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Pathi’s sister is still troubling

  • Authors: Naidoo, Savani
  • Date: 2023-03-30
  • Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) South Africa , South African fiction (English) 21st century , Short stories, South African (English) 21st century , Diaries -- Authorship , Books Reviews
  • Language: English
  • Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/408942 , vital:70539
  • Description: My thesis is a collection of micro fiction, flash fiction, fairy tales, vignettes and short stories which explore the tension of being both an insider and an outsider. I have access to different cultures without belonging to any of them: as a child, my family moved from a South African Indian community to a formerly whites-only suburb; as an adult I have lived in South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan. My prose draws on my life experiences, family legends, neighbourhood gossip, news reports and historical events to question norms and ideas that I may have taken for granted had I been fully inside a single culture. In my thesis I frequently spell words phonetically to mimic how I hear or remember them. I also borrow words from languages I don’t speak. I want the languages I use and mix to corrupt each other, as Raymond Federman put it, in order to better express the voices and contexts of the communities I draw inspiration from. Kuzhali Manickavel’s Things We Found During the Autopsy showed me that culturally rich imagery can be used without interrupting narrative flow with explanations. I am also influenced by the poetic sense of rhythm and melody of Lydia Davis’s minimalist prose, and by Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, where each concise short story stands alone but together creates a broad understanding of people and place. Anthologies such as PP/FF, edited by Peter Conners, and My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, edited by Kate Bernheimer, have inspired me to be bold in finding the form that best allows each narrative to be told. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of Languages and Literatures, 2023
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  • Date Issued: 2023-03-30

A nasty chamber

Chaos!

  • Authors: Ngwenya, Thembalethu Sabrina
  • Date: 2022-10-14
  • Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) South Africa , Diaries -- Authorship , Books Reviews , South African prose literature (English) 21st century , South African fiction (English) 21st century
  • Language: English
  • Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/406298 , vital:70256
  • Description: Chaos! is a combination of short prose forms in fragments that tackles difficult topics such as troubled marriages, child molestation, rape, infidelity and abuse in every way, whether it is mental, emotional or physical. The stories contain a lot of horrific and violent acts that, often times in this day and age, happen behind closed doors or sometimes even openly, yet not a lot of people are ready to talk about these topics. In my thesis, I go into the minds of those that are abusive and those that are on the receiving end of abuse. In doing so, I aim to explore all the dynamics of abuse. Abusers, as I have portrayed in my thesis, tend to have a deranged sense of reasoning in performing abusive acts and one thing that is important to note is that, more than likely, in their own heads and according to their own reasoning, the behaviour that they act on is very much rational and reasonable. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of Languages and Literatures, 2022
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  • Date Issued: 2022-10-14

Fractured flowers

The Daily Sun subscribers

  • Authors: Mahe, Xolani
  • Date: 2022-10-14
  • Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) South Africa , Diaries -- Authorship , Books Reviews , South African fiction (English) 21st century , Short stories, South African (English) 21st century
  • Language: English
  • Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/406276 , vital:70254
  • Description: My thesis comprises interlinked short stories, verfabula, sketches, fragments, flash fiction, folktales, anecdotes, and the epistolary form. I write in English tinged with IsiXhosa. In terms of specific influences, the collection is strongly influenced by the experimental writing of Kathy Acker and Samuel Delany notably the uncompromising ways in which they contort formal grammar and sexuality, the defamiliarizing function of the phantasmagoria in the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky and David Lynch, the techniques of the picturesque as used by Amos Tutuola, and, importantly, narration in the present tense as deployed in Dambudzo Marechera’s House of Hunger which results in negation and subversion of the narrative depiction of the past, the present, and the future. On the stylistic level, I am strongly influenced by the haunting surrealism of Sony Labou Tansi, the eccentric meditations of Julio Cortázar, and the iconoclastic rants of Lesego Rampolokeng. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of Languages and Literatures, 2022
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  • Date Issued: 2022-10-14

