Women’s Month celebrates the struggles and accomplishments of women nationwide.
The Sunday Independent speaks to a woman who’s making waves in publishing.
Thabiso Mahlape, the founder of publishing house BlackBird Books, feels strongly that feminism is quite a big thing for women today, especially among the current generation of female authors.
Mahlape’s BlackBird Books is an imprint incubated by Jacana Media that is celebrating its third birthday this year and has so far published 18 books.
“The gender-equality theme runs across in a very big way. Each generation has a responsibility to record and archive themselves as they are. Back then, the big contention was race, which still is, but it’s compounded.
“We want to be acknowledged as women, as having equal ability. But also just fighting for space as women is relevant now.
“Yes, we’re women, we’re fighting for equality, we’re fighting against racism but there’s a whole lot more to us; we have sex, we get depressed, so archiving ourselves as we are and looking at ourselves holistically as young black women is vital.”
There lies a consistency in the narrative brought across in books exploring the importance of feminism. This robust and deliberate conversation is seen in the work of Pumla Dineo Gqola and Malebo Sephodi.
Gqola is a professor and Sephodi is an activist and writer who takes special interest in gender, development, science and economics in Africa.
Reflecting Rogue is a compilation of Gqola’s reflections on living, feminism, country, family, community, violence, which are dissected by a voraciously curious mind in this collection of 14 essays. It’s outstanding essay-writing that is conversational, mesmerising and tangibly relatable.
In Miss Behave, Sephodi challenges society’s deep-seated beliefs about what it means to be an obedient woman. Sephodi tracks her journey on a path towards achieving total autonomy, challenging us to change our thinking in regard to customs and traditions.
Koleka Putuma’s Collective Amnesia is a personal exploration of blackness, womanhood and history. The book is a powerful appraisal, reminder and revelation of all that has been forgotten. This collection of poems marks a massive shift in South African poetry.
Feminism is: South Africans speak their truth, edited by Jen Thorpe, is a compilation of reflections by South African feminists where they explore their often vastly different experiences and perspectives in accessible and engaging voices.
The book touches on issues as wide-ranging as motherhood, anger, sex, race, inclusions and exclusions, the noisy protest and the quiet struggle.
It looks to challenge one’s thinking and inspires one to action, reaffirming the urgent necessity of feminism in South Africa today.
According to Mahlape, some of the struggles faced by young writers include access and racism, adding that the industry is still very much white-owned.
“So access is a big problem which is why you’d notice there is now a big sprout of self-published authors - these are people tired of fighting for access and who’ve found an alternative way.
“We are no longer in a place where you can just be a writer, where you can just be a publisher.
“The author now is a bookseller, the publisher is publishing and doing PR (public relations); it’s become one convergent space.”
Reflecting on how the face of South African publishing has changed, Mahlape says she knew she wanted to start with black voices and black narratives.
“Third birthday, 18 books later, it feels a little crazy now.
“I find myself going in between two realms: 18 books, that’s crazy, and then I think well, I could have done more. That’s not possible, I couldn’t have done more. It’s great to see the emergence of the new kind of writer.”
On whether there could have been a space for BlackBird Books during the dark days of apartheid, Mahlape explains that there couldn’t have been.
“The dangers of society are present. If you explore black lives through a white lens, there are certain things that people want to believe about what being black is about, and a lot of it would reflect that being black is painful.
“I don’t think there’s been a market for a happy-go kind of blackness that we know to be true.”
Mahlape has always wanted black readers to find their lives represented in their works.
“After I discovered that was what I needed to do, yes. I didn’t know that when I was publishing under Jacana and I published McIntosh Polela’s My Father, My Monster, Redi Tlhabi’s Endings and Beginnings and Bonnie Henna’s Eyebags & Dimples. Just the response from black readers was what set the tone for what BlackBird Books would become.
“I realised that people are ready to unpack themselves as black people and what better way to do it than offer them literature that represents them in a certain way.”
She says she would like to write herself, although there is a lot of fear around it when one switches roles from being a publisher to a writer.
One of the reasons she contributes to various publications, she says, is to remind herself that’s what the goal is.
While we’re not a reading nation, as we haven’t as a society managed to encapsulate reading and books as an everyday culture, Mahlape reckons the tide is starting to turn.
“Not fast enough or big enough, but it is starting to turn. In my own little world, I’m encouraged by it.
“The fact that BlackBird Books has been going for three years, when it was something new, headed by a black woman, is a big thing. I am encouraged.”