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Reviewed by:
  • Race, Nation, Translation: South African Essays, 1990–2013 by Zoë Wicomb
  • Jacob Mckinnon Ivey
BOOK REVIEW of Wicomb, Zoë. 2018. Race, Nation, Translation: South African Essays, 1990–2013. Edited by Andrew van der Vlies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 352 pp.

Zoë Wicomb is one of South Africa's leading authors, whose works include the novels October, Playing in the Light, and David's Story and the short story collections You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town and The One That Got Away. This book, edited by Andrew van der Vlies, includes sixteen of Wicomb's nonfictional essays first published between 1990 and 2013. The collection ranges widely and includes literary analysis, social commentary, and even a remembrance of Nelson Mandela after his passing, in 2013.

The book begins with an extensive chapter by van der Vlies, skillfully introducing Wicomb to readers who may not have been aware of her work. Sketching her biography in the backdrop of the apartheid era, it introduces many of the major themes that dominate the volume, including the threat of being overly protective of the heterogeneity of South African society produced by apartheid, the necessity of new methods of reading for visible practices of representation in the new South Africa, and explaining the "business of writing" in conjunction with complex issues of race and translation in crafting these narratives.

Readers well versed in the major literary figures of South Africa will be engrossed by Wicomb's analysis of Bessie Head, Nadine Gordimer, Njabulo Ndebele, J. M. Coetzee, and others. The rereading of July's People (Gordimer's 1981 novel), written in 2003, pointedly recasts the vantage point of July to a later time, when the ending "asserts the impossibility of emancipation at the beginning of the revolution," but admits that conditions are possible through language and narration (186).

The theme of race permeates many of these essays, with the issue of the "colored" population of South Africa at the forefront. This is unsurprising, considering Wicomb's background as a colored writer. However, essays on District Six, "Shame and Identity," and an analysis of the colored writer Bessie Head serve as a through line to challenge readers to confront the narrative of racial identity over and over again.

Other essays, including a poignant and pithy commemoration of the death of Nelson Mandela, give a wonderful sense of why Wicomb is one of South Africa's finest authors. Casting Mandela as an enigma during his imprisonment, Wicomb remembers the first president of a free South Africa [End Page 151] walking out of prison "in beauty," without the "ugly hair parting" that dominated the last photos taken of him before his imprisonment. She praises him for being "spared that inevitable slippage from idealism to corruption that war and military values bring" (129). Wicomb concludes this passage by acknowledging our continued fascination with the man and the mysteries he held until his death, most notably his meeting, in 1995, with Betsie Verwoerd, the widow of Hendrick Verwoerd, a former prime minister and the so-called architect of apartheid. Neither Mandela nor the widow Verwoerd spoke publicly about this meeting, which therefore, according the Wicomb, must "remain the stuff of fiction" (129).

The final chapter of this collection is perhaps the most insightful for fans of Wicomb. In an interview conducted specifically for this volume by van der Vlies, Wicomb elaborates on not only her personal history, but the manner in which her work has evolved over the past three decades. This interview provides insight into topics from the importance of art to the nature of post-apartheid pedagogy. During the interview, Wicomb posits that she doesn't "understand postapartheid pedagogy," most notably the government's decision to focus on more advanced postgraduate training, which, in her opinion, "has left primary education in a parlous state" (273). These statements are notable in light of "Culture beyond Color? A South African Dilemma" (included in this volume), a 1993 essay in which Wicomb calls for a "radical pedagogy that will sensitize those whose privilege has blinded them to the ironies of power" (65). These connections highlight both Wicomb's ability to remain relevant in her insight and...

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