Obituary: Remembering Nothando Zulu, master storyteller
Vusumuzi Zulu remembers the first time he met Nothando.
It was 1968. He was having an after-work drink at a bar in downtown Minneapolis when she walked in with a mutual friend. White miniskirt, tall go-go boots, and “this beautiful smile.”
After some conversation, they parted ways — she left in a Chrysler convertible, he recalled — and he was worried he wouldn’t see her again. Until, that is, a few weeks later when she showed up, unannounced, at the community center where he worked. A coworker literally had to carry him outside to prove to him that she’d returned.
“And there she was,” Vusumuzi said. “Beautiful. Beautiful. Wow. That’s what I said: ‘Wow. Girl, where you been!’”
They kept talking, went on more dates, and soon married.
All told, the two master storytellers were together 55 years.
Nothando Zulu, the cofounder and president of the Black Storytellers Alliance, died Sept. 11. She was 78.
The energy and power behind Nothando’s celebrated storytelling came from her own life, Vusumuzi said.
She was born Dec. 3, 1944, and grew up near rural Southampton County, Virginia — also the birthplace of enslaved rebellion leader Nat Turner. Her parents were sharecroppers. Shortly after her mother died, Nothando, then 16 years old, traveled alone to Minnesota to join her older brother and pursue an education.
She attended St. Cloud State University and the University of Minnesota, where she studied theater. In 1976, she and a group of performers including Lou Bellamy, the founder of Penumbra Theatre, and Vusumuzi Zulu, who by that point was her husband, launched the Black Theatre Alliance.
“At first, she tried to fit in with the way folks were doing things here in Minnesota,” Vusumuzi said. But that changed. “She said, ‘I tell folks, don’t try to fit in. The more you try to fit in, the more you lose you. When you stop trying to fit in, it’s like a weight being taken off.’”
In the early 1990s, the Zulus transformed the organization into the Black Storytellers Alliance and launched the annual “Signifyin’ & Testifyin'” Black Master Storytellers Festival.
Through these initiatives, the Zulus cultivated relationships with storytellers from around the country and here in the Twin Cities, including the late Beverly Cottman, who died earlier this year, and performers T. Mychael Rambo and Danielle Daniel.
Nothando Zulu’s own storytelling style was praised for its humor and attention to detail; her tales were full of song and dialogue and sturdy morals. From Vusumuzi’s perspective, she was especially skilled at embodying characters in sound, from a sweet child’s voice to a tiger’s ferocious roar to a bird’s caw in her signature story, which focused on a young eagle learning to fly and be free.
“She had a special way of transporting you to different worlds,” Daniel said in a tribute to Nothando Zulu compiled by the arts education organization COMPAS. “Teaching the community through storytelling about our history, encouraging us to stand tall…to embrace our greatness, and reminded us of the importance of laughter.”
Earlier this year, the Zulus were awarded one of four 2023 McKnight Culture Bearer Fellowships.
The program, an initiative of the St. Paul-based Indigenous Roots Cultural Arts Center, aims to recognize those committed to sharing cultural practices across generations. This was precisely Nothando’s goal, her husband said.
She used stories and storytelling to showcase the resilience and beauty that can come from learning one’s own history, Vusumuzi said, and believed strongly in the power of young people and youth activists.
“Storytelling, for her, was really a way to educate and teach without preaching,” Vusumuzi said. “It was a way to have folks feel what you’re talking about, and to learn lessons in a subtle way. Or sometimes not so subtle.”
As part of the fellowship, the couple was interviewed on video. A reception honoring fellowship recipients took place in September, after Nothando had died, and part of the video was shown as a tribute.
Vusumuzi cried through the whole video tribute, he said, full of both grief and pride.
“There wasn’t a stronger, more powerful, feisty, fierce Black woman on the planet,” he said.
Nothando Zulu is survived by her husband, Vusumuzi; children Makeda, Keke, Terrence, David & Stephanie; 17 grandchildren; 18 great-grandchildren; and a large extended family and community.
A homegoing ceremony for Nothando Zulu was held Sept. 27 in advance of the 33rd annual Black Master Storytellers Festival, taking place Sept. 28–30 in Minneapolis. The family hopes to organize a larger public celebration-of-life in the near future, too.