In Send Her Back and Other Stories, Munashe Kaseke offers an awfully intimate, fresh telling of the immigrant experience of black women in the United States. Equally awash with the joys of exploring a new world as well as a myriad of challenges, her complicated, and often tangled, female Zimbabwean protagonists navigate issues of identity, microaggressions, and sexism in vibrant, indelible settings. Yet again, these are not only stories of navigating an at times tense US political climate, they are also marked by characters who rise to the top of their professional fields, seize the American dream, and travel the world in glee. Kaseke peels back on the inner wranglings of characters caught between two worlds, be it by stories of dating outside oneâs culture and race or failing to assimilate upon returning home after spending time abroad.
Uncanny. Witty. Gripping. Send Her Back and other stories dazzles, leaving you newly awakened to the world we live in.
In Send Her Back and Other Stories, Munashe Kaseke offers an awfully intimate, fresh telling of the immigrant experience of black women in the United States. Equally awash with the joys of exploring a new world as well as a myriad of challenges, her complicated, and often tangled, female Zimbabwean protagonists navigate issues of identity, microaggressions, and sexism in vibrant, indelible settings. Yet again, these are not only stories of navigating an at times tense US political climate, they are also marked by characters who rise to the top of their professional fields, seize the American dream, and travel the world in glee. Kaseke peels back on the inner wranglings of characters caught between two worlds, be it by stories of dating outside oneâs culture and race or failing to assimilate upon returning home after spending time abroad.
Uncanny. Witty. Gripping. Send Her Back and other stories dazzles, leaving you newly awakened to the world we live in.
He looked like a beautiful alien, with his translucent blue eyes that turned gray on cloudy days. When he wore his artichoke-colored hoodie that had clearly seen too many washes, they turned green. Each time we met, I gazed into them first, curious what color would stare back into mine. My boring dark brown eyes remained as loyal as the sunrise, held no surprises, and vowed allegiance to the state of their birth.
 âI need some sun,â heâd say, looking at his fluorescent white skin. I couldnât disagree more. It was his paleness that was most ravishing. When we held hands, our fingers interlocked; the pattern of alternating black and white digits was arresting. His skin always felt delicate, as though it were naked. I imagined that if you peeled my black coat off, Iâd look like him underneath. I touched him with the utmost care, watching in fascination whenever it turned blue from a bruise, light peach after the sunâs tan, or red and flaky after a burn.
âIâll never kiss a white girl again. Why date someone with bird lips when I can have all this?â heâd say and bite my lower lip. Closing my eyes, I felt his kisses in my stomach, in the hairs of my body, in my toes that carried my body weight as I stretched my neck to meet his lips.
I kept him entertained with stories of Shona culture. Everything from naked witches roaming the night to safari game drives at twilight. I promised to take him to stand before the mighty Victoria Falls, to show him the southern hemisphere sky, which, of course, is much prettier than the American sky. We talked on the phone for hours on end, late into witching hours, without a care for the responsibilities of the jobs that awaited us after the sun was born anew. I cooked him sadza, taught him to eat with his hands, made him kale sautéed in peanut butter, scrumptious beef curry stews, and introduced him to black Rooibos tea brewed with a dash of steamed milk and honey.
âZimbabwean,â he whispered after introducing me to his coworkers. He was an engineering manager at an autonomous vehicle Silicon Valley startup. âIt sounds so exotic. When we get married, perhaps I can get a Zimbabwean passport and tell people Iâm African American,â he joked, squeezing my cold hand as we walked down Castro Street, its trees strewn in string lights creating a halo effect on the evening. I playfully shoved his hand away and rolled my eyes. He pulled me in and planted a kiss on my forehead. I smiled, placing a reciprocal kiss on his cheek.
âI canât believe you cook,â heâd say. âIn all my visions of a perfect woman, I never imagined that my future wife could cook. Who cooks in America in our generation?â I knew that just about everyone in Zimbabwe cooked; I wasnât that unique. Iâd smile sheepishly as he took a bite, eyes shut, savoring every morsel, asking for seconds if any remained.Â
Four weeks after our first date, we were in proactive premarital counseling, emotions blossoming, the reinforced walls that guarded my heart crumbling. We hadnât decided on a ring yet. He believed diamonds were a scam.
