Sindiwe MagonaRecensioni

This story based on a true story, about a school in a township in South Africa. When vandals (skollies) constantly break into the local school, there is a lot of apathy among the adults in the village. As well, many of them are without work and homes are either shacks or they are falling apart. When the new computers are stolen from a locked room, by making a hole in the roof, the principal calls a meeting of all parents. He tells them that the future of the children depends on them getting a good education. Knowing the children will repeat the path of their parents, the parents are invited to use the school to complete projects. The projects they develop are successful and lead the village into a more self-reliant existance and pride in their lives.

This book shows how empowering a community helped the children receive a better education. This brings to life the saying, "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach him to fish, he eats for a lifetime." Developing pride in our lives and in what we do, working together, having confidence in our abilities, learning new things and being positive are all shown in this book. The back of the books contains a lot of information. There is a short description of the actual project this book is based on as well as some information on Aparthied and Nelson Mandela. There is a glossary of the Afrikaans words used in the story and some discussion questions. This would be a great story to use when studying World Politics, Social Justice and Prejudice. This book would be a great addition to Middle School and High School libraries and classes. The publisher generously provided me with a copy of this book via Netgalley.

I couldn't stop reading this lively tale of life in rural Transkei. Magona tells a good story.

Inspiring story, largely based on truth, of how an enterprising principal turned around the fortunes of a South African primary school and its community by involving parents in a profitable brick making business. Not only did they benefit from the bricks; the program restored dignity to many who had lost their jobs, and it prepared them to take on new jobs outside of the school. As the afterword mentions, South Africa continues to face incredible problems with inequality and with education, but there are extraordinary people there who are providing a ray of hope. The book is well-written and will also introduce readers to some commonly used Afrikaans words.

A great entry into modern African fiction and the apartheid system. Readers can easily draw comparisons between Part One and The Help.

At the center of this novel is the straightforward story of one mother reaching out to another, out of grief and poverty, attempting to understand her own son's actions and the world which has proved so unfair to her own family, as well as the family of the woman she writes. Where the actions, and even immediate circumstances, are understood, she struggles with the chain of events that have led to the ruin and heartbreak she sees around her, and Magona's simple and poetic style bring the full world of this confusion to life.

Magona is at her best when writing character-driven fiction that explores intersections of socio-political chaos and individual experience--this novel is no exception. Moving quickly, and maneuvering between past and present in the midst of a short and heartbroken letter, the novel is a masterpiece of smart and moving fiction. Magona's work isn't easy to find, but it is worth searching out.

Absolutely recommended.

Magona's depictions of poverty and family are striking, each of her stories focusing on the ways in which political and cultural forces tangle individuals in situations they never would have foreseen for themselves. Yet, in each of her stories, there is also humor, and there is also kindness, her characters coming to life on every page so that it truly seems that each story is a world in itself.

What Magona can create and express in 10 or 15 pages is truly remarkable, and her understated style is worth reading and sharing.

Absolutely recommended.½

This slim volume of short stories about domestic workers and their ‘medems’ is set in pre-democratic South Africa. I thought it excellent.

A prominent young South African writer talks about ‘listening’ to these stories, rather than reading them, which harks back to the African oral storytelling tradition and is accurate, I think.½

While Magona's fiction has a poetic tone, and unquestionable originality, I have to admit that I found both these qualities lacking in her poetry. Many of the poems came across as short socio-politically themed speeches or monologues, with little poetry in the language or the direct expression, aside from the line breaks. While there were some few moments that struck me, much of the poetry came across as overly didactic or melodramatic, leaving all of the wrong elements to the imagination. Her fiction is so concrete as to paint wonderful illustrations of the most beautiful and horrible scenes alike, but this same level of detail was nearly entirely absent from the poetry. I hate to say it, but much of the poetry actually came across as somewhat amateurish, and was a huge disappointment.

Certainly, the poems clearly paint issues and express emotion about situations and events which should be seen and more widely discussed, so the work here is necessary in many ways, as literature may be the best way to educate the world about socio-political issues and problems that readers aren't personally familiar with. BUT, the problem here is that the poetry comes across as too simple, and as too much in that educational vein, to really reach readers on an emotional level (in most cases).

In the end, I would absolutely recommend Magona's work, but I would recommend her prose first. There are some few poems here which stand out beautifully as poems that should be read and shared, but they are so few and far between that, admittedly, I have to hesitate before recommending this particular example of her work.

Simple, powerful, and necessary: this book is as much about family and love as it is about AIDS or our changing society. Beautiful and recommended.

As I like to support local (South African)authors, I added it to my basket.

