African Women: Three Generations - Hardcover

Mathabane, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241135060 ISBN 13: 9780241135068

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 1995

Synopsis

Mark Mathabane tells the stories of his sister Florah, mother Geli, and his grandmother. They have to cope with abuse, gambling, drunkenness, and infidelity from the men they love or have been forced to marry. All three women defy African tradition and the poverty and violence of life in a modern urban society, to make fulfilling lives for themselves and those they love within the context of South Africa's oppressive apartheid regime. The stories of Florah, Geli and Granny, are told in their own words, in alternating chapters that demonstrate how similiar are the problems faced by each generation - the need for an independent income to care for themselves and their children, the traditional assumption that women are property, commodities bought and sold by men, and the terrible hardship imposed not only on women but also on black men by the apartheid system. The story of these three courageous women is told with passion and sympathy, and conveys their honesty, faith, and even hopefulness in which they live.

About this title

From the Publisher

In this powerful and dramatic biography, Mark Mathabane weaves together the voices of his grandmother, mother, and sister to provide a rich, stirring look at three generations of black South African women.

From Kirkus Reviews

The South African-born Mathabane strains to tell the stories of his sister, mother, and grandmother, illuminating some lesser- known facets of black life under apartheid. Wanting to tell of the unsung struggles of black women in South Africa, Mathabane (co-author of Love in Black and White, 1991; Kaffir Boy in America, 1989; Kaffir Boy, 1986) probes his family in cycles of short chapters. Sister Florah found her marriage complicated by lobola, the traditional bride price. Mother Geli suffered through a marriage to an older man she didn't love. The author's Granny, abandoned in her village by her philandering, city-employed husband, bravely moved on her own to Johannesburg. All three women fought for safety, work, and housing, suffering the indignities of life in the squalid, dangerous black township of Alexandra. Whites are mostly absent from these stories, and the country's political upheavals intrude only occasionally. More important are township neighbors, the local church, and the persistence of traditional practices, including puberty rituals and a widespread belief in witchcraft, which the author warns readers not to deride. Though Mathabane claims to tell the women's stories ``in their own words,'' this is no oral history; his heavy authorial hand repeatedly intrudes, for instance, in putting phrases such as ``the perfect anodyne'' or ``Poverty, with its thousand terrors, returned'' in the mouth of his illiterate Granny. A worthy subject, but its treatment is marred by the author's suspect style. (25 b&w photographs--not seen) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241135060
• ISBN 13: 9780241135068
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384