Life
Vera was born in Bulawayo, in what was then Southern Rhodesia, to her mother Ericah Gwetai. At the age of eight, she worked as a cotton-picker near Chegutu. She attended Mzilikazi High School and then taught English literature at Njube High School, both in Bulawayo. In 1987 she travelled to Canada and she married John Jose, a Canadian whom she'd met while he was teaching at Njube. At York University, Toronto she completed an undergraduate degree, a master's and a PhD, and taught literature.
In 1995, Vera returned to Zimbabwe and in 1997 became director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo, a gallery which showcases local talent ranging from that of professional artists to school children. In 2004 she went back to Canada, where she died on April 7, 2005 of AIDS-related meningitis.
Read more about this topic: Yvonne Vera
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“A little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly.”
—Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865)
“One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)