Novel explores passing in South Africa
CVK
Zoe Wicomb’s new novel Playing in the Light
Scotsman.com has a really interesting interview with Wicomb, in which she discusses “play-whites” - those who passed for white for economic gain:
“There was a family living across the road from us, and one day they just disappeared. Our neighbours said, ‘They’ve left. They’ve turned white’.”
“This happened all the time. It’s an odd phenomenon, the play-whites,” says Wicomb. “We don’t even know how many of them there are. There’s no discourse, nothing in the library, because officially they don’t exist. Yet the truth of the matter, because of their history, is that many Afrikaners are mixed race. Even Verwoerd [the founder of apartheid] had a wife who looked African.”
mtevc wrote:
have to pick this up…if anyone is interested in more S.A. fiction, check out J.M. Coetzee’s book Disgrace…as this is one of the best written books ever, and if you are familiar with South Africa, he does such a wonderful job of describing things and the problems and the interactions that occur (because of the race issue and the race of the characters) but I don’t think he ever mentions this one is black and this one is white…he makes it clear by the status…wonderful book…
Posted 21 Jun 2006 at 10:30 am ¶
gatamala wrote:
mtevc
Coetzee is on my list, but I’ll bump him up. Thanks for the recommendation.
Posted 21 Jun 2006 at 1:47 pm ¶
Charlette wrote:
thanks for the news.
Posted 21 Jun 2006 at 7:39 pm ¶
mtevc wrote:
disgrace is one of my favorite books ever…on many levels…it is so well written…the way he talks about race and never mentions color (of course, you need to know the backdrop and situation in modern day S.A.)…but more importantly, the way he is able to get us inside the head of the lead character…the narrator is so pitiful and so unrepentant at the beginning…and then…
Posted 22 Jun 2006 at 8:58 am ¶
Bobby wrote:
Bringing racial passing closer to home is novel ‘That Caucafrican Distraction’
A humorous narrative about an opportunistic goldigger, he’s struggling to cover
his tracks; keep the lid on!
Posted 25 Jun 2006 at 12:49 pm ¶
jlnli wrote:
Re this: many Afrikaners are mixed race. Even Verwoerd [the founder of apartheid] had a wife who looked African.”
I don’t know how true it is (although the book seemed massively well-researched), but in Hermann Giliomee’s “The Afrikaners: Biography of a People” he says that essentially *all* of the major Afrikaner families are from a mixed background from the early colonial days.
Posted 30 Jun 2006 at 11:19 am ¶