Georgia Sparling
This is Why We Write, a podcast of Lesley University. Every episode, we bring you conversations with authors from the Lesley community to talk about books, writing and the writing life. Today's guest is Thato Mwosa. Thato has studied Writing for the Stage and Screen at Lesley's MFA in Creative Writing program. and she wrote and directed Memoirs of a Black Girl, which won Best Feature Film at the Roxbury International Film Festival earlier this year, and was a selection for Atlanta's BronzeLens Film Fest in August. She's the author and illustrator of the new children's book, 14 African Women Who Made History. She's also a film teacher and has created her own trivia game. So we have lots to talk about. Welcome to the show.
Thato Mwosa
Thank you. Thank you for the invitation.
Georgia
Oh, yeah, I'm so excited. You do so many things. First, let's talk a little bit. You're originally from Botswana. So what originally brought you to the States?
Thato
I actually came here for college. I came here in 1997. Actually, I came here to do journalism, because my dad was a journalist, and I wanted to be like him. I followed his writing when I was growing up and I was interested in writing too. When I was doing a year into journalism, I got to take a class that was part of broadcast journalism. And I was like, this is it. Like, I like the idea of incorporating camera because it's still journalism, it's just that now you're doing documentaries, like long form or short form, and news and all of that. So I was more I was attracted to the camera as aspect of journalism. So I decided to actually focus on TV broadcasting. That was my degree at Emerson College. And in that program, I was introduced to documentary filmmaking, which I fell in love with.
Georgia
Memoirs of a Black Girl is fictional. So what caused you to move over to like a fictional storytelling instead of documentary?
Thato
Yeah, that's a good question. So I graduated, and I was working in nonprofit. I just had these stories that were sitting in me, and I wanted to share that when I had not written a screenplay. I had no idea what writing a screenplay looked like. But I knew there was a story that I wanted to turn into a film. And it was fictional. As an artist, stories arrive sometimes and you have to receive them, right? And I remember sitting and I'm like, "I really want to tell the story, but I don't know how to. The only way I can do it is if it's a documentary, but the story is just a story that was just made up in my head." So I looked up a few programs, and I came across this program called New York Film Academy. And fortunately, at that time, they had an eight-week course that was taking place at Harvard for the summer. So I enrolled in that eight-week course to learn screenwriting, narrative, filmmaking, directing, and all of that. I mean, technically, I knew in terms of how to use a camera and all of those other things, I just needed to know how to tell a story, and how to at least write a story and direct a fictional film. And that's what I got from the program. So from that program, I made my first film, Don't Tell Me You Love Me. With that film, I won the Emerging Filmmaker Award, and that was 2005 at the Roxbury Film Festival. And with that, I was like, "Oh my god, I'm a filmmaker. I can do this." [laughs] And I think that just really increased my desire to tell stories and with confidence, like it boosted my confidence, because, sometimes you make something and you're like, "But I'm not a real filmmaker." So I think I was like, "Okay, this is it. I'm gonna make a second film." And I started to actually dabble in both and, and I grew more as a filmmaker, and this was like, 16 years ago now.
Georgia
So what brought you to Lesley?
Thato
I knew I needed to get my MFA, and I debated because when you look at an MFA in Film program, because I mean, I knew I wanted to get an MFA in Film. I just wasn't like, I don't want to go to-- because when you look at the MFA programs across the country, most of them are three years. Why? Because it's like law school. They assume that you're coming with no background in film. A lot of students actually don't have to have a background in film, because it's like law school or medical school. You're coming in, you want to learn how to make films, you're gonna do introductory classes in production. And I was like "They're going to teach me what I know in terms of technical stuff. But what I really need is to, to work on my writing side." Because for me, technically, as a director, I am a lot more confident as a director, and I know that technical stuff. I also wanted to write a feature length screenplay. And it was so intimidating to me. It's like writing a book. It's like going from writing short stories to now transitioning into like a long-form like a book and a chapter book. So I was so intimidated. I tried to write it, I had no idea what I was doing. And I was like, "Oh, maybe I should look at an MFA. Like a Writing for Film MFA." Fortunately, there was one at Lesley is right here in Cambridge, I can do the residency and I can still keep my job because I am a film teacher. I studied for two years there. And I'm really happy because now I can write a screenplay. From Lesley, I walked away with about four full-length pieces, one play and three screenplays. And the first screenplay definitely was Memoirs of a Black Girl. And the second screenplay that I'm actually now in the process of producing is A Blue Dawn and that was developed at Lesley. So it was a really good decision to actually go there and work with that with their professors.
Georgia
You said you worked on Memoirs of a Black Girl, while you were at Lesley. So would you tell us a little bit what what it's about for those who who haven't had the opportunity to see it yet?
