The script you inherited. The one you rewrote. Chichi Tsikisayi.

he script you inherited. The one you rewrote. Chichi Tsikisayi on what she kept and what she chose to change.

Culture. Family history. Expectation. The people who shaped you before you had words for any of it.

Chioniso 'Chichi Celeste' Tsikisayi is a Zimbabwean poet, writer, filmmaker and playwright. In this conversation, we trace what she's carried through her art, through her grandparents' steady presence, through seven cycles of life and what she chose to keep.

We talk about names, food as living memory, and why most of us often don't recognize their own cuisine as culture, even when it is. Travel and how it reshapes perspective. Play as the foundation of serious art. And the life scripts that come with being a firstborn daughter — the ones inherited without consent, and the ones she chose to rewrite. And siblings as your first social system.

We close on joy. Not as a feeling that arrives, but as a choice especially in the hard seasons.

Topics: Zimbabwean identity · African poetry · African theatre · cultural identity · food as culture · Zimbabwean cuisine · firstborn experience · sibling dynamics · life cycles · grief and family · African creatives · personal growth · joy and resilience · identity and belonging · Bulawayo · Zimbabwe · Part-Time Human · Season One Threshold