Gray

Pink Concrete

  • Authors: Curr, Jill Alexandra
  • Date: 2022-04-07
  • Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) South Africa , Diaries -- Authorship , South African fiction (English) 21st century , English fiction History and criticism , Nigerian fiction (English) History and criticism , Argentine fiction History and criticism , Angolan fiction (Portuguese) History and criticism
  • Language: English
  • Type: Master's thesis , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/232388 , vital:49987
  • Description: (From Reader Report Reflection) - I started this course believing I was not a writer. I knew that I loved to write, I knew that it was innate to how I perceived the world. I had written a novel previously, it was an outpouring, uncontrollable imagination spew. I was often scared and doubted myself throughout writing it, but I took comfort in my reading. I picked up all the classics, modern and old, rewriting the words into notebooks alongside my own, retracing the sounds, the rhythms, the symbols and their little links, the pauses. I collected pieces rereading them with reverence, my fingers curling over the lines sunken into the page. I didn’t understand what I was doing, it felt natural to hide in the skirts of other writers peering behind the curtain to see how they built the illusion. And yet, even after finishing my novel I still didn’t think I was a writer; it was a hobby, it was something extra to me, a backpack I could take off and on. I denied what was innate, and said it was not that important to me. I applied for this Master’s in Creative Writing (MACW)7 course because I wanted external validation on my first novel and an application was probably the only way, I was going to get someone to read it. It is sad and stunted that I needed this external validation to believe I could try, to believe that I could learn to control this compulsion, to believe that I could become a writer. In our first course contact week,8 lecturers and supervisors kept saying again again that we were already writers, that this is what we are. I was scared of this, that they would find out I was not really meant to be here. Writing, taking those solitary thoughts that are too much for my skull and making them real, something tangible; this is how I move through my existence. I take pieces of myself and paste them to the page, otherwise the thoughts build up like snow around a car until you are suffocating in an icebox. And by removing this part of myself to just a hobby, a silly backpack that I can pick up and put down, was just me running away. This MACW course gave me the tools to tap into what I am, that I have a why that I must write to and that I have an audience for this why. By sharing pieces of myself, I make them real again, something I can study, tracing their edges, their dark underbelly, the light hillocks. I sat with my fear for two years slowly, piece by piece, cracking it open. I learnt to love my voice and believe in it without needing external validation, without needing the gold star of acceptance, because I accept and love what I am trying to build with my writing. , Thesis (MACW) -- Faculty of Arts, School of Languages and Literatures, 2022
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  • Date Issued: 2022-04-07

Praying mantis

  • Authors: Kenene, Thobeka
  • Date: 2022-04-07
  • Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) South Africa , Diaries -- Authorship , South African fiction (English) 21st century , South African essays (English) 21st century , Portuguese fiction 20th century History and criticism , Russian fiction 20th century History and criticism , Zimbabwean fiction (English) 20th century History and criticism , American fiction 20th century History and criticism
  • Language: English
  • Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/292726 , vital:57010
  • Description: (Prologue) I could only see in black and white as if I had travelled through time. I was the star of the medieval people who waited on me. The city was Johannesburg where strange faces called me a traitor because I was an educated black person. I hid between the skyscrapers and ran into a mirror image of myself as a man. “I write this book,” he said to his readers, “To invoke a yearning in our youth to awaken from slumber. To set examples for them to desist from characters like Velesazi and Nongendi, and imitate Nomsa and Themba. And also, to contribute to Xhosa literature.” He signed off by calling himself our servant. These are the words from the note my great-grandfather left me. We walked together across a barren field and past a graveyard. I was feeling tired and lost; I wanted to get home as fast as possible. We quickened our step and entered a church site. Inside the church were all my close relatives. I saw myself on stage looking down at them, and when I opened my mouth to sing, they began laughing at me. I imagined him in his 1917 suit, as a writer, penning down his first novel that is dedicated to his mother. His round cheeks enveloped in a haze of candle light. He visited my dream in 2012 and in the dream he asked me, “Do you see?” I said, “Yes, I see.” My great-grandfather hummed a song from his belly. I inhaled deeply into my belly and then exhaled a sound. Together we hummed this song that made everyone fall silent and listen. In the dream I could feel my lungs expanding and deflating along to the rhythm of the song. As my great-grandfather and I sang it, the night lamps shone brighter. I had become my great-grandfather, wearing his suit and black leather shoes. His friends were my friends. They turned and asked me what my clan name was. When I told them, they whispered something among themselves. One of them said to me, “Unogcwabevu.” I saw a white unknown woman who was afraid of me. I told her it is going to be okay, and that I would not harm her. But the colour of my skin frightened her. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of Languages and Literatures, 2022
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  • Date Issued: 2022-04-07

