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Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America
White Women, Black Revolutionaries: Sex And Politics In Four Novels By Nadine Gordimer, Nancy Topping Bazin
White Women, Black Revolutionaries: Sex And Politics In Four Novels By Nadine Gordimer, Nancy Topping Bazin
English Faculty Publications
As early as 1959, the white South African novelist, essayist, and short story writer Nadine Gordimer wrote an essay, "Where Do Whites Fit In?" As the black struggle for power intensified and finally achieved its primary goal of black majority rule in 1994, Gordimer continued to reflect upon this question. Her eighth novel, July's People (1981), is a psychological and political fable. It celebrates a white woman's readiness to reject the relationships and privileges that bind her to the white world and her readiness to embrace the new South Africa of an emancipated black majority. The novels written before July's …
Androgyny Or Catastrophe: Doris Lessing's Vision In The Early 1970s, Nancy Topping Bazin
Androgyny Or Catastrophe: Doris Lessing's Vision In The Early 1970s, Nancy Topping Bazin
English Faculty Publications
Doris Lessing's novels of the early 1970s offer readers a rare kind of wisdom one which has been nourished by Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism, which she admires. Unlike Lessing's earlier fiction which was simply influenced by the ideas of Sufism, three of her novels-Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), The Summer Before the Dark (1973), and The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)-are literally Sufi fables-that is, symbolic stories, each of which "illuminates truth" (qtd. in Shah, The Sufis 14). The Sufi truth illuminated by these novels is that "life is One," and that because we have …
Southern Africa And The Themes Of Madness: Novels By Doris Lessing, Bessie Head, And Nadine Gordimer, Nancy Topping Bazin
Southern Africa And The Themes Of Madness: Novels By Doris Lessing, Bessie Head, And Nadine Gordimer, Nancy Topping Bazin
English Faculty Publications
However different their lives, Doris Lessing, Bessie Head, and Nadine Gordimer share the common heritage of having grown up in southern Africa. All three were profoundly affected by that experience. Their responses to the colonialist, racist, and sexist attitudes that permeated their lives have determined, to a major extent. the nature of their fiction. Their novels reflect the grotesque situations and bizarre human relationships created by prejudice, injustice, and the desire to dominate. These three authors focus on the mad nature of this social and political situation in southern Africa. In their works, dystopian and utopian visions of the future …
Women And Revolution In Dystopian Fiction: Nadine Gordimer's July's People And Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Nancy Topping Bazin
Women And Revolution In Dystopian Fiction: Nadine Gordimer's July's People And Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Nancy Topping Bazin
English Faculty Publications
Nadine Gordimer's July's People (1981) and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) are both dystopias, nightmare visions of the future. Both of the worlds depicted come into being because of revolutionary coups. However, in both cases, the revolutions were in progress long before the actual takeovers, and there were opportunities for citizens to have prevented these dystopian situations from coming to pass. Yet, because changing the direction of political events requires energy, solidarity, bravery or at least some self-sacrifice, most citizens are reluctant to become involved. Nadine Gordimer and Margaret Atwood understand this attitude because they have felt that way …