Practising what you teach

A second-year English student asked me the other day if there was any advice I could give regarding her studies, and in her aspirations to lecture in the none-too-distant future. Hardly the Dangerous Minds/Akeelah and the Bee moment she might've hoped for, there were a lot of  "um"s from my side. I couldn't think of anything, you know, profound. Or even particularly useful.
     Feeling quite the let-down, I gave the matter more thought.

Amongst the more obvious and practical suggestions, was the suggestion that if she wants to stand in front of a lecture hall full of students at a South African university, she might take the time to invest in local literature as well.

When I look out at a lecture hall, the faces before me are of many hues and from many backgrounds. Understanding the complexity of this country's make-up, of the grossly divergent states-of-being that were enforced within one country, is fundamental for the task.

I'll always remember once, while teaching African Literature to first years, I asked a top student which of the books had been her favourite. It was Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying. She had enjoyed it most because what Mda had written resonated with the world she knew. There is a scene in which Toloki, a self-made Professional Mourner, visits a furniture chain-store for their catalogues. Toloki, with the help of his heart's fondness, Noria, uses these old catalogues to decorate the walls of their newly-built shack and home. Intended as a gift for Noria, the reader is asked to suspend their disbelief when this action momentarily transforms the space they share as if by magic, perhaps by the magic of love. The student told me that she used to do the same with her sister, covering the bedroom walls of their shack-home in similar fashion.

This young, bright woman had floored me, and for reasons I can't say I entirely understand. I had been aware that she was the first in her highschool to attend a university. I also knew that her high grades and hardwork had afforded her the opportunity she deserved, with a bursary that covered all her studies expenses. But it's in the small things, the small and the personal, that I feel a quiet reverence in the presence of others. It is also when I feel confident in my belief that literature, that fiction, is vital to us. She had enjoyed Mda's novel not only because it spoke to her own memories of girlhood, but because she had not expected to find one of her daily 'ways of living' in print, drawn into this tender moment between two characters.

I do not have access to the same first-hand reading of Ways of Dying as many others might have. Similarly, I may not be able to relate to Zoe Wicomb's Playing in the Light as someone who knows what it is to be classified as Coloured with a capital C, and what it might mean to try and avoid that classification. The capital W afforded White-ness  wasn't the same. It did not keep any of my family members from beaches, or bus-seats, or restaurants, or door-frames. It did not separate either of my parents from their siblings. If anything, across the board, it made clear who you could and could not love. But what those who could not be classified as White experienced, that is of a different kind altogether. That said, it doesn't mean I can't imagine. Calling on my imagination is the very least I can do, I think. If empathy can be defined as "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another," then imagination must surely be the means with which we arrive at this ability.

In hindsight, though, I realised that I hadn't exactly taken heed of my own advice. Yes, I regularly read and am moved by South African literature. Recently, I re-read K. Sello Duiker's The Quiet Violence of Dreams and found myself turned inside out by this incredible novel.  The focus of my masters is also a higly personal one, invested as it is in local literature, in the ability of our fictions to alter, or make fluid, the co-ordinates of South Africa's urbanscapes. And yet, Attic Door Loves Books doesn't have a single South African book review to show for itself. Pretty shameful.

Hoping to better practise what I teach from here on out, each month will see a South African book review posted as I dive into the local literary terrain and celebrate the diverse writers this country boasts... so watch this space!