Radical love and our stories

Nothing beats getting into the habit of reading for leisure. Exploring and immersing yourself in the works of literary wunderkinder is but one of many ways to escape the pressures of daily life. Whether you’re a fan of fiction, non-fiction, poetry or plays, reading moves the soul and may influence the way we experience life and its events and one such aspect of life that’s greatly influenced by literature is love and its surrounding tropes.

February is famously regarded as the month of love – a month filled with love in the air, hawkers selling roses and Valentine’s mugs in the streets and, most importantly, expressing love and romance for our friends, families and partners.

In the spirit of love and romance, we decided to check out The Commune bookstore in Braamfontein to talk all things love and romance with our readers and what we found out is enough to make us feel impassioned and in love or even run away from love.

“Love remains love and whatever perception people have about love has nothing to do with love. In all the chaos and toxicity love remains pure – but we vilify it and that’s not the makings of what love is,” Rusty Seswike said.

If you’re ever on the lookout for a good read asking someone who spends most of their time at a book store is always your best bet. The Commune is a community centered, collectively-run bookshop. The bookstore has selected books that reflect its collective commitment to revolutionary politics and cover everything from grassroots social movements, decolonisation, queer theory and a healthy dose of art, poetry and fiction.

“Sometimes we need to look at what the essence behind some stories is. What we read and what we look at somehow has an influence on how we think. However, I’m quite happy with some books that are coming out,” Mlindeli Zondi, said.

Joining in on some of the love tropes integral or absent in some literary works, Lerato Sefoloshe said love can come in all forms as we know it. The young theatre practitioner said she has experienced different forms of love and has given herself time to find out what it is that she’s actually looking for when it comes to love and would like to see that included in literature.

“We need to write more about these things. Especially platonic relationships – I feel like they’re not spoken about and written about enough. It’s as equally important as romantic relationships,” Lerato said.

Browsing through The Commune’s bookshelves is as pleasing as it is sitting on its couches with a nice and warm coffee in hand and having insightful conversations with likeminded individuals. Some of the books that stood out as we browsed through the bookstore’s niche collection were Maneo Mohale’s Everything is a Deathly Flower, Sindiwe Magona’s Please, Take Photographs, Danai Mupotsa’s Feeling and Ugly, Reneilwe Malatji’s Love Interrupted and Toni Morrison’s Paradise.

“I’ve always wondered how we find romance in us because they way romance is portrayed in film and books is very western. We need to adapt it to the postmodern times and how we find our romance and those are books that I’d like to find,” Mlindeli said.