{"id":20722,"date":"2023-05-10T07:31:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-10T05:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/?p=20722"},"modified":"2023-05-05T12:45:49","modified_gmt":"2023-05-05T10:45:49","slug":"intruders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/2023\/05\/10\/intruders\/","title":{"rendered":"Intruders"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">Mohale Mashigo\u2019s short story collection <em>Intruders <\/em>is an unexpected pleasure. You might remember, we wrote about Mashigo\u2019s thoughts on Afrofuturism (and how it isn\u2019t for Africans living in Africa) <a href=\"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/2020\/11\/23\/afrofuturism-and-africanfuturism\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>. That critique forms the foreword of this book of short stories and prepares the ground for the author\u2019s creative intervention in a speculative fiction written on and for the African continent \u2013 more specifically, the South African context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Intruders <\/em>ranges from stories about familiar monsters \u2013 werewolves and ghosts, say \u2013 to imagining technologies of the not-too-distant future \u2013 eye implant computers, for example. Even when the imagined taps into a familiar trope or figure, like the mermaid, Mashigo gives it a twist (spoiler: tentacles). Those twists, and the settings in which she embeds her characters and their experiences, are always tangibly and specifically South African. Her characters deal with everyday problems and realities, like poverty and the lack of electricity, as well as extraordinary ones, like growing wings.&nbsp; Almost all of Mashigo\u2019s significant characters are women of colour, and a recurring theme throughout the collection is violence against women. But Mashigo never make these characters merely victims \u2013 rather, they emerge as charismatic variations of vengeful spirits and high-heel wielding killers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While a dystopian thread runs through many of the tales, there is an upbeat rhythm that never allows them to become a drag \u2013 much like Mashigo\u2019s characters who, despite living through nightmarish events, never seem to lose their sense of humour. I especially enjoyed the way the stories interlaced local folktales and traditions with speculative technologies. My only critique would be that the stories sometimes seemed to end just as I was getting into them, but then maybe that\u2019s just the short story format. If you get a hold of <em>Intruders<\/em>, it\u2019s well worth a read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Intruders ranges from stories about familiar monsters \u2013 werewolves and ghosts, say \u2013 to imagining technologies of the not-too-distant future \u2013 eye implant computers, for example. Even when the imagined taps into a familiar trope or figure, like the mermaid, Mashigo gives it a twist&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":20717,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[474,123,475,221,162,288],"class_list":["post-20722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-africanfuturism","tag-afrofuturism","tag-mohale-mashigo","tag-short-stories","tag-south-africa","tag-speculative-fiction"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20722"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20725,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20722\/revisions\/20725"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}