WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT IT

describes the mood, after Zimbabwe won its independence from Britain in 1980, as a “release of breaths long held.” But that optimism gave way to a reign of terror. From 1983 through 1987, an estimated 20,000 civilians were killed by forces loyal to Prime Minister Robert Mugabe in what became known as Gukurahundi, or “the early rain which washes away the chaff.” The atrocities were excluded from the nation’s history books—Tshuma’s own family couldn’t bear to speak of them. Now, she says,, wrestles with the legacy of Gukurahundi and its place in the national consciousness. “At home, I would have become aware of the potential dangers of what I was doing—the limits on what we are able to discuss and how,” she says. “In Iowa, I just thought, ‘Let me keep this as fiction and see what happens.’”