Sindiwe Magona - The African Mirror

Jul

2023

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

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

2021

By The African Mirror

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…

Mar

2021

By The African Mirror

Learning from the story of pioneering South African writer Sindiwe Magona

LITERATURE

PULENG SEGALO, Professor of Psychology, University of South Africa THE African proverb, “Until the lion can tell its own story, the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter,” speaks to the importance of telling one’s own stories. For a long time, African stories and realities were told by colonisers in ways that painted a picture of Africa as backward and uncivilised. It is for this reason that many literary scholars tell the story of colonialism and apartheid through personal autobiographies. One such scholar is Sindiwe Magona. Magona has published over a dozen books for adults, from critically acclaimed…