LITERATURE - The African Mirror

Oct

06

2023

Writing In The Sand: This young woman’s early memories of her grandmother kept her dreams of an education alive

LITERATURE

WHEN Tholoana was four, her grandmother taught her to write her name using a stick to carve out the letters in the sand outside her home, a one-bedroom brick house in a small, peri-urban area outside of Maseru, Lesotho. “She didn’t have much of an education, but she taught me letters by the shapes they formed: downward wash basins, chairs, standing tree, and eggs. This is how my name took form,” said Tholoana, recalling those early years, and speaking now at the Cape University of Technology (CPUT) in Cape Town. “I come from the dusty ground, like a true warrior,”…

Sep

27

2023

By The African Mirror

African Literature in the Digital Age: new book traces the role of the internet, queers and class

LITERATURE

THE first book-length study of digital literature in Africa has attracted a lot of academic attention. African Literature in the Digital Age: Class and Sexual Politics in New Writing from Kenya and Nigeria considers the role of the Internet and new media in finding and shaping new audiences for literature. We asked its author, former journalist, literature scholar, publishing editor of The New Black Magazine and associate professor of African studies, Shola Adenekan, about the book. SHOLA ADENEKAN, Associate Professor of African Literature, Ghent University What prompted you to write this? The book came out of my own experience of…

Sep

27

2023

By The African Mirror

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s new novel is a modern Nigerian tragedy about the rich and the poor

LITERATURE

NIGERIAN writer Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀` took the literary world by storm with her debut novel Stay With Me in 2017. Six years later, she has followed up with an equally brilliant second novel, A Spell of Good Things, which has been longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023. SAKIRU ADEBAYO, Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia Just as with her first novel, A Spell of Good Things delves masterfully into the complexities of polygamy and problems with patriarchy while also exploring the corrosive effects of Nigeria’s political corruption on ordinary and, especially, poor Nigerians. As someone who studies Nigerian literature, I hold…

Sep

27

2023

By The African Mirror

Kole Omotoso, the Nigerian writer, scholar and actor who inspired a continent

LITERATURE

BANKOLE Ajibabi Omotoso, better known as Kole Omotoso, the Nigerian novelist, playwright, journalist, scholar and actor, died on 19 July 2023. His son Akin Omotoso, a filmmaker, announced the death of the writer on Instagram. It came at a time when Nigeria was celebrating the 89th birthday of Wole Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel laureate in literature and Omotoso’s colleague at the then-University of Ife. Both were so prominent nationwide that everyone wanted to go to Ife and study at their feet, especially those aspiring to a career in the arts or humanities. OLAYINKA OYEGBILE, Journalist and Communications scholar, Trinity University,…

Jul

13

2023

By The African Mirror

Sindiwe Magona’s new book of essays tackles issues South Africans aren’t talking about

LITERATURE

SINDIWE Magona – who turns 80 this year – is a celebrated South African writer, storyteller, speaker and activist. In 2022 Magona, once a domestic worker, received her PhD in creative writing. Best known for her novels, autobiographies, short stories, poems and children’s books, she’s also a writer of essays. Now a new collection, I Write the Yawning Void, has been published. The essays in the book mostly deal with becoming and being a writer in a country like South Africa with a violent past that lives on in painful social and economic inequality. We asked her about the book.…

Jul

06

2023

By FRANCESCA NEGRO

Paulina Chiziane, Mozambique’s grand novelist, finally receives her prestigious award

LITERATURE

PAULINA Chiziane, the first woman to publish a novel in Mozambique, has become the first African woman to receive the most important award for Portuguese literature, the Camões Prize. She’s also the first to break all the rules about what a writer may reveal about Mozambique’s patriarchal culture and social taboos. Born in Manjacaze in 1955 and raised in the capital, Maputo, Chiziane’s mother tongue is Chopi, a Bantu language spoken along the southern coast of Mozambique, which she practised along with Portuguese, the language imposed during the colonial period. Today Chiziane has a degree in linguistics and is a…

Jun

15

2023

By The African Mirror

South African activist Frank Anthony wrote a novel that has been forgotten: why it shouldn’t have been

LITERATURE

HOW does it come about that a man who dedicated the greater part of his life to a vision of a just South Africa, and sacrificed his family and personal relationships to do so, disappears from the annals of the country’s history? How does a writer with consummate command of two of South Africa’s national languages – English and Afrikaans – and whose work in poetry and prose reflects deep insights into world politics, literature and culture come to be virtually totally forgotten? Author F. FIONA MOOLLA, Senior Lecturer in English, University of the Western Cape This is what happened…

Jun

13

2023

By The African Mirror

Animal Farm has been translated into Shona – why a group of Zimbabwean writers undertook the task

LITERATURE

SINCE independence in 1980, Zimbabwe has in some ways become like Animal Farm. Like the pigs in the classic 1945 novel by English writer George Orwell, the country’s post-liberation leaders have hijacked a revolution that was once rooted in righteous outrage. In Zimbabwe, the revolution was against colonialism and its practices of extraction and exploitation. Author TINASHE MUSHAKAVANHU, Junior Research Fellow, University of Oxford The lead characters in Animal Farm have the propensity for evil and the greed for power found in despots throughout history, including former Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe’s leaders have also acted for personal gain. They…

Jun

09

2023

By The African Mirror

Ama Ata Aidoo: the pioneering writer from Ghana left behind a string of feminist classics

LITERATURE

PROLIFIC author and former Ghanaian education minister Ama Ata Aidoo passed away on 31 May 2023 at the age of 81. News of her death reverberated around the world, proof of her towering influence in literary, feminist and political spaces. Aidoo was Ghana’s foremost woman writer and her distinguished career spanned several decades. Her literary contribution places her among the first generation of African women writers of the post-independence era. After independence in Ghana in 1957 she became a leading feminist voice within postcolonial writing. Author ROSE A. SACKEYFIO, Associate Professor of English and Liberal Studies, Winston-Salem State University For…

Jun

03

2023

By ROGER SOUTHALL

Harry Oppenheimer biography shows the South African mining magnate’s hand in economic policies

LITERATURE

IN Harry Oppenheimer: Diamonds, Gold and Dynasty, his outstanding biography of the South African mining magnate who died in 2000, Michael Cardo shows that there is still mileage to be made in the study of dead white males who played a role in the making of South Africa. Based on a remarkable depth of research, it is written in an elegant style which makes for a delightfully easy read. Author ROGER SOUTHALL, Professor of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand It is rendered the more impressive by the author’s deep conversance with the debates over the relationships between mining capital, Afrikaner…