How "Bush Babies"' author, Tej Rae, crafted fiction from playgroups
Tej Rae
“Bush Babies”
Tej Rae placed 4th with her fiction entry, “Bush Babies.” But her association with the First Pages Prize doesn’t end there, she is unique in reaching the longlist in 2019 with a different opening to her novel, The Time-Share Husband of Ngulube Road. Her writing puts the reader smack bam into scenes rich with sensory detail in a setting out of the ordinary and, as judge Sebastian Faulks put it “surprising characters with a sense that they could unfold and develop” — where we can’t wait to find out what will happen next.
Synopsis:
Six years into Isabel's marriage to Kezzy, she masters a new skill: ignoring the click-click-click of her husband texting his girlfriends behind the bathroom door. The Time-Share Husband of Ngulube Road, literary fiction set in modern-day Zambia, is the story of a cross-cultural marriage in crisis. An American woman who thought she could recreate herself inside another culture, and her husband who thought he wanted to live like a Westerner.
Q&A with Tej: Congratulations on placing 4th this year! What was your inspiration for writing The Time-Share Husband of Ngulube Road, from which your entry “Bush Babies” was taken?
When I was 34, newly married and pregnant and living in Lusaka, I was part of a baby group that included many other expats like me in intercultural marriages. Like magnets, we found each other. We met every Saturday for lunch at Chit Chat café and while our toddlers played amongst wooden playhouses and sand pits, we sifted through all the hurdles of being a mother and a wife far from home. This novel, an amalgam of our experiences, grew out of those stories.
How long have you been writing?
My affinity for reading and writing surfaced young and was my primary focus except for a brief period during college when I convinced myself that I had nothing important to say. This was remedied soon when I became an English teacher and participated in a chapter of the national Writing Project in Northern Virginia, a summer institute based on the premise that teachers of writing should also be practitioners. I was put into a four-person writing groups where I was expected to share some new writing every week and ever since then, 25 years ago, I have been not only writing but also organizing similar groups all over the world – I have been living overseas since 1999 and traveling with my Zambian husband who works for the United Nations.
What were you doing when you heard you’d won 4th place?
It was before 9 am, and I was drinking Turkish coffee on my mom’s yellow couch in Santa Fe. I had left Addis Ababa with my two children in a panicked evacuation on March 19th, and everything felt upside down. I was supposed to use the time to finish my third novel, I Hum Delilah, set in Senegal, but wasn’t sure if anything – fiction, writing, creativity – made sense anymore.
I received a text about the prize: Can I call you? Yes! After talking to Lizzie from the organization for an hour about the prize, my story, and the pandemic, I felt the question had been answered.
What’s your process and any favorite books you’d recommend?
To paraphrase Lorrie Moore: Get all that morning coffee onto the page! I try to write in the mornings every day, even on weekends. Sometimes for 30 minutes, sometimes for two hours. My post-lunch brain just doesn’t produce the same way. I only recently realized how important the daily ritual was; it gives my subconscious a chance to keep track of all the threads of the story and solve the problems that arise.
Currently, I am reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and recommend it as a model of perfect pitch and pacing – even though it was her first novel.
The way she overlays shadows onto the traditional Dick and Jane story and uses it as a guidepost. The way she handles the back and forth play of time. The way her scenes balance the visual and the visceral: mason jars of water, penny candy, green knee socks, the curled bangs of a prostitute who lives upstairs.
Otherwise, Lauren Groff, Karen Russell, and Lorrie Moore are the literary trinity I constantly return to.
What are the next steps for The Time-Share Husband?
At this stage, I am looking at self-publishing and selling two of my four novels in Zambia, where they are set. For years, I patiently pursued more traditional routes of querying agents in New York and elsewhere, but so far have only published sections of the novels. Now, like some of my fellow prize-winners, I am ready to take matters into my own hands.
Thank you, Tej, we can’t wait to read the finished result!