Thato
Yeah, let me correct that. I did work on some form of it, the pilot form of it, because when I applied to Lesley, I applied with a really rough cut of Memoirs of a Black Girl. And back then it was called Memoirs of a Snitch. My professor, Jamie Brandli, looked at me and she's like, "I love it. It can be a great pilot". So at Lesley, I actually worked on the pilot and I still have the pilot. So the film is about this a smart black girl who is from Roxbury. And she goes to a school in Roxbury called Dudley high, which is fictional. And she's, top of her class and she's a senior. She wants to go to schools like Harvard, she has really big ambitions. And she's going for the scholarship, which is a coveted scholarship is and only a few win, this is city wide. So she's one of the four selected city wide finalists. So the film begins with her finding out that she's a finalist, but she needs to do an interview, she also needs to submit her final SAT scores, so they can make that decision as to who's gonna win the scholarship. But what happens is that on the day that she finds out that she's a finalist, and she has to do all this stuff, she goes into the bathroom and she finds this girls who are very naughty. They don't abide by rules. So they were smoking in the school bathroom. So she's like, "Okay, that's smoking, I better get out of here." In the hallway on her way back to class, one of the assistant teachers accuses her of smoking weed, because now she has clothes that kind of smell. So now she has to give up the names. And part of the pressure was, if she doesn't give up the names, that means you take the fall, because I know you're up for a scholarship. So now she she's stuck between a rock and a hard place. And she has to give up the names. And the rest is what the movie is about.
Georgia
And how did you come up with the idea for this story?
Thato
You know, I was teaching in a school in Roxbury, Madison Park, and there was a lot that happened there. But there was a lot of great things that happened there too. Like I had a lot of students that are just like Aisha. Aisha is a composite of the many girls that I've heard at Madison Park, very smart, very astute, they know where they're going, they're very ambitious, hardworking and all of that. There was a reputation of it being like a bad school with a bad crop of kids. And that was not the case. And the truth is, there were some students who were caught up in the negative stuff, but majority of the students are doing the right things, doing what they need to do, they're surviving and they're taking education seriously, I was frustrated with the lack of positive storylines that come from schools like schools that are set in the inner city. I didn't want to just say all this good is happening, I wanted to acknowledge that but I wanted to push the positive stories at the forefront. And my three characters including Aisha and her two friends, were the positive stories on the forefront. The background was like all the other stuff that was happening that affected their lives. I really wanted to kind of say to my students that "I see you, I celebrate you, I want to honor you, your stories matter." Because no one is telling their stories. And if they tell them, they want to tell them in a way that is not accurate or is not balanced. So that's what I mean, that was my thing. I'm an African filmmaker, and I focus mostly on African women stories. But this film I wrote as a teacher, I wrote for my students, it was a love letter to my students. This is not normally what I do, but I was passionate about it because I was passionate about the work that I was doing at the school. And I really was connected to my students, and I wanted to celebrate them and just make something for them.
Georgia
You know, you said that there's not a lot of movies, and TV shows and places that Black kids can go to see like positive representation of people that look like them. I'm curious, like growing up, what kind of movies and TV did you watch?
Thato
Botswana is a very small country. And we are sort of influenced by the British because we were not colonized, but we're protectorate. So our education is British based and everything. And the content that we got, in terms of TV, was mostly English TV shows. But we also got American TV shows and we had our own local TV shows, too. When I say local, at the time, and it's still the case in Botswana, at the time, local means South African content. I grew up with The Cosby Show, I grew up with Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Moesha, Sister Sister, like I remember just watching. And Steve Urkele in Growing Pains, in Family Matters. And Martin, I love Martin, that was my favorite, because for the longest time, we were watching European content, and there were barely any Black people in there. And then all of a sudden, we had this influx of Black TV shows that were introduced to our region. And I remember just romanticizing the U.S, thinking people live exactly like these people in the sitcoms. I remember Fresh Prince s and saying, "Oh man, when I got to California, this is the life." Everything was so, especially in the sitcoms, like you don't really get to see the real picture. That's what I grew up with and it was inspirational, to be honest, The Cosby Show was, in a lot of ways, where you see Black professionals, a Black doctor, family. So I think it was just like, "Oh, Black people can be like that, and they can live like that." The power representation. Even though I was this little girl in Africa, I it was so powerful to see Black people on screen. But people that look like me that, you know, obviously were of a different culture because they were American, but it was just a very powerful thing.
Georgia
Yeah. And so now you've done the same thing and made a movie with great representation. So how was it to shift from documentary to fiction and turn to produce, direct a feature-length film? Because I think your previous ones are a lot shorter, so this must have been quite a shift.