The FFF used to consist of Five Friends: Edith, Cordelia, Amanda, Doris and Beauty. But then Beauty passes away suddenly. Aids has claimed another victim. On her deathbed, she extracts a promise from Amanda. Ukuhle, she begs of Amanda. May you live a long life, and may you become old.

Because Beauty’s premature death was as a result of her unfaithful husband, the remaining friends all swear an oath: they won't have unprotected sex – not even with their husbands – and they will find out their own HIV status as well as that of their husbands/partners. This oath has surprising consequences.

Aids and its impact on African life is clearly a dominating theme. But this book offers so much more than that. It challenges oppression that masquerades as tradition and irresponsibility that hides behind love.

While dealing with a predominantly (but not exclusively) African problem, Magona points a delightfully irreverent finger at our prolific and polygamous President. In a gentle but strong - almost motherly - way she gives a masterly indictment of the predisposition of some African males to infidelity, promiscuity and reckless negligence towards the women who love them.

But she is clear-headed enough to also condemn the women who, in this time of Aids, passively accept this state of affairs (excuse the pun) because of ‘tradition’. Encouragingly, there are also characters – too few of them, the FFF’s lament – like Amanda’s brother PP, who are the best of what an African man can be. There is also the sympathetic portrayal of Selby, Doris’s fiancé, a good man who struggles with the transition from traditional sexual mores to a more modern, and responsible, attitude.

In an easy-to-read style, with touches of humour and deep poignancy, Magona has produced a novel that is about the evolution of the African soul towards a new kind of freedom; one in which both sexes take responsibility for their lives in an effort to curb a new and dangerous enemy: Aids.

As the remaining friends face challenges to their beliefs, and their relationships are tested and sometimes found wanting, a core message shines through: use your freedom responsibly.

‘Beauty’s Gift’ is a gift to all women, for it shows how a women’s strength and gentleness can be combined to effect changes in a world that is often violent, and even more often lonely. But the FFF’s have each other and, in their unity, lies their salvation.

Together with To My Children's Children this makes a nice pair of autobios about the daily life of black women growing up under apartheid. I'm sorry she's so critical of the resistance groupings without putting them in context but she does make some strong points about the gender problems within student organizations which emerged out of the 1976 Soweto uprising. She's not a great writer but she does provide lots of details of womens' daily lives which are quite graphic.

Just finished this seemingly old book (1990) by Sindiwe Magona, the first black woman to publish novels in South Africa. It's an interesting reminder of the hardships of the period, much like Maya Angelou, though not as lyrically written. The overlay of Xhosa tradition and idioms add to the impact.½

With the exception of A Drowning in Cala I found this disappointing--a reason to avoid collections of short stories by authors who are well-established. Often these collections gather together anything and everything the person has ever written, most of which wouldn't get published if the person wasn't already known.½

This book is a collection of stories divided into two parts. The first part is a ring of connected, gossipy by black South African women working as domestic servants for whites. The pieces, which really highlight the different personalities of each women, and read like oral pieces (if that's possible) are written in first person and are directed to another of the women. I had the distinct feeling I had read these before, but I think the stories are similar to ones I read in '07 in a memoir called Singing Away the Hunger: The Autobiography of an African Woman by Mpho Matsepo Nthunya.

The second part is comprised of several standard short stories set in the 60s through the late 80s, during the Apartheid system in South Africa, at least one story set during some of attempts at reforms in the 80s. The stories are bleak, often tragic, and several were very powerful. There was at least one I would deem "delightful". It was told by a young girl who detailed what her wonderful Fridays were like. This is an important collection, but I could not help but wonder about the stories now. I'm not so naive as to think that the vestiges of such a longtime segregation policy do not linger, but I wondered if the stories now were more hopeful.½

A tragic, heart wrenching tale written in the form of a letter to the mother of an American girl who was killed by a black man in South Africa during the build up to the first democratic election from the murderer's mother. (The books is based on the murder of an American Fulbright Scholar who was murdered in much the same way as the character in the book) The book chronicles the life of Mandisa, the mother of the killer, as she tries to explain why the murder occurred. While not pardoning her son, Mandisa shows how the effects of Apartheid effected the youth during the early 1990s in a very compelling and sympathetic way.

Written as a letter to her grandchildren, this is an account of Sindiwe Magona's first 23 years, growing up in a poor but loving Xhosa family first in the Transkei and then on the Cape Flats at Retreat and Guguletu. She wishes her grandchildren to be aware of their own history, and writes with a candid, unselfpitying humour about the trials and tribulations of her early years in tge face of hardships relentlessly reinforced by the apartheid system.