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Periodical article | Leiden University 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, Ashlee |
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 Nthunya Nongenile Masithathu Zenani |
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. |