Book

Like family : domestic workers in South African history and literature

Jansen, Ena, author

Overview

More than a million black South African women are domestic workers. These nannies, housekeepers and chars occupy a central place in South African society. but it is an ambivalent position. Precariously situated between urban and rural areas, rich and poor, white and black, these women are at once intimately connected to and at a distant remove from the families they serve. \"Like family\" they may be, but they and their employers know they can never be real family. The author shows that slavery at the Cape shaped South African domestic worker relations, establishing social hierarchies and patterns of behavior and interaction that persist in the predicament of black female domestic workers today. The author examines the representation of domestic workers in a diversity of texts in English and Afrikaans. Authors include Andrâe Brink, JM Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Elsa Joubert, Antjie Krog, Sindiwe Magona, Es'kia Mphahlele, Sisonke Msimang, Zukiswa Wanner and Zoèe Wicomb. She uncovers wry and subversive insights into the \"madam/maid\" nexus, capturing paradoxes relating to shifting power relationships.

• Publisher: Wits University Press
• Subject: Household employees in literature. / South African literature History and criticism. / Afrikaans literature History and criticism. / South African literature (English) History and criticism. / Household employees South Africa History. / Women household employees South Africa History.
• ISBN: 1776143515, 9781776143511, 9781776144594, 1776144597

Item info:

1 item available

1 item total in all locations

Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
PT6510.J3613 2019	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE