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#south african literature
potato-head-kids · 3 months
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Currently reading: July’s People by Nadine Gordimer
It’s not our usual thing, and we don’t really “get” all of it tbh. But it’s not bad!
—DG and Jax
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zoethewriter · 11 months
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This collection asks the question, if the apricot trees of Soweto could talk, what stories would they tell? And I've come away from this book thinking, I guess they would tell depressing stories. Bleak vignettes with very little hope or silver linings.
The writing has its merits of course, it's descriptive and chatty. But the stories themselves feel very Sunday night television on a local broadcasting channel and maybe that's why people are drawn to them. Definitely not my cup of tea though, perhaps I'll try another offering from this author and see if it sticks. For now, I'm really just bummed out.
P.S This cover is bloody gorgeous.
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booksonmoon · 11 months
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The Rights of Desire
📝 Author: André Brink ⭐️ Rating: 2/5 🎧 Listening to: N/A
TW: Huge age gap
Thoughts:
Ruben, a retired librarian, lives with his care-taker, Magrieta, in a house haunted by Antje, the ghost of a young woman slave. Ruben takes Tessa in as a paying guest. From here ensues a powerful but uncomfortable relationship. This book can be (ironically) summed up in 2 words: long sentences. I wouldn't have finished it if it weren't for the delightfully poetic writing. I continued reading it to pick apart the sentence structures, usage of literary devices, and the careful selection of words. The book is written from the perspective of Ruben. The discrepancies between reality and Ruben’s view of his marriage are eye-opening. There’s also a glimpse of his childhood that gives meaningful insights into the character. Tessa, on the other hand, has been written very loosely and without any depth to her. This came as a surprise because she is Ruben’s only focal point. There is a lot of mystery around her but it seems forced, not natural. As Ruben pens his desire for Tessa and is utterly consumed by it, there are several other stories happening in the background. The sub-plots are much more engaging and rich in potential. The secondary characters, Antje and Magrieta, have immense colour and depth to them. (Although, Antje’s plot does seem unnecessary.) I found the main plot redundant to the point of boredom. I also found the climax quite forced, almost as if the author realised that there needs to be something impactful about the book and added in a climax that’s not so fitting to the book’s tone. One thing that really stood out though, was the platonic-but-always-teasing nature of Ruben’s and Tessa’s relationship. The essence of their relationship has been really fleshed out in the dynamic between the reader, the main plot, and the sub-plots. Another line of thought: Ruben’s feelings for Tessa are so strong that he hardly pays attention to the much more interesting narratives happening around him. This overpowering and consuming desire has been, maybe intentionally, translated into a weak main plot and strong sub-plots; perhaps the genius of the book lies here. Or maybe that’s just me looking for the best in a novel I didn’t particularly enjoy.
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sophiebernadotte · 4 months
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Books that have been published in November
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Alexandria: The City that Changed the World by Islam Issa (Nov. 2, 2023) // Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot (Nov. 9, 2023) // The Deorhord: An Old English Bestiary by Hana Videen (Nov. 2, 2023)
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Dethroned: The Downfall of India's Princely States by John Zubrzycki (Nov. 2, 2023) // Empire of God: How the Byzantines Saved Civilization by Robert Spencer (Nov. 21, 2023) // Exploring Roman London by Simon Webb (Nov. 6, 2023)
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Eyeliner: A Cultural History by Zahra Hankir (Nov. 16, 2023) // The Gift: How Objects of Prestige Shaped the Atlantic Slave Trade & Colonialism by Ana Lucia Araujo (Nov. 16, 2023) // Greater Tigray & the Mysterious Magnetism of Ethiopia by Haggai Erlich (Nov. 23, 2023)
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Henry VIII’s True Daughter: Catherine Carey, A Tudor Life by Wendy J Dunn (Nov. 30, 2023) // Hunger: Food Deprivation as a Military Weapon by N S Nash (Nov. 2, 2023) // An Illustrated Tour of the 1879 Anglo-Zulu Battlefields by Adrian Greaves (Nov. 30, 2023)
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James I’s Tumultuous First Year as King: Plague, Conspiracy & Catholicism by Ben Norman (Nov. 30, 2023) // Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor by Philip Freeman (Nov. 14, 2023) // The Kings of Algiers: How Two Jewish Families Shaped the Mediterranean World during the Napoleonic Wars & Beyond by Julie Kalman (Nov. 14, 2023)
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Knossos: Myth, History & Archaeology by James Whitley (Nov. 30, 2023) // The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III by Andrew Roberts (Nov. 7, 2023) // Medieval Women by Michelle Rosenberg (Nov. 30, 2023)
