Kingston University, London
Kingston-upon-Thames
Department of English, Lecture Series
“The Politics of Consciousness: The Consciousness of Politics.  Black Consciousness, Psychoanalysis and Derridean deconstruction.”
Talk on Wednesday, October 14th,  2009, at 4pm
JG 1006 (John Goldsworthy building)
Get off at Surbiton station, not Kingston.
Go to Penrhyn road campus.

A look into the scourge of rape 

03 March 2009

Book: The Writing Circle

Author: Rozena Maart

Reviewer: Lindi Obose

This book is a novel, but it is not based on fiction, but fact, as South Africa is one of the nations with the highest number of reported rape.

The book opens with a rape that occurs in front of a home in Cape Town, where five women gather every Friday night to discuss literature.

The women are waiting in the house while one of their own is being raped at gunpoint in her own yard, in her own car.

Each chapter is told in the voice of one of the women. They all recount their personal stories, revealing their reactions to the horrific events of the present and reflecting on their past experiences.

The Writing Circle is a beautifully written, heartbreaking book that allows the reader to experience an intense empathy for each woman.

The writer creates a picture so that the reader can see, hear, touch, and even smell the thing or scene talked about and describes a person so that the reader feels as though she has met the person.

It reminds us that violence against women knows no class boundaries and that people would listen to the cries of women and girls and heed the suffering that surround them and pay attention.

The writer brings difficult subject matters facing our nation today. While reading this book I realised that all the women in this book were very concerned with safety. They had people accompanying them wherever they went.

This book explains all the many different types of rape, from that of the one who was raped at gunpoint to the case of a girl who was raped by her mother’s employer. Just because a woman (or man) is dating someone, it does not give the other the right to rape them. Just because the victim knew their attacker doesn’t make it less of a rape. I highly recommend this book to everyone, men and women.

Rozena Maart, signing books at the first South African book launch of The Writing Circle, Wordsworth Bookstore, Waterfront, Cape Town, May 2008. Bridgette Dreyer, a friend from Steenberg High School, sitting close by…at the three-in-one launch of The Writing Circle, Mix It! Voices of the Bo-Kaap, and African Gold: The Story of Africa’s Nobel Laureates.

The Writing Circle has its own page. Check it for details of the book.

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Please contact Ayesha George–Publicity

I am taking bookings for the Fall/Autumn semester.

publicitymaart@gmail.com

Cape Town Book fair

June 20, 2008 Edition 1

A RECORD 50 494 people attended the third Cape Town Book Fair (CTBF) last weekend. The four-day Fair, with the theme Words Create Worlds came to an end on Monday, having had 7 194 children through its doors at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.

The fair, run in partnership with the Frankfurt Book Fair and under the auspices of the Publisher’s Association of South Africa (Pasa), was opened amid a buzz of activity by Professor Kader Asmal on Saturday, as people rushed to collect tickets for the first events of the day.

Speaking at the opening press conference of the CTBF, Dudley Schroeder, executive director of Pasa, said: “The United Nations has released figures showing that publishing is the largest creative industry in the world. The book industry is 20 times bigger than the entire international film industry.”

Members of the public flooded the more than 400 events, entertained with Michael Poliza’s breathtaking slide presentation from his book Eyes Over Africa, inspired by Riaan Manser’s account of his circumnavigation of Africa from Around Africa on my Bicycle, reflecting on the TRC process with Alex Boraine in discussion on his book A Life in Transition with Mac Maharaj and Max du Preez and faced with the reality of violence against women in Rozena Maart’s The Writing Circle. There was something for everyone.

Boraine, deputy chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said on Saturday: “This kind of gathering today is so important. It’s seldom that people have an opportunity to discuss these things.”

Robin Malan said of the panel discussion he chaired with Rozena Maart, Wendy Clark, and Anne Mayne on how violence against women is portrayed, perpetuated and/ or exposed in contemporary writing: “The three very different personalities of the panellists gave us the diverse aspects of the social activist, the legal prosecutor and the psychoanalyst in their nonetheless unified response that writing back about abuse and violence against women was both a necessary social response and an affirmation of dignity, achievable as much through the novel as through autobiography.”

Vanessa Badroodien, director of the Fair, said: “The intention to excite the public about reading was certainly achieved.” She said the link between reader and writer, which was central to the fair, came through strongly.

Bookmarks: Great Reads for Spring 2008

Comments on goodreads.com

The Writing Circle

By Rozena Maart

(TSAR Publications)

Using rotating perspectives, Maart shows how the women in a South African writing group react when one of them is raped. As they help her cope, they’re forced past boundaries of friendship to confront apartheid and class.