Trauma, Resistance, Reconstruction in Post-1994 South African Writing

Scholars of English literature in South Africa, Britain, the US, and France explore the textual strategies by which post-apartheid South Africa reconciles the trauma and violence of the past within the country's literary and cultural traditions. The 11 essays cover memory and the construction of identities; truth, reconciliation, resistance, and reconstruction; damaged narratives, silenced voices, and race; and trauma, confession, and autobiographies. Among their topics are memory and identity in Elleke Boehmer's Bloodlines and Zoë Wicomb's David's Story and Playing in the Light, reconstruction and resistance in the poetry of Gcina Mhlophe, settler myth in André Brink's Devil's Valley, and transmogrifying the traumatic into the democratic ideal in Nelson Mandela's autobiographical The Long Walk to Freedom. There is no index. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)