Description
Book SynopsisRonnie Govender's works are significant in the construction of a South African national identity. The purpose of this book is to engage critically with race, class and resistance through a collection of essays on Govender's oeuvre. His writings are re-invigorated by close reading within the context of postcolonial and critical theory. Govender recalls the resilience of the multiracial community of Cato Manor whose democratic coexistence and mutual respect comprise a model for the new nation. As a memory work, his texts recollect private and community identity in the wounded spaces of colonial and apartheid oppression. Events of the past should be interpreted in a creative and imaginative way and literature enlightens it best.
Govender's unique performative prose reconstructs and resurrects the lives of the residents of Cato Manor, their vitality and humour, pain and humiliation: a vibrant, racially integrated community destroyed by the South African apartheid regime's notoriou
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments – Introduction – Resistance and Reconciliation: Post-1994 South African Indian Writings – Transactional Memory in At the Edge and other Cato Manor Stories – Beyond Calvary: I Did It for My God – Over My Dead Body: Dispossession and Relocation – ‘Poobathie’—Colour, Caste and Religion – ‘1949’—Race and the Colonial Agenda – Ayakanoo: Bucket Carrier – The Lahnee’s Pleasure: Revisiting the Crime Scene – Coolitude, Indenture and ‘Swami’ – Interview with Ronnie Govender – Conclusion.
