Black Widow Society: A Novel

"I really respect Angela. I once listened to an interview with her, and she said she wrote Black Widow Society as entertainment, as crime fiction, and she never intended the book to be advocacy work. But for me, that’s what it is. The ‘Black Widow Society’ is a group of women who are assassins. To join, you must want to get rid of your husband. The husbands are usually people who are problematic and violent. It’s a crime novel, but as with Nervous Conditions , if I look at it metaphorically, it’s about getting rid of patriarchy and bringing forth the conversations around gender-based violence. Violence on violence is not the answer, obviously, but what I take from Angela’s narrative—even though she says it’s not that at all for her—is that we need to have these conversations. Especially in South Africa, where the gender-based violence is just insane. In fact, I used to work for an NGO, and they were very specific that we shouldn’t even call it gender-based violence but violence against women: VAW. It speaks to our violent history and how we haven’t really healed from it. I’m not making excuses, but the men in this country are really, really violent—including my dad, who was violent with my mom. You see it in young people. I went to a township school, and the boys were violent to their girlfriends. I know it’s not a unique issue and it’s not uniquely South African, but it’s very, very hectic in South Africa. That’s why I thought this book should be on this list. There are other books that speak to the violence issue, but I don’t think that they are as well written as Angela’s."