Foundational African Writers: Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Nyembezi and Es’kia Mphahlele - Softcover

Bhekizizwe Peterson (editor); Makhosazana Xaba (editor)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1776147510 ISBN 13: 9781776147519

Publisher: Wits University Press, 2022

Synopsis

The essays in this collection were crafted in celebration of the centenaries, in 2019, of Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Cyril Lincoln Nyembezi and Es’kia Mphahlele, all of whom were born in 1919. These foundational writers produced more than a half-century of writing and cultural production spanning criticism, editorials, essays, fiction, journalism, life writing and orature.
The essays in the collection showcase these writers’ multifaceted engagements and generative insights on a wide range of issues, including precolonial existence, colonialism, empire, race, the language question, tradition, gender, modernity, exile, Pan-Africanism and decolonisation.
A number of political and thematic threads cut across the essays, including those that explore the significance of the ‘colour line’, the role of education and cultural practices amidst the unfolding of colonial modernity, state racism and print culture in South Africa and elsewhere.
Foundational African Writers examines the ways in which the centenarians’ legacies still resonate in the present and how the body of work that they produced is crucial to the genealogies and institutions of modern African and diasporic black arts and letters. Studying their works revisits established debates, provokes possibilities for interdisciplinary engagement with the imperatives of decolonisation and opens up new trajectories for future scholarship.

About this title

About the Author

Bhekizizwe (Bheki) Peterson, was a South African intellectual, script writer and film producer and Professor of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He published extensively on African literature, performance and cultural studies as well as black intellectual traditions in South Africa.

Makhosazana Xaba is a research associate at the Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research (WiSER). She is a multi-genre anthologist, and has published three poetry collections and an award-winning collection of short stories.

Khwezi Mkhize is Senior Lecturer in the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wits University Press
• Publication date: 2022
• ISBN 10: 1776147510
• ISBN 13: 9781776147519
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 400