Strategies of Representation in Auto/biography

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Introduction

   • Muchativugwa Hove, Kgomotso Masemola

   Pages 1-3

3. Fictions of Autobiographical Representations: Joshua Nkomo’s The Story of My Life

   • Maurice Taonezvi Vambe

   Pages 4-23

4. Memory, Gender and Narration: Reconstruction of Subjectivity in Makeba’s My Story and Masekela’s Still Grazing

   • Nonhlanhla Dhlamini

   Pages 24-35

5. Imagining the Nation: Autobiography, Memoir, History or Fiction in Peter Godwin’s Writings

   • Muchativugwa Liberty Hove

   Pages 36-59

6. Denomi/Nation: Envisioning Possibilities of Reconstructing an Alternative Zimbabwe in Muzorewa’s Rise Up and Walk

   • Tasiyana D. Javangwe

   Pages 60-77

7. Reading Dzino: Memories of a Freedom Fighter

   • Arthur P. T. Makanda

   Pages 78-96

8. Vortex of Violence: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Peter Godwin’s The Fear

   • Muchativugwa Liberty Hove

   Pages 97-115

9. “We Were Little Kings in Rhodesia”: Rhodesian Discourse and Representations of Colonial Violence in Kandaya and Let’s Don’t Go to the Dogs Tonight

   • Murenga Joseph Chikowero

   Pages 116-142

10. Women Re-defining Themselves in the Context of HIV and AIDS: Insights from Tendayi Westerhof’s Unlucky in Love

    • Anna Chitando

    Pages 143-170

11. Historical Metaphors of the Self: Chimurenga Names as Autobiography

    • Charles Pfukwa

    Pages 171-183

12. Back Matter

    Pages 184-186

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Strategies of Representation in Auto/biography investigates how selves are represented and reconstructed in selected auto/biographical readings from African literary discourse. It examines how such representations confirm, validate, interrogate and pervade conversations with issues of identity, nation and history. In addition to providing an overview of the multidimensionality of auto/biography, the book also introduces readers to various ways of reading and analysing auto/biographical writings and develops specific perspectives on the genre and views inherently expressed through the re-imagined, re-membered and re-constructed self that speaks through the pages of autobiographical scripting. The focus on auto/biographical writings from southern Africa, specifically South Africa and Zimbabwe, offers a fresh reading of the work of significant figures in the political, economic and sociological spheres of these nation states. This collection shows that auto/biography may be more than simply the representation of an individual life, and that the socio-cultural memory of a people is a core aspect influencing individual self-representation.

• Reconstructing
• remembering
• identity matrices
• contested histories
• ideology
• autobiography
• biography
• nation
• postcolonialism
• Africa
• African
• apocalyptic
• construction
• fiction
• freedom
• gender
• history of literature
• identity
• imagination
• liberty
• memory
• subject
• women

"The contributors all are from southern Africa ably deploy both autobiographical and postcolonial theory in their analyses. Most also include sufficient political/sociological context to enable readers unfamiliar with this history to grasp the key critiques." - CHOICE

• North-West University, South Africa

  Muchativugwa Hove

• University of South Africa, South Africa

  Kgomotso Masemola

Maurice Taonezvi Vambe, University of South Africa Tasiyana D. Javangwe, Midlands State University, Zimbabwe Nonhlanhla Dhlamini, University of Swaziland Arthur P.T. Makanda, Assistant Commissioner in the Zimbabwe Republic Police Murenga Joseph Chikowero, University of Wisconsin, USA Anna Chitando, Zimbabwe Open University Charles Pfukwa, Midlands State University, Zimbabwe.

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