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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Mediating oral autobiography: ways of reading Nthunya's 'Singing Away the Hunger' and Zenani's 'And So I Grew Up'
Author:Neser, AshleeISNI
Year:2000
Periodical:Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa
Volume:12
Issue:2
Pages:71-84
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:literature
autobiography
About persons:Mpho 'M'atsepo NthunyaISNI
Nongenile Masithathu ZenaniISNI
Abstract:Nongenile Masithathu Zenani's 'And So I Grew Up' (1988) and Mpho 'M'atsepo Nthunya's 'Singing Away the Hunger' (1996) are texts in which oral literature intersects with autobiography. Both represent processes of transformation from their oral telling into print form. In her reading of the stories of Nthunya and Zenani, the present author focuses on the problems of autobiography, mediation, and the apparent prerequisite of an individualist form of self-perception, as well as the complex issues surrounding highly mediated transcribed stories. She highlights the evidence in both autobiographies of self-assured voices and concerns that resist national political contextualization. She notes that critical concern with the individuals who are responsible for storytelling and for mediating stories is essential, for in South Africa it is in the space of mediation where perhaps the most acute forms of cultural inter-discursivity occur. Bibliogr., notes.
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