“You Are Suffering from Literary Kwashiorkor”

Transculturation at the Confluence of African Literature, Vegetarianism and Indigenous Ritual Practice in Nape ’a Motana’s Son-In-Law of the Boere

Dados Bibliográficos

ID20156485
AutoresDave Nel
Ano2014
Volume30
Fascículo1
Páginas53-69
Data de publicação2014-01-02
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Literary Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0256-4718 • E-ISSN: 1753-5387
EditoraUnisa Press (PUBLISHER • ZA)
DOI10.1080/02564718.2014.887621
OpenAlexW2076134233
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas12

On the surface, Nape ’a Motana’s fictional work Son-In-Law of the Boere (2010) is a tale of love between a black “Jim-comes-to-Jo’burg” stereotype and a white Afrikaans female teaching colleague during a transitional era in South African political and social history. However, as this article will reveal, the text is a compelling and transformative narrative which should be read as a literary transculturation of three veins of social discourse: (1) the literary historiography of African literature and the provision of access for contemporary readers to the African literary archive, (2) vegetarianism as a metaphor for transformation in a postcolonial and post-apartheid society, and (3) the representation of indigenous ritual practices in the modernity of liberation-era South Africa. Furthermore, the novel suggests that access to African fictional texts and a corps of motivated educators in South African schools would go some distance toward developing the necessary literacies to overcome the “literary kwashiorkor” referred to in the title of this essay

Art · Historiography · Indigenous · Literature · Metaphor · Modernity · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theology · Transculturation · Anthropology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · South African History and Culture