Annie Holmes is the editor of the McSweeney’s collection, Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives. Humanitarian Activist.  

"I finished high school in 1983, and then I started teaching in the rural areas. Soldiers used to make us sing during the night. They called them pungwes. It’s Shona for 'an all-night party.' If you didn’t go, they would find you and say, 'You must sing praises to Robert Mugabe.' These parties were out in the forest, in the bush, under the trees. There would be a big fire and they’d be holding their rifles and dancing and jumping up and down. And you were expected to dance too. Sometimes I danced because I knew that if I didn’t, they would kill me, these guys."

— Hope Deferred