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Weeping Becomes a River

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Weeping Becomes a River

By: Siphokazi Jonas
Narrated by: Siphokazi Jonas
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About this listen

Penguin Random House South Africa presents an immersive, poetic and mythical audio journey rooted in traditional South African storytelling.

Weeping Becomes a River, narrated by award-winning author and performer Siphokazi Jonas, weaves seemingly discordant worlds, rooted in her experiences of growing up in an Afrikaans dorpie, attending an English boarding school, and going on annual holidays to a village emaXhoseni during the transition years of South Africa’s democracy.

Migrating between forms, between poetry and intsomi, she navigates the waters of tradition, religion, intergenerational experiences of rural and urban spaces, and the ways in which family dynamics affect the body. She is not only a referee of the raging tensions within her, but she also pieces together a language for pathways of leaving and returning.

Her poems grapple with the past, the present, and possible futures without forgetting that “the body is marked territory from birth, and the scent of it never leaves.”

Recorded by: Creafulence

Sound design: Elvis Sibeko

Mixing and mastering: ES Studios

“Unonkala wadidiyela” sung by: Zimbini

©2024 Penguin Random House South Africa (P)2025 Penguin Random House South Africa Cultural & Regional Poetry
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This has been so different to the normal poetry. I loved the movement from poetry to storytelling.

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