By Gabeba Baderoon Questions of lineage mark much contemporary writing by Black women, from Nomboniso Gasa’s Women in South African History (2007) to Koleka Putuma’s Collective Amnesia (2017), signaling a longing for beginnings and continuity in the face of the vast silences and abrupt severing which mar so much of South African history. In Beauty…
Category: Reviews
Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism, by Karima Bennoune. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015
By Charmaine Pereira In a world marked by the proliferation of violent jihadi groups, what can be done to turn the tide against Muslim fundamentalism? This question lies at the heart of Karima Bennoune’s Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism. Bennoune’s award-winning book focuses on the struggles…
Rape: A South African Nightmare, by Pumla Dineo Gqola. Johannesburg: MF Books, an imprint of Jacana Media (PTY) Ltd, 2015
By Jane Bennett I make the assertion that rape is not a moment but a language…and I untangle and decipher the knots and codes of this language, to surface its structure, underline its histories, understand its rules. (Gqola, 2015: 22) In the two years since the publication of Pumla Gqola’s third book, Rape: A South…