Weeping Becomes a River
R220.00
Siphokazi Jonas is a weaver of seemingly discordant worlds. Growing up in an Afrikaans dorpie, attending an English boarding school, and spending holidays in her ancestral village emaXhoseni during South Africa’s democratic transition made this weaving a necessity.
In Weeping Becomes a River, Jonas confronts the linguistic and cultural alienation experienced by Black learners in former Model C schools during the 1990s and early 2000s. From these fragments, she fashions a new language of belonging—reclaiming her voice within a long lineage of storytellers.
Moving fluidly between poetry and intsomi (oral storytelling), Jonas navigates the waters of tradition, faith, intergenerational memory, and the shifting landscapes of rural and urban life. Her work meditates on the ways family, history, and geography inscribe themselves upon the body. She is both witness and reconciler, finding words for the continual acts of leaving and returning.
Her poems hold the past, present, and possible futures in one hand, never forgetting that “the body is marked territory from birth, and the scent of it never leaves.”
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Weeping Becomes a River—Siphokazi Jonas’s debut poetry collection, published by Penguin Random House—was launched in September 2024.
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Weeping Becomes a River – Audiobook
R220.00
About this listen:
Penguin Random House South Africa presents an immersive, poetic and mythical audio journey rooted in traditional South African storytelling.
Weeping Becomes a River, narrated by award-winning author and performer Siphokazi Jonas, weaves seemingly discordant worlds, rooted in her experiences of growing up in an Afrikaans dorpie, attending an English boarding school, and going on annual holidays to a village emaXhoseni during the transition years of South Africa’s democracy.
Migrating between forms, between poetry and intsomi, she navigates the waters of tradition, religion, intergenerational experiences of rural and urban spaces, and the ways in which family dynamics affect the body. She is not only a referee of the raging tensions within her, but she also pieces together a language for pathways of leaving and returning.
Her poems grapple with the past, the present, and possible futures without forgetting that “the body is marked territory from birth, and the scent of it never leaves.”
Recorded by: Creafluence
Sound design: Elvis Sibeko
Mixing and mastering: ES Studios
“Unonkala wadidiyela” sung by: Zimbini
©2024 Penguin Random House South Africa (P)2025 Penguin Random House South Africa
“I was breathless after reading this collection. It is exquisite, courageous, energizing, boundary-scaling, mesmerising, moving.”
─ Gabeba Baderoon
Reviews
unique writing and wild book structure. Each chapter, words so carefully selected, reaches a climax and then boom it stops and I am faced with thought provoking verse before returning to the story and onto the next climax. As a white South African who grew up in the old Transkei the settings and stories were so relatable but oh so challenging. My head is spinning. Stumbling on the book at a fun launch a few days ago was fate. This book has earned a special place on my bookshelf.
– Diana Boynton
I know very little about poetry, but these poems have a way to speak to your heart and evoke poignant images. They are relatable yet foreign, hers but also sometimes mine.
Thank you for writing this.
— Allison
it’s the writing, it’s the storytelling… it’s the experience for me!
having read this work and sat with the different elements for a while now, i had not expected to be more blown away. Siphokazi carries us with the gentle allure that is the theft of ixhalanga. now we are here. not concentrating. stealing time from our work and our lives..searching frantically for our tongues, spring cleaning our own experiences, smelling samoosas and left with no land… only poems. and a river that reminds us every time we try to go home… that asinankabi. oh my dear heart!
even the glossary has me undone!!! “bring yourself into the room by listing your genealogy” i mean!!!!
— Anonymous
Siphokazi Jonas 