This week I have my story about rape up at FunDza Literacy Trust's Mobi website. It's called Not Him. The thing that's great about FunDza is that you get immediate feedback so you can tell if the readers are engaging with the story. I think this is quite important with this story in particular. It's about a young woman who out of the blue get a date with the golden boy of their township, Bonolo, but things go wrong on the date and her life is very nearly destroyed.
Chapters go out each day and at the end of each chapter the writer asks a question. I purposefully asked questions to find out how the readers feel about some of the issues around rape. The FunDza readers do not hide what they feel- at all as you can see if you check their comments. I was happy to find that despite the fact that the media gives the impression that, for example, people believe that women wearing miniskirts provoke men to rape them, it appears the readers at FunDza don't buy that line at all.The story goes for seven chapters and I'm curious to see how the readers will respond at the end.
I think, too, FunDza stories show that you needn't be moralistic in your tone when writing fiction, to get kids to engage and come to decisions about what they feel on a controversial topic.
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