âList things you donât like about each other, things that drive you crazy about the other person, big or small,â the counselor said to all the giddy couples in the room. As the chatter swirled around us, we looked at each other bewildered, genuinely unable to come up with a single thing. We held hands, and his lips grazed my cheek. âWeâre going to have it so much easier than everyone else here,â he said. I giggled in agreement.Â
He asked me to go to Wyoming to meet his family over Memorial Day weekend. It was ninety degrees. I struggled to remember their names, the skinny redhead in an overflowing blue dress with eyes that matched his on a sunny day. The ever-smiling, almost identical blondes, save for the fact that one had curly hair, the other straight. The buff older brothers in checkered shirts, their wives. The spirited toddlers running around. The large black dog that wouldnât stop licking my toes. The family friend. The parents.Â
Faded photographs hung on the walls, displaying younger, happier versions of themselves. I noticed a sibling in all the pictures was missing on this day.Â
After a day of people coming in and out and the unbearable humidity that caused my pores to cry and my hair to rebel, I was disoriented.
âA work emergency came up,â he announced, entering the living room. âI need to fly back to California.â I quietly let out a sigh of relief.
He turned to me and looked me in the eyes. âBut maybe you stay so my family can get to know you better?â My eyes grew wide. Excitement filled the room, a chorus âpleaseâ drawn out for effect. I shut my mouth, which I realized was hanging open, swallowed hard, and nodded.
After he left, I sat in the living room, surrounded by ten sets of eyes. Will you settle in Zimbabwe after you get married? I want to have a relationship with my grandkidsâyou canât move there. Did you know he went through a depression not too long ago? Do you know he doesnât want a big wedding, heâll probably make you elope? Do you know he hates scents? Donât wear perfume around him. Heâs incredibly close with a female friend who has lived with us for the last five years. Sheâs a single mom, and heâs a father figure to her daughter, buys her books and kites all the time.
As the questions rained, my heart began rebuilding the walls that had crumbled so easily. Who was this man? I didnât have the answers to most of their questions.
He picked me up from the airport, excited. âI was reading something about Shona culture, and I learned a new word today,â he said. Though frazzled by his familyâs interrogation, when I was met with hazel eyes, a hue Iâd yet to see, I left my trepidation at the airport. With eyes like that, we could work through anything. My heart shimmied, amazed at how keen he was to learn my tongue. We drove down Highway 280, undulating green hills dotted with large, envy-evoking homes peeking through the trees on one side, the Coastal Mountain Range, with fog crowning its peaks, and Upper Crystal Springs Reservoir shimmering in the tangerine sunset on the other. He grabbed my hand and placed it on his thigh, where it sat until we arrived at my place.Â
Roora was the word heâd learned in my absence.
âI get to buy you from your family! How much do you think youâre worth?â he asked nejinja, excited.Â
âYouâre not quite buying me,â I explained. âItâs a gift of gratitude that you give to my family. Kind of the same way a man here buys an expensive engagement ring for his fiancĂ©. Itâs just that instead of the expensive gift coming to me and sitting on my finger, it goes to my family.âÂ
He laughed. âSpin it however you wishâIâm buying your ass,â he said as he kissed my lips. I looked into his now gray eyes and smiled, shaking my head as I felt my bones echo from his touch.
That evening, I lay my head on his chest with its fine silky hairs, some blond, some brown, others even red. He stroked my black curls as I listened to his heartbeat. Determined to uproot the seeds of apprehension, I began unraveling the scroll of questions that had been presented to me in Wyoming.
âKids?â I asked.
âItâs a big deal to bring a soul into the world. Thatâs something we can discuss after weâre married.â
âMoney?âÂ
 I learned that he had bad credit and fifty-five thousand dollars in college debt, which heâd stopped repaying, he hadnât filed his taxes in two years, and heâd âinvestedâ thirty thousand dollars, his life savings, in a political betting site.
Itâs not that I wanted kids or was against marrying anyone with debt, though I had none. Itâs just that I had grown up seeing poverty first-hand. To me, life was never kind; you had to fight in life to stand a chance. In my world, you figured out what life should look like ten years beforehand so you could attempt to prepare for its cruelty. His nonchalant, weâll figure everything out as it happens approach terrified me, struck me as irresponsible, especially for someone eight years older. Never mind that I had come to the US alone in my early twenties, yet I suddenly seemed to be lightyears ahead of him.
