http://hdl.handle.net/10500/4979 Thu, 23 May 2013 20:37:46 GMT 2013-05-23T20:37:46Z http://hdl.handle.net/10500/5274 “Remembering the Short Stories of Yvonne Vera: A Postcolonial and Feminist reading of Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals?” Murray, Jessica The Zimbabwean author Yvonne Vera is one of the most important writers to emerge from the African continent over the last two decades. Although she has received widespread critical acclaim as well as academic scrutiny, analyses of her work have mostly focused on her novels. This article attempts to redress this scholarly imbalance by offering a close textual analysis of Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals? through a critical lens of postcolonial and feminist theory. In these stories Vera articulates the internal thoughts of her characters in order to explore the way that oppressed people negotiate the fact of their oppression. It is particularly the female characters’ reflections that reveal the complexity of the position occupied by colonised women and the sophistication of their attempts to address the layered marginalisation to which they are subjected. Vera shows that, for them, an unproblematic participation in the nationalist movement for liberating Zimbabwe from colonial oppression is simply not an option. The article explores the specifically gendered expectations and obstacles that shape the female characters’ struggles in the Zimbabwean context. Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10500/5274 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10500/5270 ‘Africa has erred in its memory’: Exploring continuities and discontinuities in texts by Petina Gappah and Yvonne Vera Murray, Jessica In the short story collection Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals (1992) the Zimbabwean author Yvonne Vera initiates her construction of alternative historical narratives, particularly ones that are able to voice women’s experiences. Her project of fostering an alternative engagement with Zimbabwean history locates her in a group of writers that have moved away from simple adherence to historical narratives. The importance of addressing the elision of women from history becomes all the more apparent when one considers that the silencing of their voices and the construction of identity has been twofold: identity was shaped by both the imperial discourse of the coloniser and by the patriarchal discourse of men. While women have certainly negotiated these pressures in myriad ways, imperial and patriarchal discourses have established the frameworks within which they were able to construct their identities. The need to create texts that will mirror the experiences of the female subject from their own perspectives is thus an important feminist and post-colonial project. While academic discussions of Vera’s texts have often compared and contrasted her work with male Zimbabwean authors, no work has focussed on analysing her together with one of the most prominent female authors to have emerged from Zimbabwe since Vera herself. This article focuses on Vera’s work and Petina Gappah’s short story collection An Elegy for Easterly (2009) to explore the concerns that these two Zimbabwean authors address in their fiction. Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10500/5270 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10500/5267 Daring to Speak Its Name: The Representation of a Lesbian Relationship in the Work of Rozena Maart Murray, Jessica This article explores the representation of a lesbian relationship in a contemporary South African short story. I take an intersectional approach to the reading of lesbianism and consider how the race, gender and the geographical location of the lesbian body restrict the relationship options that are open to lesbians in a society where heterosexual partnering constitutes the norm. By means of a close reading of ‘No Rosa, No District 6’ by Rozena Maart, I illustrate the heteronormative pressures that structure the daily choices that lesbians must make in their relationships with one another as well as the ways in which other characters make sense of these relationships. While the textual representations of heteronormativity, and lesbian defiance thereof, will be the focus of the article, my work is motivated by a desire to address the silencing that seems to characterize much of the scholarly engagement with South African works of fiction that depict lesbianism. Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10500/5267 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10500/5265 “Binne ʼn halfuur het ek wit geword” : snypunte van gender, ras en klas in Suid-Afrikaanse fiksionele uitbeeldings van voorkoms Murray, Jessica This article explores how intersections of gender, race and class shape the evaluation of women’s appearance in selected South African works of fiction. These texts include Pat Stamatélos’ Kroes (2005), E.K.M. Dido’s ʼn Stringetjie blou krale (2000) and Zoë Wicomb’s You can’t get lost in Cape Town (1987), Playing in the light (2006) and The one that got away (2008). The novels and short stories that are analysed in the article reveal the extent to which the different authors regard aspects of appearance, such as hair texture, skin colour and facial features, as determining the material circumstances of the female characters’ lives. In the process they construct a landscape that contains marked similarities to South African society. Gender, race and class can, however, never be regarded as wholly separate constructions. These axes are intricately interwoven and must be considered together in any attempt to understand standards of appearance. By means of a literary analysis within the framework of feminist theories about the intersections of gender, race and class, the article investigates the types of pressure that are exerted on female characters in terms of their appearance. The article illustrates that female characters often invest a great deal of time and effort in their appearance. However, it emerges that power relations in a racist and patriarchal society strongly encourage women to conform to Eurocentric standards of beauty. The article suggests that women are not engaging in trivialities when they attempt to change their appearance. On the contrary, the experiences of the characters demonstrate that this may be the only way in which women are able to exercise some limited amount of power in a context where they are oppressed - due to the intersections of gender, race and class. Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10500/5265 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z