Gothataone Moeng is the author of the short story collection Call and Response. She is a Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing (UW-Madison), a former Fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and a former fiction fellow in the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. She has also received fellowships and support from Tin House, where she was a Summer Workshop Scholar, and from A Public Space, where she was an Emerging Writer Fellow. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, One Story, A Public Space, and the Oxford American, amongst others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Mississippi.
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Call and Response: StoriesFrom"Botalaote"
Whatever group of friends I told, what always fascinated people was not the boy’s dying but this image, this juxtaposition of school and cemetery, side by side, and a hill cutting them off from the ward. It was as if they thought that, away from our parents, we kids fraternized with the dead. There would often be one person who thought that I was embellishing, that I was making up these details for the benefit of a story, to create some sort of meaning. That skeptic seemed to assume that the hill—which I now knew to be just a hillock—the school, the cemetery were symbolic of something that I had overcome, something I had escaped. But the Botalaote cemetery was separated from Motalaote Lekhutile Primary School by only a narrow dirt road, and behind them the hillock cut them off from Botalaote Ward. Those were the facts.
Call and Response:Stories- Print Books
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Call and Response: StoriesFrom"When Mrs. Kennekae Dreamt of Snakes"
Every winter, Mrs. Botho Kennekae’s husband took time off from his driving job in the city and spent three weeks at the cattlepost, where he did whatever men did there—presumably offer the softness they withheld from everyone to their cattle, for the cattle were the great loves of their lives, so beloved the men called them wet-nosed gods, so beloved the men agreed: without cattle, a man pined and lost his sleep; still, having cattle, a man fretted and lost his sleep.
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Call and Response: StoriesFrom"Small Wonders"
As Phetso dried herself, the old woman unfolded clothes from a plastic bag.
“Your uncles in Serowe have bought you these clothes,” the old woman said with formal solemnity, “to show the end of your affliction.” Then the woman handed Phetso the clothes, one by one, saying as she did:
“Receive this, panties.
“Receive this, a bra.
“Receive this, a skirt.
“Receive this, a shirt.
“Receive this, socks.
“Receive this, shoes.”
Phetso put each item on: sky-blue cotton panties; a brown cotton bra, slightly big on her; a German-print skirt that fell below her knees; a white long-sleeved T-shirt; sky-blue socks; and a white version of her midnight-blue canvas takkies. She put them on, one after the other, like a child learning to dress for the first time.
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“All these stories reveal how women, family, and community intersect—each written with compassion and a deft hand." —Oprah Daily [on Call and Response]
“Botswanan writer Moeng’s lyrical and poignant debut delves into complex family dynamics. . . . [Moeng] brings insightful prose and a distinctive voice to these layered stories, demonstrating deep knowledge of her characters and care for their worlds.” —Publishers Weekly [on Call and Response]
"Idiomatic phrases add texture to the prose, elegantly describing the characters' lives and their internal conflicts. . . . A lovely debut brimming with deeply felt and well-rounded stories." —Kirkus Reviews [on Call and Response]
"What sharply observed vignettes—linked by striking figures, vivid details, a wry and ruminative mood, and deep insight into the vicissitudes of family life. They reminded me sometimes of the work of Anton Chekhov, sometimes that of Bessie Head: calm, wise, yet searching, restless, like a still pond bestirred by undercurrents, or in Moeng’s lambent words, ‘like a torchlight helpless over the vast velvet of night.'” —Namwali Serpell, author of The Old Drift [on Call and Response]
These nine big-hearted, capacious stories, rooted in the villages and cities of Botswana, examine all that blooms and breaks in the bonds, desires, and ambitions of women: widows young and old, sparring sisters, and girls full of longing, who lean on and push against the dictates of their world. In this debut, Gothataone Moeng walks with the masters of the form; she is capable of enthralling leaps in time and point of view. Her work makes our day-to-day moments immense.