Award-winning writer Cynthia Jele has joined the “Faces of FunDza” campaign to encourage and motivate young South Africans to get reading.
Cynthia Jele grew up in a small border town in Mpumalanga. She graduated with a BTech in Environmental Health from the then Natal Technikon and obtained a BA in International Business from North Central College in Illinois.
She worked as a public health officer for the Mpumalanga Health Department, and then travelled to the United States where she spent a year as an au pair. She then went on to live in the United Kingdom for a year. Upon her return to South Africa, Jele worked as a management consultant. She has recently established an economic development consultancy, Lombuso Consulting Group.
Jele won 1st and 4th prizes in the 2008 BTA/Anglo-Platinum Short Story Competition. Her debut novel – a story celebrating love and female friendships – Happiness is a Four-Letter Word, won the Best First Book category (Africa region) in the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2011, as well as the 2011 M-Net Literary Award in the Film category. The novel was also shortlisted for the 2011 Booksellers Choice Award.
In 2006 Jele self-published a guide, So You Wanna Be an Au Pair, What Your Agency Will Never Tell.
FunDza is very proud to have Cynthia as one of our first ‘Faces of Fundza’ and to have her short stories published on the Fundza mobi site. Cynthia wrote the ‘The Big Crush’ which was really enjoyed by Fundza readers and she will soon follow with a sequel. ‘Finding Joe,’a story of friendship and family in a small railway town in KZN is the subject of the current story on the Fundza mobi site. Cynthia has been very supportive of Fundza and we value her continued involvement with the literacy trust and in popularising reading.
On how her writing journey started, Jele muses, “I once attended a reading session given by an American author, where towards the end of her talk she took the audience through a short writing exercise: she read out a line from a new short story she was working on and asked the audience to complete the first two paragraphs. I remember the thrill of trying to put something on a piece of paper. When I got home, I pulled out my computer and wrote a short story. I haven’t stopped since.”
Cynthia answers some of FunDza’s questions about her early experiences of reading and books:
What is your first memory of listening to or reading a story?
I remember reading Masihambisane (prescribed Zulu books) in primary school.
What is your favourite book/books?
Zadie Smith’s White Teeth remains on top of my list.
What role does reading play in your life?
Reading provides an escapism from the real world, books take me to different worlds – worlds I can only dream of sometimes.
Why do you think it’s important for SA teens to be reading?
Dr Seuss sums it nicely, “The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you will go.”
Did anyone particular inspire you to read?
I got into reading on my own and enjoyed it. After the Masihambisane series and after I had learned to read English, I couldn’t stop reading comics.