Table Of ContentSPRINGER BRIEFS IN EDUCATION
Judith Inggs
Transition and
Transgression
English Young
Adult Fiction in
Post-Apartheid
South Africa
123
SpringerBriefs in Education
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8914
Judith Inggs
Transition and Transgression
English Young Adult Fiction
in Post-Apartheid South Africa
1 3
Judith Inggs
Translation and Interpreting Studies
University of the Witwatersrand
Johannesburg
South Africa
ISSN 2211-1921 ISSN 2211-193X (electronic)
SpringerBriefs in Education
ISBN 978-3-319-25532-3 ISBN 978-3-319-25534-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-25534-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015956364
© The Author(s) 2016
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Contents
1 Introduction ................................................ 1
References .................................................. 7
2 Turmoil and Unrest .......................................... 9
1976 and Its Aftermath ........................................ 11
White Writers Narrating the 1976 Riots ........................... 12
Black Writers Narrating the Unrest of the 70s and 80s ................ 17
White Resistance ............................................. 20
Conclusion .................................................. 22
References .................................................. 23
3 Identity, Space and Race. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Segregation ................................................. 29
Merging Space ............................................... 31
Place and a Search for Identity .................................. 35
The Example of Song of Be and the N!ore ......................... 36
The Physical Landscape ....................................... 37
Homelessness ............................................... 39
Conclusion .................................................. 41
References .................................................. 41
4 The Post-apartheid Adolescent Subject ......................... 45
Negotiating Identity and Power in the School ....................... 46
Caught Between Two Worlds ................................... 49
Prejudice and Acceptance ...................................... 52
Crime and Poverty ............................................ 55
Negotiating Identity and Power as Other .......................... 58
Conclusion .................................................. 62
References .................................................. 63
5 Transgression, Romance and Sexuality .......................... 65
Romance ................................................... 67
Negative Consequences of Sexual Activity ......................... 69
v
vi Contents
Silence in Relation to HIV/AIDS ................................ 72
Patriarchal Attitudes and Gender-Based Violence .................... 73
Internet Predators ............................................ 76
Gender and Sexual Identity ..................................... 77
Conclusion .................................................. 81
References .................................................. 81
6 Fantasy, Myth, and Legend ................................... 85
Traditional Belief Systems ..................................... 87
Fantasy, History and Legend .................................... 89
Fantasy and Realism—The Hidden Star ........................... 93
New Directions .............................................. 94
Horror Novels and Speculative Fiction ............................ 99
Conclusion .................................................. 101
References .................................................. 101
7 Benevolence and Malevolence ................................. 105
Dystopian Fiction ............................................ 105
South African Dystopias ....................................... 108
Post-disaster and Post-apocalyptic Novels ......................... 112
Conclusion .................................................. 115
References .................................................. 117
8 Conclusion and Afterthoughts ................................. 119
Chapter 1
Introduction
My interest in South African young adult fiction was initially sparked by my
research into Soviet children’s literature during perestroika, when I began to draw
parallels between two societies experiencing a period of transition and restruc-
turing. In both Russia and South Africa writers needed to adapt to a new politi-
cal and social climate, and often struggled to find new directions in their writing.
Literature for young adults often illustrates and reflects changes taking place in
society as the protagonists negotiate a sense of identity and position of power
within the various institutions in which they live. As Roberta Seelinger Trites has
noted, young adult novels typically question these institutions and explore how
individuals are constructed by society, making them key texts for exploring “the
individual’s power in relation to the institutions that comprise her or his existence”
(Trites 2000, p. 18). Seen in this light, they have a clear educational value and
yet often the study of such texts and their value in developing social awareness
alongside language and literacy is neglected, despite the fact that The Teacher’s
Guide for the South African Revised National Curriculum Statement advises edu-
cators to “take a text-based approach to the teaching of languages” (Hatton and
Van der Walt 2011). Awareness of titles produced by South African writers is often
further limited because of the large number of titles produced internationally in
the English language each year. Consequently, my primary intention is to contrib-
ute to rectifying this situation, making South African literature for young adults
more visible, and highlighting its value in an educational and a literary context.
The overall scope of this book, then, is to provide an analysis of South African
English-language YA fiction from the years when apartheid began to break down
in the 1980s, through the period of transition in the 1990s to a democratic society
and beyond to the present day.
It has been widely accepted that the question of power is central in young adult
(YA) fiction and that this is one of its defining characteristics (Trites 2000, p. 8).
