English in Africa

Introduction

Sandile B. Ngidi — Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

No abstract.

Fat Time and Other Stories by Jeffery Renard Allen.

Michael A. Antonucci — Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

No abstract.

National mythology and cultural imagination: Three portraits of Bessie Head

Keely Shinners — Thu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hallett, a painting by Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, and a sculpture by Claudette Schreuders. It argues that these portraits each symbolise Head to a certain degree: Hallett wanted to capture the Artist in Exile; Nkosi wanted to capture a Struggle Hero; and Schreuders wanted to capture a Fellow South African. This paper is interested in how all three of these artists – although to different ends and effects – each mythologise Bessie Head, and how this relates to a broader project of national mythology. In this way, this analysis hopes to contribute to a greater understanding of Bessie Head in the cultural imagination of South Africa.

Solidarity and gender in protest novels: Bessie Head’s The Cardinals and Miriam Tlali’s Muriel at Metropolitan

Sanja Nivesjö — Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article analyses the critical role of gender within racial solidarity in anti-apartheid protest writing by comparing Bessie Head’s The Cardinals and Miriam Tlali’s Muriel at Metropolitan. Both novels depict the protagonist’s experience of being the only Black woman at a white-collar workplace during apartheid. The workplace relationships explored within the novels illustrate the complex role of gender in forming alliances and nurturing solidarity. Although Tlali’s novel prioritises solidarity between Black people in the face of apartheid, areas of significant gender inequalities are present. Head’s The Cardinals, on the other hand, explicitly explores the fissures in Black anti-apartheid alliances created by gender inequalities. The juxtaposition of these two novels challenges a uniform understanding of Black anti-apartheid solidarity, while also elucidating depictions of the competing relationships of solidarity for Black working women in female-authored protest writing. By forcing the reader to consider the place of gender in relation to both collectives of solidarity and to anti-apartheid protest, the novels trigger a rethinking of what traditionally male-dominated protest writing was and could be.

“You are going to commit suicide”: The coloniality of power/gender and [not] belonging in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power

Ndumiso Ncube — Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Bessie Head’s novel A Question of Power interrogates exploitative power structures and advocates the birthing of new humane societies. Rather than creating a singular norm of existence in her characters, Head advocates multiple ways of existence or a creation of many worlds. In the spirit of imagining a pluriverse, this article argues that the character Elizabeth, as a decolonial being, works towards creating an ordinary world where everyone belongs. Nonetheless, the world of “everyone” and “everything” is not one of inclusion into existing hierarchical power structures, but an attempt to challenge them. In creating this world of belonging Head shows the complexities of becoming a decolonial being because the process of “becoming” includes suffering and fragmentation. This process is not “normal”, “conventional” or “sane” because in writing her decolonial subject, all is blurred and broken. Yet mentally, the normal and the abnormal are completely blended. Essentially, I argue that in this novel Head suggests that to de-colonise power one must go through pain and intense personal suffering, in a continuous process of becoming.

self-portrait in utopia

Nkateko Masinga — Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

No abstract.

Bessie Head’s absorbent poetics: Lessons from co-operative farming in Botswana

Anneke Rautenbach — Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In her autobiographical novel, A Question of Power (1973), Bessie Head identified a dialectical bind in the language and imagery of decolonial and nationalist movements across Africa at the time. I contrast the novel’s treatment of such language with Head’s observations of the agricultural development projects in which she participated during her time in Botswana, which are distinguished by a relational responsiveness across difference, reflected in their responsiveness to the natural environment. Her involvement as a participant-observer, I argue, allowed Head to develop a unique Afrocentric philosophy and poetics, distinct from and often at odds with the language and ethos of campaigns for national liberation. This poetics is what I term “absorbent”: defined by its capacity for sustaining and responding to difference. However, although Head attempted to transcend the dialectical discourse of nationalism, I show that this effort towards transcendence sometimes risked intellectual deflection, which ultimately reinforced a conservative model of global politics and economics.

Chalk and Cheese? A comparative study of Bessie Head (1937–1986) and Lewis Nkosi (1936–2010)

Lindy Stiebel — Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article brings together two giants of Southern African literature and criticism for the purposes of comparison, particularly of their experience of the Drum and Golden City Post era, and the immediate aftermath. Bessie Head and Lewis Nkosi, both journalists, first crossed paths in the Johannesburg of what Nkosi called ‘The Fabulous Decade’ of the 1950s; both, in the early 1960s, went into exile – Nkosi to America to take up a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University; and Head to Serowe in Botswana to become a teacher. Both left, after having passports refused, on one-way exit permits which meant they couldn’t return, for the duration of apartheid rule at least. There were, of course, significant differences as well: though both had difficult childhoods, Head’s struggles as a disowned illegitimate foster child were harder than Nkosi’s who at least had some family to support him in his early years; Head’s battle with mental health was not shared by Nkosi, though her dependence on alcohol was. In terms of their long-term reputations, Head was the more acclaimed novelist, while Nkosi’s acclaim was for his critical writings. This article is a preliminary step towards comparatively discussing these two exiled writers whose paths crossed briefly in turbulent personal and political times in South Africa.