[DOWNLOAD] "New Beginnings in Zulu Literature" by Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: New Beginnings in Zulu Literature
- Author : Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa
- Release Date : January 01, 2009
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 86 KB
Description
An enormous change has taken place in Zulu literature in the years after 1994, speeding up at the turn of the century and particularly marked in the period under consideration here. Because the apartheid state severely curtailed African-language publishing until the democratic elections in 1994, Zulu literature, together with the several other African-language literatures, was necessarily school-orientated: that is to say, only books which were suitable for prescription in schools were likely to find a publisher. Since Africans were disenfranchised, strict state control applied to all political discussion. Any questioning of apartheid laws which controlled the lives of Africans was equally firmly discouraged. What we are suggesting is that, although this essay will focus on Zulu literature, our observations will be found to have general applicability also to the response and practice of contemporary writers among the Xhosa, Ndebele, Sotho, Tswana, Pedi and Venda--in short, to the several African-language literatures of South Africa. (1) Since the first democratic elections of 1994, authors who write in isiZulu have gradually gained the confidence to address themselves to the adult Zulu community, which has meant that they have felt free to deal with political, socio-economic and cultural issues which were previously taboo. They have started to take as their themes, and to embark on critical discussions of issues which propriety previously forbad, such as sexual matters, and institutions such as marriage and the position of women and homosexual people. Equally, Zulu society, probably as it has become increasingly urban, has become less conservative and more willing to discuss and read of matters which would have been thought improper twenty years ago.