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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Class in the Discourses of Sindiwe Magona's Autobiography and Fiction
Author:Daymond, Margeret J.ISNI
Year:1995
Periodical:Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume:21
Issue:4
Period:December
Pages:561-572
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:literature
autobiographies (form)
Literature, Mass Media and the Press
About person:Sindiwe Magona (1943-)ISNI
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/2637208
Abstract:Autobiography, like fiction, cannot be written outside discourse; even a resistance discourse, such as the celebration of blackness, will be contaminated by the dominant values of the society in which it functions. But an important difference between autobiography and fiction lies in the reading of these two kinds of writing. This leads the author to suggest that, because the foundational contracts are different in order for the necessary illusions of autobiography and fiction to work, the relationship between writer and reader can sometimes be the occasion of truths about life that the autobiographical pact would not allow. Using this approach, the present article analyses Sindiwe Magona's discursive self-positioning in her fiction ('Living, loving and lying awake at night', 1991) as well as in her autobiography ('To my children's children', 1990, and 'Forced to grow', 1992). Focusing on the role of class in Magona's self-representation, the author shows that a South African writer like Magona is effectively more free to represent the experience and meaning of class through her fiction than in her autobiography. Notes, ref., sum.
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