Miniseminare

<< Terug | Back

Rosemund J Handler “It’s a sad state of affairs when a white woman journalist writes in the Sunday Times that most of the writing by women is by white women – and then goes on to question whether, in fact, white women writers have anything to say.”

	Jane Ranger “True - a lot of the fiction (and non-fiction) being published currently in South Africa is written by white women, but it’s the quality of the writing and the freshness of the voice that count, not colour or gender.”
	Isobel Dixon “... Celean Jacobson's article totally oversimplifies the matter and in some cases simply misses the mark. For one thing, she mentions only white English women writers in South Africa, as though the whole lively Afrikaans publishing scene did not exist ...”
	Michelle McGrane “It's not always easy to have an opinion, to take a public position. I want to be consistent, fearless, to allow the book to guide me like a map, but it's all too easy to trip and become unanchored.”
	Stacy Hardy “Post-apartheid: we are all so eager to please, so easy to please; so thrilled to be adding our voices to the multifaceted chorus reflecting our one rainbow nation-hood; so ready to comment via our own dilemmas and identifications as writers ...”
	Janet van Eeden “When it comes to the world of theatre and film, all hell breaks loose ... In both arenas the male perspective dominates. As a result, the number of plays by women about women seen at the Grahamstown festival in 2005 was a rare surprise ... and very positive phenomenon and I hoped it would last. It didn’t.”
	Gabeba Baderoon “Where do we find honest conversations about pleasures and disappointments about our writing ... ? It should be our larger culture, where discussions, reviews, literature courses, prizes, lectures, fellowships, books of the week, radio interviews, readings, excerpts in newspapers and long conversations can form part of an expansive, honest exchange.”
	Kelwyn Sole “... there is a burgeoning official discourse that wishes to narrow down the kinds of questions that writers will ask of our country, and the styles that should be used to ask these questions.”
	Simãu  Kikamba “You don’t catch a snake by its tail … This question does not address the real issue. It may make for excellent women-empowering, gender-equality rhetoric, but it does not strike me as a constructive way to tackle the real debate that we writers face in this country ...”
	Ken Barris “What strikes me about the parts of this seminar I’ve read so far is that although certain of the contributions are impressively cogent, relevant and insightful, little has been said that is entirely new.”
	Sam Raditlhalo “For let us be frank and honest, at the very least: the Edward Saidian communities of interpretation in South Africa still reflect the biases and binary oppositions of those tired beasts: 'good/bad' literature, 'protest/ideal' literature and so forth.”
	Henrietta Rose-Innes “There’s always been a sense that we need to build up precious South African writers, not knock them down. But I think the industry has grown to a point where this is no longer always necessary or useful. We have a large crop of new writers and many books appearing every year. We are strong enough to withstand a bit of serious scrutiny.”
	Ashraf Jamal “‘From Houghton to Khayelitsha’ just doesn’t crack it! What about all that uncoded matter in between, and on the hither side of an easy contradiction? And since we are talking about matter: these are the questions that matter; not whether women writers are being taken seriously or not!”
	Andries Oliphant “With Afrikaans having been stigmatised as 'the language of oppression', Afrikaans publishers began to promote writing by black Afrikaans speakers long shunned by the racially exclusive literary institutions of the language.”
	Joan Hambidge “Tog is dit paradoksaal so dat die partikuliere of spesifieke letterkunde juis oor die eiesoortigheid van die ervaring of belewenis gaan. Stel jou ’n letterkunde voor waarin daar geen intieme ervaring van die spesifieke is nie?”
	Michiel Heyns "Do women writers take themselves seriously? I hope not, if that means they have to be aware of themselves as women in the first place and writers only secondarily. Do publishers take women writers seriously? I hope not, if it means the creation of more single-sex publishing houses, as if women needed the protection of a playpen.”
	Diane Awerbuck “Just because you can write – you have access to a PC, or know words of more than one syllable, or take a few hours in the evening away from your two other day jobs to hammer away at the keyboard) – doesn't mean you should.”

Kommentaar is welkom. Stuur briewe aan webvoet@litnet.co.za.

<< Terug na miniseminare | Back to mini-seminars <<