Skipping stones

  • Authors: Le Roux, Jade-Eden
  • Date: 2022-04-07
  • Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) South Africa , South African fiction (English) 21st century , Suicide in literature
  • Language: English
  • Type: Master's thesis , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/234389 , vital:50191
  • Description: My thesis takes the form of a novella exploring suicide and the unanswered questions it leaves. The main protagonist is a young girl who struggles to come to terms with her best friend’s suicide. The work is situated in contemporary South Africa, where inequality and depression is rife, especially among young people, and social media too often provides a smokescreen to conceal emotions. My writing is motivated by my desire to explore the human condition and the world around me, through my own subjective lens of experience. By working between fact and fiction I seek to trouble conventional narratives attached to suicide and highlight the subjectivity of truth. I am influenced by Lydia Davis's ability to write obliquely about loss, and her light-handed approach to emotionally charged topics; Susan Steinberg's dark motifs, vivid imagery, and her fragmented narrative that captures the characters’ responses to trauma and interrogates the notion of truth; Lidia Yuknavitch's cinematic imagery and immediacy of tone and compact storytelling; and Kate Zambreno's poetic prose that lends itself to clear societal commentary. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of Languages and Literatures, 2022
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  • Date Issued: 2022-04-07

The memory altar

The mountain’s calling

A Smaller Circle

  • Authors: Bhikha, Nasira
  • Date: 2022-04
  • Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) South Africa , South African fiction (English) 21st century , Short stories, South African (English) 21st century , Diaries -- Authorship , Autobiography , Short stories, English History and criticism , American fiction History and criticism , Mexican fiction History and criticism
  • Language: English
  • Type: Master's thesis , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/232427 , vital:49991
  • Description: My thesis is a collection of prose forms weaving my identity as a South African woman of colour, my observations of life through personal, cultural and sociological lenses, where traditions are constantly challenged and evolving. The collection focuses on the untold and unresolved, using fiction as a tool of pushback and psychological reflection. I am motivated by writers who use what I would term reflective expressionism to evoke empathy by tapping into innate, universal emotions. In particular Tiff Holland’s vivid telling of family in the novella Betty Superman where she navigates complex relationships, and bell hooks’ memoirs Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood written as poetic vignettes in fluctuating points of view to draw attention to the intricacies of social structures. Joanna Walsh’s Vertigo has strongly influenced my approach to writing through her compelling imagery and use of motif in fragmented prose that delves into the psyche of her characters. I am also inspired by Lidia Yuknavitch’s visceral use of language, identifying with her invitation: “You deserve to sit at the table. The radiance falls on all of us.” , Thesis (MACW) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of Languages, 2022
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  • Date Issued: 2022-04

Jungle Drive and Other Stories

  • Authors: Koenig, Nathalie
  • Date: 2021-10-29
  • Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) South Africa , South African fiction (English) 21st century , South African poetry (English) 21st century , Short stories, South African (English) 21st century
  • Language: English
  • Type: Master's theses , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/192225 , vital:45207
  • Description: My thesis comprises prose in a variety of forms with porous borders, including the short story, flash fiction and prose poetry. I am attracted to a processual approach to writing as I like the potential for experimentation with spontaneity and textual improvisation within and across forms that this allows. I am influenced by Joanna Ruocco’s novellas, The Mothering Coven and Dan, whose worlds are built with generously scattered references, interesting words and strange features, delivered in a dead-pan tone that joyfully scrambles my logic. At the same time, I am inspired by the precision and beauty of Tina May Hall’s prose, and how she plays in the space between the natural and magical worlds. In addition, I draw on the musicality and rhythm of Noy Holland and JA Tyler’s prose, adding a corporeal layer to the words, sounds and movement of the text. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of Languages and Literatures, 2021
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  • Date Issued: 2021-10-29

