A-dZiko Simba Gegele is a novelist, poet and storyteller whose work moves between the page and performance. Her debut, All Over Again, grew from stories written for her son and won the inaugural Burt Award for Caribbean Literature. Her writing draws on a practice that spans theatre, radio, screen and workshops.
All Over Again is a hilarious and enchanting coming of age story as a young boy goes through the trials and joys and puberty, battles with his 6-year-old sister who is the bane of his existences, worries about disappointing his mother and understanding his father. He has to learn to get around the town's bully while moving beyond know-it-all Kenny. The story is energetically told and has an enchanting narrative style that pulls you into it immediately. Growing up is hard. You know this. And when your mother has X-ray eyes and dances like a wobbling bag of water? When your father's idea of fun is to put all your money in a savings account and make you get up at 5 am every Sunday morning? When Kenny, Percival Thorton High's big show-off, is after Christina Parker - your Christina Parker? And when you have a shrimp of a little sister who is the bawlingest lits 6-year-old in the whole of Riverland? Then growing up is something you not sure you can manage at all. Who in their right mind could? Who? You?
Print · Blouse and Skirt Books · 2013 · English ISBN 9789769543614
A television profile of the writer from SpotlightPBCJamaica.
Spotlight · Season 2, episode 7 · Video
More About A-dZiko Simba Gegele
A-dZiko Simba Gegele brings poetry and theatre ↗ into her fiction. Of Jamaican and Nigerian parentage, she writes across genres and works as a storyteller and workshop facilitator. Her publisher describes a performance practice shaped by rhythm and vocal range; her writing has also extended to radio and screen.
All Over Again began as stories for her son ↗. Gegele wanted to give him room to express feelings as he grew older. Publisher Tanya Batson-Savage recognized a novel in the recurring characters, arranged the stories and asked Gegele to write the passages that connected them. That collaboration became an episodic account of boyhood in a fictional Jamaican village.
The novel won the inaugural Burt Award ↗ for Caribbean Literature in 2014. Its reach extends beyond the original English edition: Raffaella Belletti translated it into Italian as Tutto daccapo. Gegele has also taken part in the Yaddo, Cropper and Calabash writing programmes, and was longlisted for the 2019 Johnson and Amoy Achong Caribbean Writers Prize.
Quotes From the Writer and Contributors
“I wanted him to be able to stay open and express what he was feeling.”