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Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science by Catherine McNeur (Nov. 9, 2023) // Moygara Castle, County Sligo, & the O'Garas of Coolavin by Kieran O'Conor (Nov. 10, 2023) // A Nasty Little War: The West's Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution by Anna Reid (Nov. 9, 2023)
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The Nubian Pharaohs of Egypt: Their Lives & Afterlives by Aidan Dodson (Nov. 21, 2023) // Pomp & Piety: Everyday Life of the Aristocracy in Stuart England by Ben Norman (Nov. 15, 2023) // The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age & the Fall of Ming China by Timothy Brook (Nov. 21, 2023)
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The Princes in the Tower: Solving History's Greatest Cold Case by Philippa Langley (Nov. 19, 2023) // The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748–1789 by Robert Darnton (Nov. 2, 2023) // A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire by Emma Southon (Nov. 7, 2023)
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A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: The World Through Medieval Eyes by Anthony Bale (Nov. 2, 2023) // Visions of War: Art of the Imperial War Museums by Claire Brenard (Nov. 9, 2023) // Weird Medieval Guys: How to Live, Laugh, Love (& Die) in Dark Times by Olivia Swarthout (Nov. 2, 2023)
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note-boom · 1 year
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Say what you will about Bungo Stray Dogs but the fact is that it has inspired a good number of an entire generation to pick up 1800s to 1900s great literature from Japan, North America, and Europe and i think that's very cool of it really
#and if not to actually read to books then to make them aware of their existence#and if you're like me to spiral on a tangent to see what other cool books not as well-teached countries have#honestly you guys the little ive managed to read among the bsd authors has been fascinating#the postwar mentality and the struggles of those who didnt have religion to fall back on as a center of morality and meaning#thats some GOOD stuff to dig into#of course you'll find that anywhere but each literary period has its own vibe#usually that vibe is oversimplified tbh...esp considering each period even questioned their own themes and moods and the liie#*like#im hoping asagiri also delves into south american and African literature as well as other parts of asia/middle east...#as they have pretty cool things as well...and also a really different postwar perspective to look at it from#mainly we're sort of seeing lit from what we could consider winners? of war (oversimplification i know)#which is amazing and all because of the schools of thought that pop up...#but it would be neat to see the schools of thought that pop up from the literary greats of the countries that were victimized in the war#esp because the victim/victor distinction is never as clear cut as it looks#but im rambling again oops....#this is actually a literature appreciation post disguised as a bsd appreciation post heh...#bsd#bungo stray dogs#bungou stray dogs#bsd musings#i havent mentioned australian lit....forgive me...i actually dont know if ive read any classic authors from there#though the modern authors from australia ive read are very good#spitting nonsense#rambling in the tags sorry#edit: or maybe dont go into other country lits cause....well it depends on how its handled really...#it would be cool but at the same time.....
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homervstheworld · 8 months
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a pseudo-tie-in to the new book, Politics & Violence is a grounded short story about addiction, treason and the power to shape the future of the entire world.
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tigger8900 · 11 months
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Scatterlings, by Rešoketšwe Manenzhe
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⭐⭐⭐⭐
Abram van Zijl had been English once, or perhaps Dutch, but now considers himself to be African. Alisa is a Jamaican-English woman who'd come to Africa seeking the origin of her enslaved ancestors. Living together in South Africa, they've enjoyed a long marriage, albeit one troubled as of late, and have two children together. But it's 1927 and the Immorality Act has just been passed, criminalizing mixed-race relationships such as their own. Blinded by privilege he doesn't even realize he possesses, by the time Abram sees the danger to his family it's too late; desperate to save her children, Alisa commits an unforgivable act, one which will haunt her entire family as they seek refuge from those who would enforce the law.
This was a beautiful book about oppression, belonging, and what it means to find your home. Both Abram and Alisa are written as deeply flawed characters, Abram in his colonizer's naivete and Alisa in her all-consuming depression, but ones that ultimately evoke empathy. The inclusion of their daughter Dido's perspective provided a much-needed relief from what would likely have been too heavy and melancholy, if the only narrators had been adults. Her curious exploration of African folklore and tradition, first through Gloria and then through Josephina, brought the novel's themes home in a way neither of her parents had quite managed to accomplish.