Back to nowhere

  • Authors: Fundakubi, Zukile Anthony
  • Date: 2017
  • Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) South Africa , South African fiction (English) 21st century , Short stories, South African (English) 21st century , Xhosa fiction 21st century , Short stories, Xhosa 21st century , Detective and mystery stories 21st century
  • Language: English , Xhosa
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/5071 , vital:20763
  • Description: My writing contains elements of hard-boiled detective fiction and crime writing. My stories, written in isiXhosa and English and a mixture of both, transplant these genres into a South African township setting where gang violence dominates and life is cheap. They are driven by uniquely South African characters, brutal crime scenes and fear-inspiring suspense, but none the less still full of humour. I want my work to entertain the reader while also looking realistically and critically at the problem of crime in our townships. I draw on influences of African and Latin American writers to create South African crime fiction in a realistic urban setting, with dynamic characters and sharp dialogue. , Le ngqokelela yamabali iqulathe amabali angobomi babantu abasezilokishini nabo bahlala ezilalini. Nangona umfundi angahle awafumanisa ehlekisa amanye elusizi, injongo yombhali asikukuhlekisa nakunyanzelisa imfundiso koko ikuzoba ubomi bababantu, bephila kwezi ndawo neengxaki abajongene nazo. Imeko yaba bantu kumakhaya ngamakhaya yiyo ebangele ukuba umbhali abelane nomfundi ngokuqhubekayo ebomini. , This thesis is presented in two parts: English and isiXhosa
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  • Date Issued: 2017

Happiness is somebody’s name

  • Authors: Jijana, Thabo
  • Date: 2017
  • Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) South Africa , South African fiction (English) 21st century , Short stories, South African (English) 21st century
  • Language: English , Xhosa
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/7268 , vital:21237
  • Description: This collection of loosely interlinked short stories is a “book of imaginary beings”. It draws its influence from amaXhosa history, religion and mythology. Written in a fluid blend of isiXhosa and English, the stories make use of innovative forms and an inventive, pared-down language to create new and strange perspectives on our past, present and future. Ranging in length from brief mini-sagas to longer vignettes, the collection touches on such diverse subjects as the lore and superstitions surrounding the mythical being of tokoloshe, sorcery in the black community, and other fantastical elements of amaXhosa folklore. Literary influences include the Syrian writer Osama Olamar, whose writing about inanimate and everyday objects is both interesting and rare; Amos Tutuola, whose appropriation of Yoruba mythology I have learned much from; the Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar who has the facility to articulate the fantastical in a straightforward narrative; and Taban Lo Liyong, the Ugandan writer, whose fabulist work has served as stimulus for many of these stories.
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  • Date Issued: 2017

I want to believe there is a girl here under the table

  • Authors: Asfour, Fouad-Martin
  • Date: 2017
  • Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) South Africa , South African fiction (English) 21st century
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/7190 , vital:21227
  • Description: Written in non-linear fragments, my thesis is what Audre Lorde in her novel Zami calls a "biomythography" - the weaving together of myth, history and biography in epic narrative form, a style of composition that represents all the ways in which we perceive the world. Using repetition and shifting memories, I draw from my bicultural upbringing in Offenbach, a city in Germany populated mostly by migrants, as well as my experience of working in art and culture internationally, travelling and living in different countries. Interrogating objects, buildings, family photographs, books and movies, and listening to the silences of the unvoiced, I upset and play with experiences of othering, assumptions and expectations about identity and ask questions about home, belonging and migration, mother tongue and translation. I draw inspiration from Korean American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's use of texts, documents and images to explore dislocation and memory, as well as authors who engage language, translation and belonging such as Mikhail Shishkin, Yoko Tawada, Gloria Anzaldua and Mohammed Khair-Eddine.
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  • Date Issued: 2017

