Miriam Tlali was a novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist, and activist against apartheid and patriarchal confinement. She worked consistently to build literary and political community, was one of the founders of Staffrider magazine, promoting the work of younger writers, and was the most prolific writer of her time. Hailed as the first black woman to publish a novel within the country in English under apartheid, and as the first black woman to significantly impact the male terrain of South African short story writing, Tlali held the mantle of many firsts.
Fiercely opposed to censorship, she went to great lengths to undermine the will and impact of the apartheid censors and wrote many essays exposing the violence and hypocrisy of apartheid censors. A prolific writer whose plays were performed on two continents, Tlali was routinely banned in South Africa – once after a mere public reading of a story before it was even published. Tlali was recognised as an important South African literary voice, and her first novel was translated into Japanese, Dutch, German and Polish, while it remained banned in the country of her birth. This addition to the Voices of Liberation series, Miriam Tlali Writing Freedom, brings together select original writing by Tlali with analyses of the many ways in which she imagined freedom. Like the other books in the Voices of Liberation series, this title surfaces how Tlali’s writing of freedom retains relevance beyond the specific site and conditions of its emergence.
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Read an excerpt from the book on the Johannesburg Review of Books website.
The Voices of Liberation series is a celebration of lives and writings of South African and African liberation activists and heroes. Each book provides human, social and literary contexts of the subject, with critical resonance to where we come from, who we are, as a nation, and how we can choose to shape our destiny. This series invites the contemporary reader to ensure that the debates and values that shaped the liberation movement are not lost, by providing access to their thoughts and writings, and engaging directly with the rich history of the struggle for democracy, to discover where we come from and to explore how we, too, can choose our destiny.
The Voices of Liberation series ensures that the debates and values that shaped the liberation movement are not lost. It offers a unique combination of biographical information with selections from original speeches and writings in each volume. By providing access to the thoughts and writings of some of the many men and women who fought for the dismantling of apartheid, colonialism and capitalist legacy, this series invites the contemporary reader to engage directly with the rich history of the struggle for democracy and the restoration of our own identity.
