Dear Mrs Gerwel,
The most bizarre thing has just happened, another mystery that has to be solved. What is this strange occurrence?
Juliette Mnqeta is speechless!
With every fibre of my being, please allow me to thank you for the wonderful year you have given me. This was a writing workshop to assist with polishing up a manuscript, mere blank ink on white paper. But the experience healed the teenager inside of me who was told she wasn’t exceptional enough to see her work on the bookshelves.
A brief story (and yes, at times, when I try really hard, I can be brief)
At nineteen, I got a job as a receptionist for a property letting company. My employer was a mean fellow, sort of similar to the villains I now write about. But apart from many disparaging remarks, he would say to me about my race, hair, and weight, thinking it was all a joke, he plain out told me that I would never be able to write a book. He said everybody wants to write a book, thinking they have a story other mere mortals would find interesting. But only exceptional people actually got published. I wasn’t one of those.
Because of that comment, I stopped writing at nineteen. In my late twenties, I stopped reading any sort of fiction because I didn’t want to be tempted to write again.
A few months after my mother passed away, I swung open the top panel of my hand-me-down Lenovo ThinkPad, went into Microsoft Word, and through tears and sobs, just started writing. Realising I no longer had any parents triggered something or other in me.
“If the Dead Could Talk” was the first piece of writing after more than a decade of not believing anyone would be interested in hearing my voice. And interestingly, it’s this novel that the Jakes Gerwel Foundation showed faith in, almost as if the legacy of Professor Gerwel was telling me that I did have a story to share with the world.
Again, I don’t have the words to thank you, Mrs Gerwel for taking a heartbroken and bruised teenager into your arms and saying: “My dear, your employer was a fool. And here, we don’t argue with fools because they’ll take you down to their level and beat you with experience. You are exceptional after all.”
Thank you for saving my life.
Yours sincerely,
Juliette Mnqeta
Pictures: Juliette Mnqeta
Juliette Manitshana-Mnqeta matriculated from Westerford High School in 2005. She is currently based in Plettenberg Bay and works as a freelance Labour Court transcriber and isiXhosa translator. The crime novel she will be working on has the working title If The Dead Could Talk.