On the shop-floor: ten years at Ford

  • Authors: Cilibe, Mpumelelo
  • Date: 2017
  • Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) South Africa , South African fiction (English) 21st century , Autobiographical fiction, South African (English) 21st century , Xhosa fiction 21st century , Short stories, Xhosa 21st century
  • Language: English , Xhosa
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/7257 , vital:21234
  • Description: My autobiographical novella covers a period of my life between 1974 and 1984, when I worked at the Ford Motor company Struandale Assembly plant in Port Elizabeth. This period predated the formation of NUMSA (the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa) and COSATU - it was a time when automobile industry workers broke away from the race- based unions to form MACWUSA (Motor Assemblers and Component Workers Union of SA). Around the same time Rev Leon Sullivan was putting pressure on US companies, including Ford, to move away from apartheid labour practices. As quite an angry young man influenced by the Black Consciousness movement, I got deeply involved in union activities mainly for my own survival, and as a personal reaction to racism in the workplace. The story is told in a realist style, with many anecdotal detours giving the flavour of life in New Brighton in the 1980s. Important influences have been Bloke Modisane's autobiography, Blame Me on History and Studs Terkel's interviews of Ford plant workers and management in his book Working. , Growing up in New Brighton gave me so many stories that had never been written before but that were told person to person by the residents of my neighbourhood. Some of the tales in this collection are based on such stories. Others are stories that are reminiscent of childhood while growing up with an elder brother. I take the inspiration from different books that are in line with the stories that I am writing: collections of Extreme Fiction - Fabulists and Formalists that were edited by Robin Hemley and Michael Martone and The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade edited by Jeremy Robert Johnson and Cameron Pierce. Some stories by L.L. Ngewu and L.S. Ngcangata, and a novellette by P.T. Mtuze, Alitshoni Lingaphumi, also bring much influence as they reveal suffering in the lives of black people who endured forced removals, and other situations that are of interest to build my stories on. , Le ngqokolela yamabali iqulathe amabali asekelwe kumabali endandiweva ebaliswa ebuntwaneni bam ndisakhula. Amanye amabali angeenkumbulo zasebuntwaneni ngethuba ndandikhula nomkhuluwa wam ongasaphiliyo. Ifuthe lokuwaqamba ndilifumene kwiincwadi zababhali abanje ngabo bafumaneka kwiingqokolela ezihlelwe nguRobin Hemley no Michael Martone kwincwadi ethi Extreme Fiction - Fabulists and Formalists, noJeremy Robert Johnson enoCameron Pierce kwingqokolela ethi, The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade. Amanye amabali abenefuthe ndiwafumene kwiincwadi zooP.T. Mtuze, kwinovella yakhe ethi Alitshoni Lingaphumi, nakwezoL.L. Ngewu noL.S. Ngcangatha apho babalisa ngobomi basekuhlaleni ngexesha abantu babedudulwa befuduswa ngetshova ukususwa kwiindawo zabo zokuhlala. , This thesis is presented in two parts: English and isiXhosa
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  • Date Issued: 2017

Son of a dog

  • Authors: Kolawole, Samuel
  • Date: 2017
  • Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) South Africa , South African fiction (English) 21st century , African fiction (English) 21st century
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/7195 , vital:21228
  • Description: Son of a Dog is inspired by a real-life figure whose exploits captured the Nigerian public imagination in the 1980s. Famously known as Ovbigbo (“The Law”), Lawrence Anini unleashed a nationwide reign of terror against law and order. Set against the backdrop of the political turmoil following the Nigerian civil war, the novel traces Anini’s formative years in menial jobs to his rise to the leadership of a notorious criminal gang. It fuses the established facts of his short meteoric career with my imagined version of his inner life and the contemporary myths that sprung up around his legend. It finally crosses the boundary between the real and the mythic as Lawrence Anini becomes truly invincible and elusive after a lust-struck encounter with a fantastical character. I draw inspiration from the dark visceral fiction of Michael Cisco and Brian Evenson, AyiKwei Armah’s unflinchingly descriptive prose and E.C. Osondu’s sharp contemporary humour.
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  • Date Issued: 2017
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