Storying in Four Colours

Some personal fragments of memoir serve as an introduction to the article, which eschews overdetermined theorisation in favour of an approach of storying and reading reparatively. An image combining the bisexual and transgender Pride flags visually expresses the value of a shared queer identity with different manifestations. This forms a springboard for the analysis of two memoirs: Always Anastacia: A Transgender Life in South Africa (2016), by Anastacia Tomson, and Becoming Him: A Trans Memoir of Triumph (2018), by Landa Mabenge. The analytical tool used is Leah Anderst’s suggestion of three tracks of narrative empathy, which invite the reader to respond to numinous scenes involving the narrating-I of the present of the text, the experiencing-I of the past, and other characters respectively. The article argues that through the process of narrative empathy in reading memoirs, an imaginative experience of conviviality can be forged, which imbues contamination with positive energy, and builds bridges between perceptions of difference, with possible real-life increases in empathy and altruism

Somewhere in the double rainbow : representations of bisexuality in post-apartheid novels.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2005.This thesis examines the middle ground between dual strands of sexuality/gender and race/ethnicity, which I refer to metaphorically as a fluid space of possibility between the rainbows of the pride flag, which celebrates sexual diversity, and the image of the rainbow nation, which celebrates multiculturalism. I discuss ways in which lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues and rights have been discursively treated in the West as well as Africa, most particularly South Africa. I note that a substantial number of novels which appeared after 1994 and have a South African setting or were authored by South Africans, employ the trope of bisexuality. This new preoccupation with bisexuality is parallel to attitudes towards change, the future, and progressive politics, including gender politics. Representations of bisexuality in each of the texts I examine vary; however, together they form a crucial cartography of a liberalization of the imagination in post-apartheid South Africa: a space of anxiety and hope, a space particularly revealing the ongoing evolution of a national identity, and newly part of a global community. Reading bisexuality accurately contributes to the disruption of binaries and illumination of the interstitial associated with the post-apartheid moment in general, and contemporary South African literature and literary criticism in particular. This method of reading, which I call "biopia," allows for a fresh understanding of sexuality, gender, race, citizenship and authority

Constructing the autobiographical self, collective identity and spiritual spaces in South African queer autobiography

This article examines four recent collections of South African queer autobiographies. These are: Hijab: Unveiling queer Muslim lives, Yes I am! Writing by South African gay men,Reclaiming the L-word: Sappho’s daughters out in Africa and Trans: Transgender life stories from South Africa. Selected narratives from each collection have been analysed in order to exhibit the relational nature of autobiographical self-construction through an exploration of how it is specifically constructed in spiritual or religious spaces. The ubuntu theology of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is analysed as it intersects with representations of spirituality and religion in the texts. This article seeks to highlight the socio-political value of the texts and their functioning as important tools in the struggle for equality in which the queer minority currently find themselves