Thato
Documentaries are a lot harder. I find actually narrative film as so easy, especially for production. So easy. Because with narrative film, you have a template: Do you have a script? Do you know exactly what you need to get in production? And when you edit, there's no question, you have the story. The story is intact because you wrote it, sequence to sequence to sequence.
Georgia
We'll be back after a quick break,
Commercial
Tracey Baptiste
Hi, my name is Tracey Baptiste. I am a faculty member in the Creative Writing MFA program at Lesley University. Lesley MFA is kind of fantastic because in addition to working with world-class authors and playwrights and graphic novelists, is that you also have the advantage of working, sort of cross-pollinating, with all of these other genres. So if you are working with me in Writing for Young People, but you are also interested in doing screenplays, you have Sinan, who you can work with. Or if you want to do creative nonfiction, you can work with Rachel Manley. We really have some of the greatest faculty working in letters right now and you have access to all of them. It just does not get better than that.
Georgia
Learn more at lesley.edu/writers. There's also a link in the show notes. Okay, back to the interview. So I'm assuming that Diary of a Black Girl is still in the film circuit? How can people watch it or when will people be able to access it?
Thato
So it showed at [inaudible], we had a phenomenal showing there. August 5th. It was really great. And we were also excited to be showing August 6, at Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival, which is one of the top Black film festivals in the country. So it was amazing. We also showed at BronzeLens in Atlanta, and we showed at Cleveland Film Festival. And it should be released between October and November. Very soon.
Georgia
Great. Shifting gears a bit, you have a lot of things going on. So you're also an illustrator, and you have your first children's book has just come out, which is edited by Tracey Baptiste, and she's a member of the MFA faculty here at Lesley. And she's been on Why We Write I think three times now. [laughs] She's a repeat guest. She's great. But so how did 14 African Women Who Made History Come About? Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Thato
Oh, my God, as an African woman, and someone who likes to celebrate women, too, I found that, I am so glad that my daughter is growing up at a time where there's a lot more choices for diverse books. Because when my boys were, especially my firstborn, who is now turning 16, I remember I had a hard time finding books that he would see himself in, that reflected his, books with black boys on the cover. Maybe I should put it that way. So I'm a big fan of that, especially for my kids because I didn't have that growing up. We read a lot of European literature, children's books were Snow White, Cinderella, and all of that. And that really affected the way I saw myself and how I defined my own beauty. I always envied, I remember when I was young, I wanted to have long blonde hair. And then we didn't even have like, brown dolls. The dolls that were being sold in Africa where white dolls. And to me, that was really something that when I look back, and I'm like man like all of this, like literature, like I make an effort when it comes to my students, to not have the same experience I did. Growing up and being surrounded by whiteness, even though I was in that predominately black country in terms of media. When it came to my daughter, she has a lot of black books, like girls on the cover She also knows too, because when we go to a bookstore, she's like, "Mommy, look! A brown girl! That's my book!" You know, in my household, I want to make sure that she has afrocentric books, she has multicultural books. But what I found was that when it came to African characters, even if there's like black people on the cover, or it's a black story, it's written in a way that it still depicts Africa as like impoverished, or in a village setting, primitive. Every African book that I buy, and it's written mostly by non-African people, mostly Westerners, mostly white people, you never see the contemporary Africa, you never see the developed Africa, you never see a child who's in a regular school or even a private school. But that's African, right? There is the city and there's the village and there's also like the township where, there's all kinds of classes too. But I feel like whenever we cover Africa, whether it's even in children's literature, is animals or village or poverty or boy who has to walk 10 miles to school, like those storylines that are very, very common when it comes to Africa. And for me, I grew up in Africa, I grew up in the city. I know what Africa is to me. And I know that's not all that there is to Africa. Africa is not primitive, Africa is very developed. There's engineers in Africa, there's doctors in Africa, there's people solving problems, there is people creating amazing architecture, there's all those people are Africans. So I wanted to just present a different kind of, and I wanted to celebrate African women, because as a woman, I was like, okay, it's not to say I discriminate against men, it was just natural for me to have a collection of phenomenal African men and women. And in this book, we have writers, playwrights, we have playwrights, authors and we have, of course, we have doctors, we have a philanthropist, we have all kinds of amazing women who are solving their own problems, who have taken charge to contribute to their society and make things happen for themselves without outsiders saying, "We're going to come and save you, Africans. Because that's always the narrative. Like when we tell the story of Africa, sometimes it's told through how this white men came and saved this village, right? So I wanted to just extract that and celebrate the people who are actually doing the thing on the ground. And I wanted my daughter to read about these women, too. Not just my daughter, my sons, and my daughter to read about these women and continue because this is just the first of the series. I'm going to continue to celebrate phenomenal Africans who are making a contribution in their communities.
