THE BLACK EXPERIENCE IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA: A WOMANIST READING OF KOPANO MATLWA’S NOVELS, COCONUT AND PERIOD PAIN

Abstract

This study entails a womanist reading of Kopano Matlwa’s novels, Coconut (2007) and Period Pain (2016). It analyzes how the author projects the black experience in post-apartheid South Africa from a womanist perspective in her writing. The study aimed to explore how a black woman writer like Matlwa advocates for positive transformation where men and women work together rather than against each other. Black women writers often grapple with interlocking forms of oppression on the basis of race, class and gender. In this study, it is argued that Matlwa is part of the new generation of women writers who have written their fictional works which seek to explore their unique experiences. The study therefore, was guided by three objectives: to explore the deep meaning of the black woman experience as depicted in the two novels; to demonstrate the womanist approach in the reading and interpretation of the two novels; to analyze the author’s vision for the black people in post-apartheid South Africa in the two novels. In order to meet these objectives, the study used a womanist approach to argue that Matlwa depicts the black experience from a womanist consciousness. The researcher employed close textual reading on the two novels in order to get adequate data for analysis. In this kind of a method, the study made use of scenes, characters’ language and thematic concerns projected by Matlwa in the two novels which provided the main points of arguments. The analysis was then subjected to Walker’s (1984) and Ogunyemi’s (1985) womanist theory in order to argue that Matlwa projects the black experience from a womanist perspective in post-apartheid South Africa. This study had three major findings. Firstly, the deep meaning of the black woman experience entails multiple forms of oppressions on the basis of race, class and gender. Secondly, the major tenets of womanism includes: portrayal of the black women as courageous and daring, has a concern for humanity, intertextuality, epistolary form and the concept of madness. Thirdly, the womanist vision entails