The Stone Breakers: A Classic Novel of Labor Resistance x Emmanuel Dongala, Sara Hanaburgh (tr.)

355 pages.

Expected publication date: Sept 5, 2023 (Schaffner Press)

Fiction/African Literature.

Driving through a suburb on the outskirts of Harare recently, an area with lots of new houses going up, I saw a woman of indeterminate age sitting in front of her tiny house, breaking rocks. It was just a glimpse, and I wished afterwards that I had stopped to speak to her, to hear a little of her story; but I was in a hurry, and the moment was lost. It’s not that I ever forget that I’m a woman, but it’s easy to begin to take one’s own experiences and stories for the only truth, to forget that women’s experiences are incredibly diverse, and that womanhood—even African womanhood—is no monolith. In a way, that’s what’s at the heart of this novel by Emmanuel Dongala, about a group of women who break stones on the banks of a river in an imagined African country, and who decide to push for a better return on their labour.

I loved hearing about how each of them ended up there—the author in the process blowing up the reader’s assumptions, because when we find people in more precarious positions than our own, we always make assumptions. But the main plot of the novel is also wonderful: a group of women going up against a powerful and corrupt autocracy, with a happy (if somewhat bittersweet) ending, with their encountering a powerful woman minister and a stereotypical and very familiar Mother of the Nation (the First Lady) on the way. They come up against the brutal police service and a broken health system. There are all of the ways ordinary people continue to survive a broken state. There’s also love: an awful ex, and a budding romance.

The women have overcome sometimes terrible odds to even be at the riverside, and it’s a mistake to underestimate these warriors because of their current station in life. Even though many of the details of their experiences are grim, this is ultimately a feel-good novel and a powerful story—one that the minister of women’s affairs in the novel, and anyone who claims to advocate for women, would do well to read.

Thank you to Lauren Cerand, Schaffner Press and to Edelweiss for access to this DRC.

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