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Nadine Gordimer's Fictional Selves: Can A White Woman Be At Home In Black South Africa?, Nancy Topping Bazin

Women's & Gender Studies Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) Growing up in South Africa where only 5.6 million people are white out of a population of 37.9 million, Nadine Gordimer became increasingly conscious of her whiteness¹. The colour of her skin instantly signaled 'oppressor' to black South Africans. Her whiteness imposed upon her a social and political identity that she rejected; yet, it was like a face she could not wash off, a mask she could not take off. As she said in a 1978 interview, 'In South Africa one wears one's skin like a uniform. White equals guilt' (Bazin & Seymour 1990:94). She often …