Sindiwe magona biography definition

  • Ms Magona is the.
  • A former primary school teacher and civil servant, she is a prolific author who has produced nine books, among them an autobiographical work, a.
  • Magona was born in 1943 in the small town of Gungululu just outside an area called Mthatha in what was then known as the homeland of Transkei.

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    The African proverb, “Until the lion can tell its own story, the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter,” speaks to the importance of telling one’s own stories. For a long time, African stories and realities were told by colonisers in ways that painted a picture of Africa as backward and uncivilised. It is for this reason that many literary scholars tell the story of colonialism and apartheid through personal autobiographies.

    One such scholar is Sindiwe Magona. Magona has published over a dozen books for adults, from critically acclaimed novels – like Beauty’s Gift – to poems, plays and biographies. She has written over 130 children’s books. But it is her two autobiographies that drew my attention as a psychology scholar. In these, To My Children’s Children (1990) and Forced to Grow (1992), Magona narrates her story of memory, remembering, class, belonging, home and identity.

    In a conversation with anthropologist and activist Elaine Salo in 2009, Magona said:

    I

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    A Second Autobiography, From Disempowered to Empowered

    After reading the first volume of her autobiography To My Children’s Children, this second volume covers South African writer, teacher and facilitator Sindiwe Magona’s life, from the age of 23 to 40, from the lowest point in her life, to one of the highest. The last chapter of the first volume Forced to Grow, becomes the title of this wonderful book.

    Finding herself unemployed and pregnant with her third child after being pushed out of a teaching job – her husband’s parting shot as he abandons his ung family, to inform her employer of his disapproval (a husband’s approval was required for a married (black) woman to be eligible to work) – she reinvents herself, creating her own work (selling sheep heads (cooked) she’d bought on credit) initially to survive, determined to reinstate herself back into the teaching profession, to extend and elevate her education and

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    Sindiwe Magona

    A native of the Transkei, she grew up in a township near Cape Town, where she worked as a domestic and completed her secondary education by correspondence. Magona later graduated from the University of South Africa and earned a graduate degree from Columbia University. She retired from the United Nations in 2003 and currently lives in South Africa.

    She published her autobiography To My Children’s Children in 1990. In 1998, she published Mother to Mother, a fictionalized account of the Amy Biehl killing, which she adapted to a play. This was performed at the Baxter Theatre complex in late 2009 and the film rights to the novel were acquired by Type A Films in 2003. She has also written autobiographies and short story collections. Her novel Beauty’s Gift was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book, Africa Region. In 2009, Please, Take Photographs, her first collection of poems, was published.

    We’re glad to offer you this brief taste of

  • sindiwe magona biography definition