| You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town Contributor(s): Wicomb, Zoë (Author), Sicherman, Carol (Afterword by) |
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ISBN: 1558612440 ISBN-13: 9781558612440 Publisher: Feminist Press OUR PRICE: $39.90 Product Type: Library Binding - Other Formats Published: January 2000 Annotation: Zo Wicomb's complex and deeply evocative fiction is among the most distinguished recent works of South African women's literature. It is also among the only works of fiction to explore the experience of "Coloured" citizens in apartheid-era South Africa, whose mixed heritage traps them, as Bharati Mukherjee wrote in the New York Times, "in the racial crucible of their country. "Wicomb deserves a wide American audience, on a part with Nadine Gordimer and J.M.Coetzee." - "Wall St. Journal" Wicomb is a gifted writer, and her compressed narratives work like brilliant splinters in the mind, suggesting a rich rhythm and shape."-"Seattle Times" "[Wicomb's] prose is vigorous, textured, lyrical. . . . [She] is a sophisticated storyteller who combines the open-endedness of contemporary fiction with the force of autobiography and the simplicity of family stories."-Bharati Mukherjee, "New York Times Book Review" For course use in: African literature, African studies, growing up female, world literature, women's studies Zoe Wicomb was born in 1948 and raised in Namaquland, South Africa. After 20 years voluntary exile, she returned to South Africa in 1991 to teach at the University of the Western Cape. She currently lives in Glasgow and teaches at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland. Marcia Wright is professor of history at Columbia University and a member of the executive committee for the Women Writing Africa series. Carol Sicherman is professor emerita of English at Lehman College, CUNY. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Physical Information: 0.94" H x 5.62" W x 8.88" (0.97 lbs) 240 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town is among the only works of fiction to explore the experience of "Coloured" citizens in apartheid-era South Africa, whose mixed heritage traps them, as Bharati Mukherjee wrote in the New York Times, "in the racial crucible of their country. Frieda Shenton, the daughter of Coloured parents in rural South Africa, is taught as a child to emulate whites: she is encouraged to learn correct English, to straighten her hair, and to do more than, as her father says, "peg out the madam's washing." While still a self-conscious and overweight adolescent, Frieda is sent away from home to be among the first to integrate a prestigious Anglican high school in Cape Town, and finds herself in a city where racial lines are so strictly drawn that it is not possible to step out of one's place. At last, Frieda flees to England, only to return more than a decade later to a South Africa now in violent rebellion against apartheid--but still, seemingly, without a place for her. It is only as Frieda finds the courage to tell her "terrible stories" that she at last begins to create her own place in a world where she has always felt herself an exile. |