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Introduction
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Introduction ghirmai negash P haswane Mpe (1970–2004) was one of the major literary talents to emerge in south Africa after the fall of apartheid. A graduate in African literature and english from the university of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, he was a novelist , poet, scholar, and cultural activist who wrote with extraordinary commitment and originality, both in substance and in form. His intellectual honesty in exploring thematic concerns germane to postapartheid south African society continues to inspire readers who seek to reflect on old and new sets of problems facing the new south Africa. And his style continues to set the bar for many aspiring black south African writers. Mpe’s writing is informed by an oral tradition particular to the communal life of the south African xii Introduction pastoral area of limpopo. this, in addition to his modern university liberal arts education; his experience of urban life in Johannesburg; and, ultimately, his artistic sensibility and ability to synthesize disparate elements, has marked him as a truly “homegrown ” south African literary phenomenon. it is no wonder that the south African literary community was struck by utter shock and loss in 2004 when the author died prematurely at the age of thirtyfour . in literary historical terms, Mpe’s early death was indeed a defining moment. in an immediate way, his south African compatriots—writers, critics, and cultural activists—were jolted into awareness of what the loss of Mpe as a unique literary figure meant for south African literary tradition. in terms of his legacy, it was also a moment of acute revelation that the force and form of his work was a motivating influence for, just as it was inspired by, the emergence of many more writers of considerable talent. to celebrate Mpe’s role as transformative for south African literature is not to make an overstatement. in his book Words Gone Two Soon (2005), Mbulelo Mzamane, one of south Africa’s literary dons, has the following to say about Mpe’s influences and literary interchanges as he considers Mpe and sello duiker: there was mutual admiration between duiker and Mpe. duiker delivered a moving eulogy at Mpe’s memorial service. . . . from the outpouring tributes to both, it soon became [34.229.50.161] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:07 GMT) Ghirmai Negash xiii apparent, first, that they commanded a considerable following and, second, that among their peers there are numerous closet scribes with major stories to tell [about the postapartheid era]. (xii, xi) commenting on Mpe’s unique writerly contribution to the continuum of black African literary tradition, the writer and philosopher Antjie Krog observes: “for a long time i have been wondering whether a strong communal sense would have an influence on the telling and writing of stories in black communities .” to have a Western-centered notion of storytelling means, she says, to rely primarily on coherent linearity, on the presence of a main narrator and a main story line, and on a proper beginning and end (56). Answering her own rhetorical question, she points out that Mpe remains committed to traditional African forms of narrative that allow him, in his novel Welcome to Our Hillbrow, not only to move in and out of the “physical and the metaphysical sphere[s]” effectively but also to employ a communal mode of narrative continuity. the story that begins with “an opening narrator who dies halfway through” is carried on by “another narrator [who] takes over without any obvious change in style or view” (57). first published in 2001, seven years after south Africa’s liberation from the apartheid system, Welcome to Our Hillbrow provides its readers with substantial criticism and social commentary regarding the lingering and evolving problems of a new south xiv Introduction Africa. it focuses on themes that Mpe often referred to as “taboos” or “sensitive issues.” After a synopsis of the novel’s plot, this brief introduction will address the underlying thematic concerns of Mpe’s book by grouping them under the conceptual categories euphemism, linguicism, and xenophobia . Of course, the novel’s many concerns cannot be reduced to these few groupings. for example, it is evident that Mpe was interested in experimenting with the south African novel as a genre, appropriating traditional or local techniques to tell a contemporary or modern south African story of the postapartheid era. A reader will recognize that in Mpe’s text the what (narrative representation) and the how (language) are blurred entities; the “question of language” is openly a matter of...