Of Suffocated Hearts and Tortured Souls: Seeking Subjecthood through Madness in Francophone Women's Book

Gcina Mhlophe came to Pietermaritzburg in 2008 to speak to a group of school children, to which a friend invited me. She's a charismatic speaker, able to hold the attention of young and old for some time, her genuine smile seldom leaving her face. What I find interesting about her writing is that she writes the way she speaks. There are no pretentions, no intricate literary tricks: What you see is what you get (which should inspire any novice writers out there - if she can do that, why can't I?! Gcina Mhlophe came to Pietermaritzburg in 2008 to speak to a group of school children, to which a friend invited me. She's a charismatic speaker, able to hold the attention of young and old for some time, her genuine smile seldom leaving her face. What I find interesting about her writing is that she writes the way she speaks. There are no pretentions, no intricate literary tricks: What you see is what you get (which should inspire any novice writers out there - if she can do that, why can't I?!). The other interesting aspect of this writing (each chapter alternating between a short story and a poem) is that these are tales about her experience of apartheid and the way of life in the African culture. These are things one often hears of, but because people are too scared to write about it (the way Mhlophe does), one doesn't really see much of it in print - though I stand under correction!

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