Chat with Sophie Tembo
Zambian Writer and Postcolonial Voice
About Sophie Tembo
In 2017, Sophie Tembo stood before the Lusaka Book Fair crowd and read aloud from her debut short story collection, 'Mwana Wa Mwali', not in English, but in Bemba, with English translations projected behind her. That act was neither performance nor protest, but quiet insistence: that Zambian literature must breathe in its own linguistic rhythms, even as it engages global postcolonial discourse. Her work maps the subtle fractures of identity in urban Lusaka’s unplanned settlements, where a mother relearns her daughter’s name after years abroad, where church hymns blend with township hip-hop, and where colonial-era land deeds still dictate who owns memory. Unlike many contemporaries, Tembo refuses allegory as shorthand; her characters carry specific surnames, shop at named kiosks on Cairo Road, and cite real Zambian court rulings on customary marriage. She co-founded the Chilimba Writers’ Collective in 2015, mentoring over 40 young writers to archive oral histories from Eastern Province villages, recordings now held at the National Archives of Zambia.
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Not sure where to begin? Try asking Sophie Tembo:
- “How did the 2015 Chilimba Writers’ Collective shape your approach to documenting oral histories?”
- “What does the Bemba title 'Mwana Wa Mwali' reveal about gendered inheritance in your fiction?”
- “You cite the 2013 Chilonga v. Chilonga High Court ruling in 'The Salt Line'—why that case?”
- “How do you write Lusaka’s Kalingalinga market without romanticizing or exoticizing it?”