There is no general consensus, however, regarding a satisfactory overall defini-
tion. It might include books written specifically for an adolescent market, or books
which have adolescent protagonists, or books likely to be attractive to young
adults, or a combination of these three (Trites 2000, p. 7). I use the term in this
© The Author(s) 2016 1
J. Inggs, Transition and Transgression, SpringerBriefs in Education,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-25534-7_1
2 1 Introduction
study to include books that feature young adult protagonists, normally between the
ages of 12 and 18, or which appear to have that age group as their primary tar-
get audience. This is a fairly common definition, and is adopted by, among oth-
ers, Kathryn James, in her book Death, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary
Adolescent Literature (2009, p. 5). I deliberately avoided a title that suggested that
there was a body of literature identified as “South African young adult literature”
as such a designation would be highly problematic. In current literary debates
there is no consensus on the existence of a “South African literature” or a national
literature unique to the country. This discussion is closely related to the fact that
South Africa is a multi-lingual and multi-cultural society comprising numerous
groups and multiple literatures co-habiting in spaces which are not necessarily
shared. Leon de Kock states:
If anything, “South African literature” is an area of enquiry that raises a multiplicity of
questions about the colonization of culture; about canonization and tradition formation;
and about literary-critical historiography, identity, objects of literature, the materiality of
discursive regimes, the construction of culture, and the relations of power to cultural pro-
duction. (De Kock 2001, p. 271)
Young adult literature in South Africa raises similar questions, although per-
haps not as starkly, drawing attention to the ways in which literature highlights
convergence and divergence in society—what is other and what is not, what is
shared and what is separate. The notion of a national literature entails to some
extent the existence of a national identity, and such an identity is by no means cer-
tain. This is, I think, in contrast to the situation in some other postcolonial coun-
tries. Roderick McGillis, in his introduction to Voices of the Other, a collection of
essays on children’s literature in a postcolonial context, comments:
The literature of the past twenty years or so in countries such as Canada, Australia, South
Africa, India, the islands in the Caribbean, and so on reveals an interest in the national
identity and pride separate from an attachment to England. (McGillis 2000, p. xxiii)
The collection contains no further mention of South African texts but the com-
ment does imply the existence of a national identity emerging from writing for
young adults, an identity for which little evidence exists. As Robert Thornton
notes: “South African identities cross-cut each other in multiple ways and in mul-
tiple contexts. There is no fundamental identity that any South African clings to
in common with all, or even most other South Africans” (De Kock 2001, p. 277).
Both individual identity and a sense of belonging are of course central in most
books for young adults as the acquisition of identity within a community is part
of an adolescent’s journey to adulthood. Consequently, many of the works dis-
cussed in the following chapters feature this search. The texts, however, point to
the existence of multiple identities, rather than a single national identity. Questions
concerning the possibility of a national identity do emerge in the exploration and
analysis of many of the works discussed, but these often reflect a perceived desire
for such an identity to exist on the part of authors, rather than the actual situa-
tion. What does stand out in the discussion of the books, many of which deal with
issues of multiculturalism and even multilingualism, is that they are almost with-
out exception firmly situated in a South African social and geographical space.
1 Introduction 3
My primary aim, as stated above, is to draw attention to the literature avail-
able, which represents a largely untapped resource for teachers in South African
schools. On a more academic level, the study of young adult literature in the con-
text of post-apartheid South Africa presents exciting opportunities for research,
especially given the paucity of scholarly works in the field and it is hoped that this
study will stimulate further research. The scope of this study is limited, partly for
reasons of space, given that a wide range of genres and themes are investigated. A
second limitation is that, as indicated in the title, the selection of books discussed
is restricted to English-language fiction. The main reason for this focus is practi-
cal: it was impossible to cover all literature for young adults, as this would have
required the participation of numerous other researchers who are experts in those
languages and literatures. I envisage that future studies might usefully explore
points of convergence and divergence between literature in the different languages
and the themes and genres that have emerged. Afrikaans writers, in particular,
have made a significant contribution to the works available for local readers and
the tradition of Afrikaans children’s and young adult literature is a long and rich
one. Books in the other languages of South Africa remain comparatively scarce
and it is my hope that more and more South African writers will write in their
own languages for South African children and young adults. Currently, however,
economics dictates that writing in English results in a wider, more lucrative market
for both publishers and writers.
Thirdly, it was not possible here to enter into a detailed discussion of YA fiction
in South Africa in relation to postcolonial studies in general, although many of the
works discussed exhibit features of postcolonial literature. It will become evident
in the following chapters that developments in characterisation and narrative style
from the 1980s onwards display changes in the depiction and description of peo-
ple and places that are indicative of post-colonial and post-apartheid practices. In
addition, as more black writers began to write for young adults, black protagonists
feature more prominently, and the inclusion of words, phrases and idioms from
languages other than English illustrates significant changes in the status quo.
The field of scholarly research in South African children’s and young adult lit-
erature is not extensive. There are only a few works focusing specifically on South
African children’s literature, and fewer still focusing on YA literature. I have
included references to these critical works relating to the novels and authors dis-
cussed where they do exist but these are limited. Prizes awarded to books are indi-
cated in the text in order to give a sense of their reception in academic and
publishing circles but there is almost no material available on reception of the
works by readers or in schools. Of the resources that are available, one of the earli-
est collections of essays, Towards Understanding: Children’s Literature for
Southern Africa, was compiled by Cilliers (1988) and provides a sense of the state
of children’s literature prior to the 1980s. The most significant contribution by a
single scholar is that of Elwyn Jenkins, whose overview of South African chil-
dren’s literature, Children of the Sun (1993), has proved invaluable as a resource.
A more recent publication is his National Character in South African English
Children’s Literature (2006) and a collection of a number of his published articles
