisoned when she was young, and now she is a mother. There are two voices: the mother’s and the daughter’s. There is a lot of distance between the two. The mother is writing about her life and her hopes and dreams for the country, and the daughter is writing about the disconnect between the woman who is adored by the country and the woman who is her mother. It’s a multigenerational story as well: you get the stories of all four generations of women within the same family. These women have all been activists in some form, and the text explores how that looks within their relationships with each other—how mothering the world intersects with mothering your own children. It’s coming out in January of 2026, so a year from now exactly. 

Grace: I am excited; it sounds really good.

Kagiso: Thanks! I hope it will be—it’s been so much work.

Grace: I’m sure it will be an amazing read! Thank you for talking with me.

Kagiso: Thank you, Grace!