Belonging, Memory and Subaltern Voices: Reflecting on Sindiwe Magona’s To my Children’s Children

Abstract

For many black people, the act of writing and expressing one’s thoughts was an exercise of resistance and defiance, one that often meant risking losing one’s freedom or one’s life. Sindiwe Magona’s works challenge the commonly held assumption that writing is a male preserve, and illustrate how, for a black woman, writing is a form of rioting, of speaking back, of reclaiming one's voice and of breathing. I focus on Magona's book, To my Children's Children (1990) to highlight the ways in which she engages notions of memory, voice and belonging. I further point to ways in which Magona shows how writing one's story is a form of protest, and of connecting the past, the present and an unknown future. For Magona, the public cannot be separated from the private. Through her life story, we are confronted with what it meant to live under the oppressive apartheid system in South Africa.