Girl-Child Woman

Lindisa Mathabela is a reluctant poet who describes herself as, "nothing much really, just a high school kid with excess ideas that crave to be expressed. I live a basic life with not too many people involved. I am myself and I speak my mind". She is only seventeen, yet her poetry explores deeper themes on the scale of Maya Angelou. Born in 1996 in Johannesburg, South Africa, Lindisa was suicidal in her early teens. She took to writing as a refuge; hence her reluctance to share her work with a wider readership. Her writing gives of whiffs of Bessie Head, of Olive Schreiner, of Maya Angelou. But she is none of these, but a compelling fresh voice from Africa.