âI like that youâre not the regular kind of black,â he announced two weeks later. âAfrican Americans are never objective. They wonât consider the facts about police shootings, for example.âÂ
Then, âIâm not a feminist. Theyâre crazy.â Â
Three months later, I could write a book about the things I didnât like about him. That artichoke hoodie that turned his eyes green was too dilapidated. He stopped taking me out to eat, saying that he preferred my cooking. I felt like a Netflix and chill girl. I hated that he watched shows with so much nudity and sex without flinching. Having been raised in conservative Zimbabwean circles, I couldnât believe it would be okay for husbands to stare at other womenâs naked bodies, even if they were acting out a story. Plus, he didnât worship; he told my deeply spiritual self. I found myself constantly thinking, âuyu ndiwo unonzi muyedzo, mashiripiti chaiwo.â â The relationship felt like a cruel joke. As though someone was researching my fondest pet peeves and constantly feeding him lines.
âWhen do I get to meet your family?â he asked. In my culture, parents meet a boyfriend on the day of roora. Before that, they donât even want to hear as much as a suggestion of dating. I tried to explain this, but he thought I was equivocating.
âWell, then give me a roora date,â he demanded. I couldnât, unsure I wanted to marry him.
We fought, doors banged, phone numbers blocked, Instagram accounts unfollowed. Then I received an email detailing his undying love for me, describing all the things that made him giddy when he first met me, reminding me of how intoxicating weâd found each other to be. He reminded me that all couples fight; we could get through this if we didnât give up. A few hours later, there was a knock on my door. Dark blue eyes that matched his shirt stared back at me. Everything Iâd felt in our early days flooded back. I rushed into my beautiful alienâs arms. We kissed until we cried.
I was ready to work it all out that evening, leave with a twelve-step plan on how we were going to resolve everything. I suggested we go out to eat at a nice restaurant in Santana Row.
âMay you cook instead? Letâs stay in and find something to watch.â he countered, flipping through the channels. He paused on a news station. âI hate these liberals, calling themselves progressives,â he asserted.
âCan we go somewhere and spend time talking about our issues instead of societyâs ills?â I replied, ignoring his words but not the feeling of his left hand caressing my thigh.
âItâs too exhausting. Not everything needs to be planned,â he replied as he continued flipping.
Mukomana wacho aiita kunge chirahwe - I couldnât tell, was he a jerk or simply American? Frustration welled up within me again, and within a few weeks, the cycle began anew. Blocked numbers, passionate apologetic emails, knocks on my door, kisses, and repeat; round and round, for two years. I finally told him to never come to my door again, or Iâd call the police. I stopped responding to his emails, marked them as spam. Itâs been five months since the last one. Every morning, the first thing I do is check my spam, but all I get are notifications of money I just won.
Munashe Kaseke paints a bleak, yet hopeful picture. Her writing is honest and straightforward. She uses wit to navigate through the waters of her stories. The tenacity her characters have is inspiring. Kaseke shows us what it's like to be an immigrant, caught between two countries. What it's like to struggle financially and spiritually.
"It was at this point that we decided our dreams would fizzle and be buried in the graveyard of our economy. We were better than that; we werenât just going to take it! I would move to the US, find a well-paying job in a lab somewhere, put my experience to good use, then sponsor Munya to follow a year later, but the US immigration system scoffed. And with each year that passed after my tourist visa expired, rendering me undocumented, our hopes shrank; we found a new type of dream graveyard."
Each of the sixteen stories has a different theme, but similar aspects. Each protagonist is a woman who struggles internally or externally or both. The characters are real, each presenting their story from a unique perspective.
âWhere are you from? I have a friend from Asia who came to study in the U.S., and she just gave herself a new English name because hers was too hard to pronounce. You should consider doing the same,â Katie, a redheaded Facebook recruiter, said.
âZimbabwe. You can learn how to say my name. Itâs fine if you donât get it right the first time, but please try,â I responded gently, with a feigned smile.
In the end, I was left with many emotions. I wanted these characters to have better but marveled at their grace and strength. Kaseke is a talented writer with much to offer the literary world. Her voice should be respected and heard. I look forward to more of the author's work.