~It was one of those thickly hot days when it felt as if the sun was sitting on the living room sofa.~

~Intently, she sat there, Listening to me unfold the soft, happy yellow dream of her coming out to her mother.~

~Spring was patiently colouring the trees back in.~

~Mama,
Am I still the light?~

~School can be the beginning of broken societies.~

~Even primary school kids know about crushes. But what I thought I knew was that crushes were little birds in cages reserved only for boys. I couldn't explain then why I felt like there was a flock of wild birds in my belly, their wings flapping enthusiastically every time I saw her. Or why those birds nested in my lungs, beaks snapping away all the air, leaving me winded and gasping. Why did I being to dream about her?~

~That not all protests look like strength.~

~When will I realise that I must be a haven for myself?~

~Colours are the dreams you recover in everything you look at.~

“I discover that my skin can carry her, that I can know what she feels like without opening my legs, without closing my eyes, when I am walking down the street without touching her.” — Uvile Ximba, “Dreaming In Colour”

#DreamingInColour is, as the publisher describes, “Langa’s story of coming out to herself, of discerning the history behind the closed door of conscious memory.” The book tracks her from school to university, as she grapples with her sexuality, her Blackness, her traumas. But this is not trauma porn. Ximba handles Langa’s challenges with gentleness, showing that ultimately, the protagonist is more than her baggage. Langa’s dream world is vivid and visceral. Her dreams reveal mysteries to her, show her a path forward, and help her cope with the challenges that she faces. She takes her dreams seriously, but not everyone in her life does. At a family meeting her grandmother chairs, Gogo Zondo uses one of Langa’s dreams as a reference in the discussion. One of the adults scoffs and tells them that they cannot think of people’s dreams as reality. In other words, dreams are fantasies, they are not relevant in the waking world. But who is to say that just because we are not awake, a dream is not real? Ximba challenges the notion that dreams don’t carry weight in reality, indeed, they are a part of it.

#DreamingInColour is about ‘coming out’, yes, but it stretches the idea farther than we usually think of it: there are multiple coming outs, many ways to emerge, and many things to emerge from.
During student protests in Makhanda, Langa muses, “You just can’t run away from Cecil John Rhodes. Not even impepho works for this fucker […] when the protests die down he is stronger, a demon that terrorises even in our sleep […] But we also try to remember that in protests there is revelation, an exposure of truth, a coming out.”
And then again, “…not all protest looks like strength. Every time we come home, every time we are together, we are coming out. Even joy becomes resistance.”

The novel is short, which is a pity because some of the themes could have benefited from a deeper exploration. Ximba is a talented writer, her use of metaphor is evocative and delicious (albeit a little flowery at times). I am excited to see what she does next.