LITERATURE - The African Mirror

Jul

29

2021

The story of an African children’s book that explains the science of skin colour

LITERATURE

SKIN We Are In is a landmark South African book for children (and grown-ups) on the subject of skin colour. Published in 2018, it was co-authored by an artist and a scientist, both South African luminaries – the author Sindiwe Magona and the anthropologist and palaeobiologist Nina Jablonski. Here they talk about how – and why – the book came about. NINA G. JABLONSKI, Evan Pugh University Professor of Anthropology, Penn State I had found, in the course of my work, that people knew its social significance, but they didn’t understand it. Many were convinced that there was a genetic…

Feb

16

2021

By The African Mirror

Aliens in Lagos: sci-fi novel Lagoon offers a bold new future

LITERATURE

IN his satirical essay How to Write About Africa, the late Kenyan writer and journalist Binyavanga Wainaina advocated for a rethinking of clichéd and stereotypical representations of the continent. Wainaina was in favour of looking beyond the despair that has plagued and continues to plague Africa. GIBSON NCUBE, Associate Professor, University of Zimbabwe African science fiction is a literary genre which tries to imagine utopic futures of the continent. Nigerian-American novelist Nnedi Okorafor calls her brand of sci-fi “Africanfuturism”. She explains in her blog that Africanfuturism is “concerned with visions of the future” and that “it’s less concerned with ‘what…

Feb

26

2021

By The African Mirror

Fighting for Black women’s rights

LITERATURE

JOYCE PILISO-SEROKE ACTIVIST and community organiser Joyce Piliso-Seroke fought overseas and at home in the struggle against apartheid, eventually joining the Commission for Gender Equality in 1999. I was still working for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) when Thenjiwe Mtintso resigned from the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) on 1 April 1998 to take up the full-time political position of deputy secretary-general of the ANC. She had completed just two years of her five-year term. Since I had vowed to continue my involvement in South Africa’s transitional process beyond the end of the TRC lifespan, I was excited to…

Jul

15

2021

By The African Mirror

The book fair giving Egypt’s writers hope

LITERATURE

ONE of Africa's biggest book fairs has come not a moment too soon for authors like Noha Mahmud. The up-and-coming Egyptian author is one of many who struggled to earn a living during the COVID-19 pandemic which devastated Egypt's publishing and book sales industry. As difficult periods go for writers, the last one-and-a-half years have been as tough as they come, for Noha Mahmud, an Egyptian writer in her late 30's. "Publishers stopped buying the literary production of almost all writers," Mahmud said in an interview. "The publishing industry as a whole came to a standstill and with it the…

Jul

09

2021

By The African Mirror

New Kiswahili science fiction award charts a path for African languages

LITERATURE

THE 6th edition of The Mabati Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature, suspended last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is back. Founded in 2014, the prize recognises writing in African languages and encourages translation from, between and into African languages. Kiswahili is widely spoken across the east coast of Africa. This year’s prize also offers a special award designed to promote and popularise a Kiswahili vocabulary for technology and digital rights. We spoke to the prize founders – literary academic Lizzy Attree, also of Short Story Day Africa, and literature professor and celebrated author Mukoma Wa Ngugi – on…

Apr

15

2021

By The African Mirror

Book Review | Remnants of Miriam Tlali

LITERATURE

BARBARA BOSWELL EDITED by esteemed feminist literary critic Pumla Dineo Gqola, Miriam Tlali: Writing Freedom presents a kaleidoscopic view of Miriam Tlali’s life and writing. The book’s most significant contribution may be that it renders into print, for the first time, a previously unpublished play by the pioneering writer. The text of the play, Crimen Injuria, landed fortuitously with Gqola after a chance encounter at the State Theatre in Pretoria, where a stranger offered it to her, having found it at the theatre. Understanding Writing Freedom’s significance hinges on understanding the significance of Tlali in South African literature. Born in 1933 in Doornfontein, Johannesburg, Tlali…

May

11

2021

By The African Mirror

Book Review | Cuddling men and tailoring scissors

LITERATURE

MEGAN ROSS THE Madhouse is a work of dazzling complexity, a pan-African tribute to art and artists alike that explores the strange lives of a family of four. Setting the novel against the political uncertainty of Nigeria in the 1980s and 1990s, author TJ Benson takes his readers on a hallucinatory journey spanning decades and time zones with the titular character – an old asylum-cum-family home – as a portal into the secrets, dreams and yearnings of brothers André and Macmillan, and their parents Sweet Mother and Sharriff. The Madhouse calls to mind the energy of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and…

May

01

2021

By The African Mirror

Book Review | 69 Jerusalem Street

LITERATURE

KARABO KGOLENG LINDIWE Nkutha has small feet. For the longest time, she coveted a pair of All Star takkies but she couldn’t find a place that sold them in her size. One day, her partner – raised in Pretoria – suggested they go to Marabastad to look for them. They found the shoes in Marabastad’s Jerusalem Street, a place that evoked for her an atmospheric combination of Diagonal, Bree and Noord Streets in Johannesburg. Anyone familiar with these streets knows they are sites of enterprise, bustling with crowds of diverse people on different missions, hooting taxis and the obligatory dodgy,…

Jun

09

2021

By The African Mirror

During lockdown, South African students wrote a book about ‘a world gone mad’

LITERATURE

SOUTH African student voices have largely remained unheard in formal discussions around COVID-19. A pandemic that should not be put to waste, COVID-19, on some podiums, is seen as laying the groundwork for germination of seeds of change. PEET VAN AARDT, Coordinator: Initiative for Creative African Narratives (iCAN) & Lecturer: Academic Literacy, University of the Free State BRIAN SIBANDA, Lecturer/Researcher: Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of the Free State, University of the Free State The students in this collection of stories by the Initiative for Creative African Narratives (iCAN, a project within the Academy for Multilingualism at…

May

31

2021

By The African Mirror

Black feminist writers in South Africa raise their voices in a new book

LITERATURE

DESIREE LEWIS, Professor of Gender Studies, University of the Western Cape GABEBA BADEROON, Associate Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and African Studies, Penn State IN the third decade of the new millennium, despite many publishers still seeing black women’s writing as having a limited market, readers have far more access than before to publications by writers from the global South. In particular, the perspectives of black women are certainly more visible in the public domain. Yet gaps and erasures – based on intellectual authority, financial resources and visibility in the knowledge commons – mean that it’s still easier…