Far from Home (Street Child): The sisters of Street Child

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If Blincoe’s accounts are true, and there’s no reason to believe that they aren’t, then many workers, particularly women and children, were treated as slaves, fettered to the mill-owner for years and with no hope of release or betterment. The book is filled with real moments of tragedy, sadness, suffering, and triumph that I would believe it if Tariro was a real person. While the Karanga and Afrikaans heavily peppered throughout are used flavorfully enough to make a glossary unnecessary, a historical note would provide vital context about Zimbabwe’s complicated present; readers could be forgiven for finding Robert Mugabe a hero. Going through the process of the each book allows me to sort of relive it all and pay homage to the time it took to make. She wants to disrupt the narrative that paints people of colour and their experiences as ‘other’, instead placing children at the centre of stories that reflect their lived reality.

Powerful and thought-provoking historical fiction about two young girls growing up in Zimbabwe years apart. But then came a suggestion from HarperCollins that I might consider writing a companion book to Street Child. Luckily there's work to be found over the water in 1920s Liverpool and soon Kitty has a job in a grocer's, where she also catches the eye of the owner. We celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories, traditions and living cultures; and we pay our respects to Elders past and present. To me and countless friends and relatives here and gone, too many now lost to drugs and violence and crime.

It's heartbreaking to read of the suffering of these people but despite it all, inside Tariro still burns with hope and the strength to endure. Between a Wolf and a Dog is an elegantly told story describing the ambiguities within human relationships. Now, Lobengula, son of Mzilikazi, king of the Ndebele, had grown concerned about all these varungu – the Boers, the Portuguese, the British – bothering him, wanting him to let them look for gold and other minerals in his territory. I don't know much about colonialism and political turmoil in Zimbabwe but this book somehow gave me some insights into them.

Born in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Jackson moved to Manhattan’s Amsterdam housing projects as a child, where he had already been falsely accused and arrested for robbery by the age of ten. I enjoyed this book, and connected with the characters emotionally (as some of the girls I was with during Eid in the park can attest to! I'm only saddened by the fact that for many children, if they survived, life was a prolonged endurance trial through one hardship after another. But it is not be, for the white soldiers who have moved in have other plans for the people and for this land. Tariro's fighting spirit is awoken when her people, the Karanga who have the totem of a lion, are driven off their fertile land.Tariro is a “daughter of the soil”, born beneath a baobab tree in the land of her ancestors, surrounded by her loving family. But, of course, justice is not blind, and here I am, a middle-aged man with a career on the rise and no criminal record, suddenly thrown into the system. Katie and Tariro are worlds apart but their lives are linked by a terrible secret, gradually revealed in this compelling and dramatic story of two girls grappling with the complexities of adolescence, family and a painful colonial legacy.

A few minutes later I am neatly dressed and walking out the front door of one of Manhattan’s largest housing projects, briefcase in hand, on my way to Microsoft Corporation’s New York headquarters on Sixth Avenue. The AD and I decided to go with a horizontal book - something I’d been wanting to do since none of my other books were in landscape format.

Imagine now this same polar bear dipping a curious paw in the river water, then leaping in with a joyful splash. Time to think about the fact that it’s been nearly forty years since the last time I found myself in this situation, detained by law enforcement.