Istraight Lendaba

Abstract

My collection of stories describes the lives of ordinary black people living in post" apartheid South Africa, especially those living in the margins, and the compromises that poverty forces them to make. In such a world, virtue and vice are flip sides of the same coin. My stories search for hope in an environment which Ayi Kwei Armah describes as "so completely seized with danger and so many different kinds of loss." My writing is inspired by Mozambican writer Luis Bernardo Honwana, South African writer Joel Matlou whose demotic stories gave voice to everyday life in the townships, and Cameroonian writer Werewere Liking's as well as Brenda Fassie's powerful representation of the subversive nature of African women.