Something that didn't entirely work for me was the character of Johannes, not so much what he represented as the reveal of his personal secret. It didn't seem to fit with the rest of what the story was about. Perhaps I misunderstood what was being implied, but it seemed like he was jealous of Alisa? It just seemed odd and a bit out of place.
Be warned: the ending of the story is an ambiguous one. You're not going to get a clear answer to the question of whether they get away or not. I was happy with the ending, but calibrate your expectations accordingly. This story is heavy on themes and emotions, but not so much on plot resolution.
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kaleidoscopeprhyme · 1 year
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I know it’s hard to tell the difference between yearning to die and just craving to be away from people for a while.
— Kaleidoscope Prhyme (via kaleidoscopeprhyme)
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beljar · 1 year
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I am not in so great a hurry to put my neck beneath any man's foot; and I do not so greatly admire the crying of babies.
Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm, 1883
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thrydes · 2 months
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only a moment, breathe me in and release me gently, only now I am changed.
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zoethewriter · 3 months
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There is something very specific about this novel, about how its written and its rhythm and feel. It's very specifically South African, it's very specifically coloured and its very specific about its message. It's both familiar and alien to me, I can relate to a lot of the themes but I've found new things to experience and think about as well. Mostly it's such a strong exploration of violence and womanhood and identity. It is like the emotional equivalent of running with scissors and playing with fire, two things at different ends. Running and playing, fun, cathartic, youthful. Scissors and fire, serious, painful, dangerous. So good.
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patfurstenberg · 2 years
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9 Books Illustrating South Africa’s Landscapes and People
This Heritage Day I’m bringing you 9 books illustrating South Africa’s landscapes and people to celebrate the diverse cultural well that is South Africa. It wasn’t easy to choose only nine books depicting the breathtaking South African landscapes, its people, and their everyday life as reflected by in the local literature. 1. The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner (set in 1883) The…
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showmey0urfangs · 6 months
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'Unrealistic' Woke Characters
I saw a comment under the IWTV YouTube trailer where the person said something along the lines of—They ruined this story by making it woke. All media has gone woke now and everything has to have black people in it. It's unrealistic.
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I saw similar comments made about Castlevania Nocturne, The Wheel of Time, Rings of Power, HotD and basically any show or movie that features any non-white characters in a prominent role, especially in the fantasy and sci-fi genre.
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Comments like this always puzzle me because,
A. In stories about Mermaids, dragons, elves and vampires that can fly, punch holes through priests, read minds, do kung fu and have floating gay sex, what you find the most unrealistic is the presence of black people??
B. I would like to further examine this claim that having non-white characters featured prominently in media is unrealistic and is only done to pander to the woke agenda.
Let's look at the numbers a little bit shall we:
Based on the latest UN data estimates, nearly 85% of the global population is non-white and according to birth and death rates projections, this percentage is only going to get higher.
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yes, these are from wikipedia because I'm lazy
As of 2022, about 60% of the global population is Asian—with China and India making up a whopping 18% each. The African continent makes up another 18% and South America another 5%.
Europe on the other hand adds up to a modest 9.32% of the global population, and North America another 4% (this is without even taking into account the demographic breakdown within the continents where for example, caucasians represent 59% of the US population).
So I ask, what is more unrealistic, making a story where nearly 85% of humanity is excluded or one that reflects an accurate picture of what the real world looks like?
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And if we focus specifically on IWTV for a moment, and the city of New Orleans where the story is set, 59% of the population is black vs. 31% white/caucasian.
A black vampire in New Orleans is not unrealistic, what is unrealistic is writing 15+ books set in a city where 59% of the population is black and having no prominent black characters in them.
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I know the term minority gets thrown around a lot; in every news program, on every health form and job application, but to people who think like the commenter on the video I say, make no mistake—we are not the minority, you are. And the insistence to center media, history, art, literature etc. solely on whiteness and white stories is artificial and it does not reflect the reality of the world we live in.
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gothhabiba · 8 months
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Literary Africa—outside, notably, of the work of some white South African writers—was an inexhaustible playground for tourists and foreigners. In the novels and stories of Joseph Conrad, Isak Dinesen, Saul Bellow, Ernest Hemingway, whether imbued with or struggling against conventional Western views of benighted Africa, their protagonists found the continent to be as empty as the collection plate—a vessel waiting for whatever copper and silver imagination was pleased to place there. Accommodatingly mute, conveniently blank, Africa could be made to serve a wide variety of literary and/or ideological requirements: it could stand back as scenery for any exploit, or leap forward and obsess itself with the woes of any foreigner; it could contort itself into frightening malignant shapes in which Westerners could contemplate evil, or it could kneel and accept elementary lessons from its betters.
