The phenomenon of black characters being the first to die was first identified in Hollywood horror movies. From the golden age of horror in the 1930s onwards, alert viewers have noticed the short shelf-life of black characters. In the first half of the twentieth century, black actors often had little name recognition in Hollywood, and…
This post is written from a position of deep respect. I have followed Charlene Smith’s writing and activism for years, and have nothing but admiration for her. Her work has revolutionised the way hospitals treat rape survivors and she has been instrumental in getting antiretrovirals administered after sexual assaults. Her writing has helped thousands of…
I used to think it was okay that the Franschhoek Literary Festival was lily-white because the money it raised was used to fund libraries in disadvantaged communities. “Who cares where the money comes from as long as it goes to a good cause,” was my reasoning. I equated the literary festival with those charity gala…
Judge Dennis Davis sent shockwaves through the South African literary community recently with his review of Behind the Door: The Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp Story by Mandy Wiener and Barry Bateman. Davis has contributed that rare thing to our local literary scene — the negative book review. It was not only negative, but excoriating….
Along with spending too much time on Facebook and perusing the sidebar of shame on the Daily Mail website, deciding where to set one’s novel provokes feelings of intense guilt in South African writers. When writers get together, either socially or on formal discussion panels, they often confess to feeling conflicted about where to set…
There is a fundamental belief in the field of liberal arts that art has an intrinsic value. Marxist theory made out a good case for art being merely a commodity with a market value like any other, but the notion of inherent value refuses to die. Cultural relativism, similarly, has attempted to connect the value…
This morning I crawled off an overnight flight from Paris, gave thanks for unlimited bandwidth, and started scrolling through Twitter. There I found an opinion piece by Peter Delmar on the Times Live site. I paused to read it because he had obviously been to Paris for a family holiday, just as I had. I…
Yesterday the news leaked that a well-received crime novel The Cuckoo’s Calling by debut novelist Robert Galbraith was actually penned by JK Rowling. The story made headlines just in time for the Sunday news cycle – traditionally a quiet phase in world media. A story of that magnitude should by rights have dominated all talk…
White South African writers who create black characters are often challenged about the authenticity of their writing. If their main protagonist is black, this challenge intensifies, and if they write in the first person, it intensifies further. There is something particularly intimate about first-person narrative. It gets under the skin of the character in a…
In the same week that South Africa’s first mainstream erotic novel for women hit shelves, a major publishing deal was announced that is poised to take local erotica worldwide. There are those who chose to link these two events with the horrific rape and murder of Anene Booysen — the implication being that women’s erotic…
