| Language | English |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 9388070518 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-9388070515 |
| No of pages | 160 |
| Book Publisher | Speaking Tiger Books |
| Published Date | 10 Sep 2018 |
About Author
Related Books
| Language | English |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 9388070518 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-9388070515 |
| No of pages | 160 |
| Book Publisher | Speaking Tiger Books |
| Published Date | 10 Sep 2018 |
Zainab Priya Dala is a freelance writer and psychologist. Her debut novel What About Meera won the inaugural Menara Aziz Hassim Literary Prize in South Africa and was longlisted for both the Etisalat Prize for Fiction
(the most prestigious literary prize for African fiction) and the Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize (South Africa’s largest literary award). Her second novel, The Architecture of Loss, has been published to much critical acclaim.
Her short stories were awarded second prize in the Witness True Stories of KwaZulu Natal and she has written opinion pieces for The New York Times Magazine, Marie Claire and Elle.
In 2017, she received an Honorary Fellowship in Writing at the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa. She has lived and worked in Dublin and now lives in Durban, South Africa.
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From the vantage point of her own personal history—a fourth-generation Indian South African of mixed lineage—indentured as well as trader class, part Hindu, part Muslim—Dala explores the nuts and bolts of being Indian in South Africa today.
From 1684 till the present, the Indian diaspora in South Africa has had a long history. But in the country of their origin, they remain synonymous with three points of identity: indenture, apartheid and Mahatma Gandhi.
In this series of essays, Zainab Priya Dala deftly lifts the veil on some of the many other facets of South African Indians, starting with the question: How relevant is Gandhi to them today?
It is a question Dala answers with searing honesty, just as she tackles the questions of the ‘new racism’—between Black Africans and Indians—and the ‘new apartheid’—money; the tussle between the ‘canefields’ where she grew up, and the ‘Casbah’, or the glittering town of Durban; and what the changing patterns in the names the Indian community chooses to adopt reflect.
In writing that is fluid, incisive and sensitive, she explores the new democratic South Africa that took birth long after Gandhi returned to the subcontinent, and the fight against apartheid was fought and won.
In this new ‘Rainbow Nation’, the people of Indian origin are striving to keep their ties to Indian culture whilst building a stronger South African identity. Zainab Priya Dala describes some of the scenarios that result from this dichotomy.
Review
‘In the candid essays of What Gandhi Didn’t See: Being Indian in South Africa that seek to “personalize history”, Zainab Priya Dala examines the facets of her experience of being a descendant of Indian origin in contemporary South Africa. In the process, she attempts to assess Gandhi’s relevance to a nation that had been instrumental in his transformation into an unstoppable political force… this is an important account of South Africa where the present is fused with the past in a tangled web. —The Telegraph
Review
‘Written with passion, this book is a beautiful and sincere account of the resilience and strength with which [indentured workers] overcame their terrible conditions…and the suffering and scars that people still have to live with.’—Ela Gandhi, Activist, and former Member of Parliament, South Africa
‘In these pages biography and history collide and collaborate to make for a compelling and visceral examination of what it might mean to be Indian in Africa.’—Ashwin Desai, Historian and co-author of Inside Indenture: A South African Story, 1860-1914