For those who made either the literal or the imaginative voyage, contact with Africa, its penetration, offered thrilling opportunities to experience life in its inchoate, formative state, the consequence of which experience was knowledge—a wisdom that confirmed the benefits of European proprietorship and, more importantly, enabled a self-revelation free of the responsibility of gathering overly much actual intelligence about African cultures. So big-hearted was this literary Africa, its invitation to explore the inner life was never burdened by an impolite demand for reciprocal generosity. A little geography, lots of climate, a few customs and anecdotes became the canvas upon which a portrait of a wiser or sadder or fully reconciled self could be painted.
[...] Thus the literature resounded with the clash of metaphors. As the original locus of the human race, Africa was ancient; yet, being under colonial control, it was also infantile. Thus it became a kind of old fetus always waiting to be born but confounding all midwives. In novel after novel, short story after short story, Africa was simultaneously innocent and corrupting, savage and pure, irrational and wise. It was raw matter out of which the writer was free to forge a template to examine desire and improve character. But what Africa never was was its own subject, as America has been for European writers, or England, France, or Spain for their American counterparts.
—Toni Morrison, "On 'The Radiance of the King.'" The New York Review, 2001.
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prismatic-bell · 7 months
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So I’m helping to do research for a Fallout 4 mod, and I’ve found yet another fun new way Africa has been fucked over by colonialism.
Said mod is a book-finding mod, and I’m researching literary fiction (so: no biographies, no histories, no memoirs, no textbooks, religious texts must be in the form of a story or allegory rather than praise hymns). I started with Western literature as requested and then went “hm, you know what could be interesting from an immersion/lore perspective? Including some Chinese texts” and from there to “you know, the divergence didn’t occur until the mid-to-late sixties and the whole learning-Buddhism-and-Hinduism-to-‘find-yourself’ thing was already underway by then, I should really put the Bhagavad-Gita on this list” and from there to “why should I leave anyone out? Let the main author pick from a bunch of texts, I’m just giving him resources.”
So to abide by US copyright laws because they’re stupid, I have to find texts where the author died before 1953. And in America, Western Europe, China, and Japan, this has proved to be no problem. You can’t throw a rock at a shelf of literature from these countries without hitting a long-dead author. The literary traditions are long and robust.
I’m currently working my way through African literature before swinging back around to Latin America. I’m using Goodreads as my starting point.
I have gone through over two hundred titles.
I. Have. Found. THREE.
Three African authors of fiction who died before 1953. Two of them are white South Africans. One of those two was a missionary during the Boer War.
If I expanded my criteria to include memoirs, I could add two more. Also both white.
There are almost no Black African authors at all before the 1980s. Not “Black African fiction authors,” mind you. Just Black African authors. Nonfiction too. Almost none. I think I’ve counted five.
And I can’t find a single collection of African folktales that was put together before the 1970s. Like I understand much of the story tradition across the African continent was oral until the 20th century, but you’d think surely someone at some point wrote down SOMETHING just to have it documented. That does not appear to be the case. It’s all either stuff like “History of Ethiopia” (ask me if I’m willing to bet a plug nickel anything in a book written by a white dude in the 1890s and titled “History of Ethiopia” is correct) or “hey, we’re missionaries, listen to our harrowing tale of trying to bring Jesus to the savages!” (WHY. I mean we know why. But WHY.)
I was hoping to find 100 books, fifty from the northern part of Africa not including the MENA region (which is its own section in this research) and fifty from the southern. If this sounds extremely sparse, yes, I know it is, but I came into this already expecting to have trouble finding African works due to colonialism and the prioritization of white texts. I figured 100 would be doable and if I found more I could be pleasantly surprised and divide the continent into further subsections. (I also chose not to do it by country because the borders within Africa have changed so much. It seemed more relevant to sort them by mother language and rough geographic location because so many places and kingdoms no longer exist under the names and borders they once held.)
I didn’t expect to find NOTHING.
I expected something to at least EXIST.
The continent that brought us the entire human race has had its stories basically stripped away by white people.
I am grieving for a history that isn’t even mine, destroyed by people who assumed the second-largest land mass on earth had nothing to offer except what they could rip out of the ground.
The stories are gone. That’s fucking horrifying.
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