The Cheeky Natives The Cheeky Natives

In this beautiful memoir, Safiya Sinclair writes about her childhood and adolescence in Jamaica with parents in the Rastafari faith. In an act of personal excavation, she brings forth the hidden histories of a people pushed to the margins by colonisation, oppression, and religious intolerance, all exacerbated by patriarchy. 
Raised in difficult socio-economic conditions by a father who increasingly becomes more militant in his practice of Rastafari, Safiya and her siblings find refuge in her mother’s creativity and love for literature.
We are drawn to the discovery of Safiya as a scholar and poet while navigating her intimate relationship with her family, the first site of turmoil and conflict between the author and the people she loves. Truthful but graceful, we embark on the journey to humanise her parents in the face of the difficult upbringing that she has.
The beauty of Safiya’s writing is the tenderness with which she handles the contradictions of an upbringing that cuts its children’s joys and ambitions small but also finds love and joy in many of these moments.
All of this take place with the ever foreboding threat of Babylon, encroaching in their personal lives and their relationship with the outside world. We are struck by the ways in which even the most vehement opposers of Babylon, accede to its rules in the world of work and life – a metaphor for the ways in which people survive.
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
A New York Times Notable Book
A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!
A Best Book of 2023 by the New York Times, Time, The Washington Post, Vulture, Shelf Awareness, Goodreads, Esquire, The Atlantic, NPR, and Barack Obama
The 2024 OCM BOCAS PRIZE non-fiction winner
Shortlisted for the non-fiction prize for the women's prize.  
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In My Life as a Chameleon, Diana Anyakwo explores the themes of identity, family and memory with a tender hand. Centred around the experiences of Lily, a teenager of mixed race background growing up in Nigeria and England. 

Lily’s experience is further complicated by her birth order as the youngest of four children with a significant age difference between her and the others. Interestingly, the novel is written in a diary like format flitting between different time periods with no strict adherence to chronology.

We watch Lily experience bereavement and the subsequent pain of grief as young child whose experience is often dismissed. Prior to this loss, Lily experiences the confusion of a loved one’s mental illness and her family’s inability to confront or adequately acknowledge the fissures and chasms that this causes.


We sat down in this delightful conversation with Diana to discuss what it means to write characters who navigate complex social contexts and identities while grieving a past unknown and an uncertain future.

My Life as a Chameleon has been longlisted for the Jhalak Children's and Young Adult Prize 2024 and shortlisted for the KMPG Ireland Children's Books Ireland Awards 
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"1. Unwelcome Reunion Unwelcome Reunion
When I was twenty-eight, my stepmother Anabel came to New York on vacation. She was living, at the time, in Pakistan, where she worked for a UN agency. At a restaurant a few blocks from my Chinatown apartment, we ate noodle soup and drank red wine. That night, Anabel told me my father did not die of cancer as I believed. He died, she claimed, of AIDS."

Aftershocks are smaller earthquakes that occur in the same general area during the days to years following a larger event or "mainshock."

In her memoir of the same title, Nadia Ouwusu explores what it means to be a nomad, a childhood characterised by loss and distance. We travel with Nadia in a life characterised by contrasts, having no mother and two mothers, having strong roots and none at the same time.

Thematically inspired by the activity an earthquake, Owusu weaves between different chronological events culminating in a week long reckoning with self and history at age 28.

In a powerfully tender conversation, Owusu sat with us  to discuss her memoir. A reflection on belonging, grief and reckoning.

Filled with honesty, grace and the joy of recollection, this was one of our favourite conversations this year.


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"And in breaking news, convicted serial killer and rapist, Napoleon Dingiswayo, escaped from Pretoria’s C-Max Prison at twelve-fifteen this afternoon, along with serial rapist and armed robber Andries Mathe, and heist kingpin Sifiso Khumalo.’ The voice of the newsreader rings crisp and cool while announcing the earth-shattering news."Angela Makholwa is one of South Africa’s more eminent crime writers. In Red Ink, we were introduced to the characters of Lucy Khambule and Napoleon Dingiswayo and left on the edge as we wondered what happened next. In her latest novel, Makholwa revisits the chapters we thought were long closed. The book opens with Napoleon’s escape from prison and Lucy’s subsequent terror begins. We sat down with Makholwa to discuss what it means to write crime fiction in South Africa, Lucy Khambule and how our preoccupations drive us towards the truth. We laughed, we introspected and walked away with a newfound appreciation for the art of crime fiction writing.Support the show

In this refreshing tale about Black love and the self-discovery, we are introduced to Zola, a young woman in her 20’s thrashing out what it means to reckon with disappointment. We meet her as a new arrival in South Africa, following an extended stint in Germany which ultimately falls apart. In the face of the disappointment of a dream shattered, she also has to navigate family politics and a complicated love life.This is when Mbali enters the story, a gorgeous man from the right side of town who is irresistible on paper but is deeply flawed and complex as most people are. The ensuing chaos between these two with a third unlikely character as Okuhle, who is her boss.The Cheeky Natives sat down with Zibu to discuss the nuanced nature of Black lives, the disappointments of dreams deferred and the search for one’s self in the face of complicated romantic and familial relationships.Zibu who is is no stranger to writing romance offered us the unique perspective of writing on Black love, life on the periphery and the navigations of class and education, especially between the haves and the have nots. More importantly, she asks important questions around the act of choosing yourself and your dreams even at great cost.Support the show

“In Violet’s bedroom, most of the furniture had been moved, except for the bed whose mattress lay on the floor and carried the weight of an unconscious Violet. The wardrobe had been moved to the corner of the room and the table that had been near the window moved to the sitting room. There was a small mound where the table had occupied space, a small grave where Violet’s baby would be laid to rest. Uncle Sontaga had dug the grave with the help of Andzani and Neo. He had used his leg to determine its depth, and when it got to his knee, he’d resolved it was deep enough.” A Soft Landing is a novel that explores the implications of a past not decisively dealt with. Wisani’s characters live lives that are mired in the questions and complexities that characterise Black life. A Soft Landing is more than a coming-of-age tale; it is a poignant study of grief in its myriad of guises. Every one of the central characters in this novel has a precarious relationship to loss. This is an examination on the weight of grief, past and present in all its manifestations. In this episode, we chat to Wisani Mushwana about his debut. We traverse topics such as homosexuality being unAfrican, weaponising shame, the cost of a human life, mental health, the implications of not dealing with trauma. We also delve into tender moments in the book, which include love, healing and hope.
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