And Wrote My Story Anyway: Black South African Women’s Novels as Feminism by Barbara Boswell (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: And Wrote My Story Anyway: Black South African Women’s Novels as Feminism by Barbara Boswell Ellen A. Ahlness And Wrote My Story Anyway: Black South African Women’s Novels as Feminism BY BARBARA BOSWELL Wits UP, 2020. xix + 229 pp. ISBN 9781776146185 paper. In Gcina Mhlophe’s short story, “The Toilet,” a young woman living under the dehumanizing and brutal conditions of apartheid struggles to pursue her drive for writing poetry. She discovers a toilet in a park that is for whites only and goes on to turn this segregated space into a sanctuary for her to work on her poetry. While she temporarily finds safety and privacy in her new haven, the victory does not last long; she later returns to her newfound space to find the toilet locked, her access barred. From this short story, Barbara Boswell takes her own text’s title: upon losing access, the protagonist of the short story defiantly heads to a bench and writes her story anyway. The determination captured within this line well-articulates the underlying drive that Boswell seems compelled to capture in her analysis of ten black women fiction writers. Throughout the book, Boswell seems driven to challenge the reduction of women, minority, and intersectional authors to genre writers—those whose powerful stories are nonetheless reduced to context-informed products—to develop in readers a greater appreciation for the worlds created within and across their published works. Depending on readers’ familiarity with South African writers, the discussed authors—Miriam Tlali, Lauretta Ngcobo, Farida Karodia, Agnes Sam, Zoë Wicomb, Sindiwe Magona, Bessie Head, Gcina Mhlophe, Yvette Christiansë, Rayda Jacobs, Kagiso Lesego Molope, and Zukiswa Wanner—may or may not be of high familiarity. Regardless of readers’ own familiarity, Boswell defends her position in discussing this varied selection of women: each represents some kind of “first” in literary history in the South African context and consequently has a unique influence on their political, social, and national landscapes. Yet even coming from the South African context, their impact is not bound by borders; their influence, Boswell positions, is also felt globally as seminal works developed from 1975 to 2012. [End Page 182] And Wrote My Story Anyway evolved out of Boswell’s PhD thesis, driven by a personal and intellectual curiosity: why did she, even as a literary scholar, see and know so few works of fiction by black women writers? This inquiry led to a deeper investigation of the structural conditions that cumulate to work against black women who would be published. The driving question that informs the book’s structure is a query into what can be learned: what can we—as readers, researchers, and scholars—learn from black women, who represent some of those most negatively impacted by apartheid and the legacy of colonialism? Boswell considers literary work as a theoretical body that suggests a direction for developing the foundations and premises of a social order built on justice. Throughout this consideration, Boswell recognizes the sociopolitical landscapes that simultaneously “othered” and opposed authors while also forming spaces that supported them in developing their resistance-oriented resources and language. Throughout the text, readers will develop a keen appreciation for the narrow path the authors had to walk in order to maintain their voices, messages, and literary resistance, even as they navigated literary, publishing, and dissemination spheres that actively made no promises that their work would be distributed or received. Historically, the South African publishing world has been dominated by white voices; Boswell’s narration of the diverse range of black women authors prompts a deep appreciation for the spaces such authors have carved out in their field and state. Overall, the book’s clear writing will certainly be engaging for field and early scholars. It is an accessible read, combining feminist critique and literary history in a natural, flowing manner. Early scholars and university readers will likely find themselves learning about black women authors whose work they had not come across before (something that, in theme with Boswell’s analysis, would be the result of institutional and curricular failings). Certainly And Wrote My Story Anyway remains a timely and insightful read for readers in South African and other...