Georgia
So you've got a new movie, a new book, you also have a trivia game that came out, I think, during the pandemic, is that right?
Thato
Yeah [laughs]
Georgia
[laughs] So tell me about SAWA.
Thato
SAWA was the first African trivia game. There is trivia online and like people just ask questions, African trivia, but there was never like a packaged game. And I was looking for one one day and I was like Wait, wait a minute, how com no one has ever thought to do this?" And the reason why I was looking for one is because I played Black Card Revoked with my friends. And my current remote
Georgia
Black Card Revolt? Is that what you said?
Thato
Yeah! You've never played Black Card Revolt?
Georgia
No, I've never heard of it.
Thato
Oh my god, it's hilarious. It's African American game and they ask you all those questions, and if you can't answer, t they revoke your black card. You know, a fun, silly game. There's no right or wrong answer, it's actually that the right answer is just by the numbers. Like five people answered to the same, that means that's the answer. For example, for a black card, they will ask "Who's the best R&B singer? Is it Bobby Brown? Or is it Ginuwine? Or is it this person? And then if four of us say, Bobby Brown, and once says Ginuwine, then Bobby Brown wins, which means we revoke the black card for the other person. So it's just a fun game that taps into the black culture and it's mostly pop culture. So now, I was inspired. I talked to my husband that night. I was like, "I wish there was something like that for Africa, like African pop culture, like where we could go into Fela and all these African musicians and we could go into music and film and all of that." And we did our research because we were like, "Okay, we'll buy the game like that because we had so much fun." None. It was like I remember spending time on the internet trying to figure out, what did I find again? Animals. Africans were animals. Like, I went into Amazon, it was like African card games, animals related or something. And if they were available, they were very low count. Like, there was one that was made for Kenyans and Kenyans only. And I'm, like, "Listen, Africa is a continent, we share a culture, even though we are individual countries, but there's so many similarities." And we wanted a game that encompasses Africa as a whole, and taps into different facets of our life, and also aspects of just Africa. It's divided into sections. So there is a geography section, there is a business section, there is music, there's film, there's all of that. So you can go into different sections of the game and just have lots of fun. But in the process, you learn as well. We definitely learned a lot developing this game. We were surprised about a lot of things that were going on in Africa, especially when it comes to technology. We found out that Africa has been making cars, like different countries have been producing cars that are on the ground that are being sold, Uganda made the first hybrid car that is on the ground and does African engineers. And Sudan, not Sudan, Rwanda, has a smartphone that is in the market in Rwanda and is now reaching some parts of Africa. But nobody talks about that, because all people want to talk about in regards to Africa is the poverty, the wall, you know, like Africa needs help. But Africans have taken charge and they are also developing amazing technology in the continent. So I think that was even a surprise to me how much is going on in Africa. And it was really inspiring. So a lot of people when they play this game, they learn a lot. And they are surprised, just as we were.
Georgia
Yeah, that sounds great. And that's available online. Is that right? On your website?
Thato
Yeah, so people can buy the game on Amazon. They just have to search for SAWA trivia, but they can also buy it on the games website, which is sawatrivia.com. But I also have it on my website, so I can direct people to that. So it's been exciting. A lot of educational institutions, which actually, I should reach out to Lesley, like BU has reached out to us and we collaborated with them with a conference, we introduced the game, people bought the game there. BC bought a bulk for their graduating students from the African Literature program, Syracuse, we've collaborated with Syracuse University. So those are all those universities that are now interested because it's a way to learn about Africa, but in a fun way. So we're excited about the future of the game because I think it definitely is there for educational purposes, but it's also there for, it's a fun game that we played over drinks and dinner with our friends. And we always have fun. And there's always too much shouting. [laughs]
Georgia
[laughs] And you're hoping to turn it into an app as well. Is that true?
Thato
Yes. Yes. So we are working with a developer, we're talking to a few developers right now. We're in the process of figuring out who's the best to design the app version of the game.
Georgia
Cool. Yeah, that's really great. So you have a lot of things going on, a lot of creative projects. What are you doing next?
Thato
By next, I think it's just really trying to push these products that are out for now. But also, I am now looking at my next film A Blue Dawn. So I'm having meetings with potential producers to look at, trying to figure out what the strategy will be for the film. So that's my next big thing in terms of just my filmmaking .But those two products, I want to do the next series, but I think in a couple of years, because right now I'm just making sure that SAWA is where it should be, and also the book.
Georgia
That's great. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really enjoyed hearing about this.
Thato
Thank you so much, and thanks for the invitation. This has been a great conversation.
Georgia
Thank you to everybody who's listening. And if you would like to learn more about Thato and her work, you can check out the links in our show notes. We'll link to the book, the movie info, her web page, all the things. And we'll be back in two weeks with another episode.