Redefining an African Sky: South African Women’s Writing Post­-Apartheid

Writers and artists know better than anyone else what it is like to live and talk and shout and scream, knowing that there is no-one there listening. That makes a killing silence. What validates the experience of an artist is knowing that somewhere out there someone will acknowledge and share your deepest thoughts, your joys, your pains and your joys. Yet in South Africa we have lived for a very long time in the stifling isolation of our separate worlds both as individuals and groups. Only now do we as South African writers and artists self-consciously group and reach out to find fellow South African kindred spirits. (Lauretta Ngcobo 1994, 1)