Karen Jennings's Reading List

"This book is going to break your heart. Be prepared to cry your eyes out, to feel immense anger, to laugh, to cry again. What a book! I don’t want to give too much away, but as you mentioned, a white boy is raised by a woman of mixed race. He lives there for 9 years before being discovered. He is taken away to go and live with what a judge tells him is his “real” family. His life is upturned from one of love and affection and education, to one of violence and ignorance and cruelty. I don’t want to give it all away, but the key here is about identity. Do we find identity in skin colour, in place, in names, in those who love us? How do we know who we are and how and where we belong? “South African authors tend to be overlooked in favour of global bestselling authors” My mom was a high school Afrikaans teacher to English-language pupils. I was a sickly child and so I would often be put on a blanket in the corner of my mom’s classroom and I would listen to her teach. Fiela’s Child was one of the prescribed texts she taught. I was completely enthralled by the way she brought the story to life and read out the different characters and the different worlds they inhabited. It might sound dramatic, but it is almost as though that book is in my blood – because of having grown up with it. But why might it appeal to other readers? I would say the strengths of the novel lie in the powerful characterisation, the human-ness of the people and their beliefs, their flaws, their actions. One of the important things to remember about the past is that we are all tourists when we try to access it. We cannot know it completely; we can only hope to get some idea of it. Dalene Matthee is an extraordinary tour guide, taking us into the past and allowing us to live there with her characters, experiencing life as though we are one of them."

"This is another personal novel. When I was 9, I used to visit the Education Museum that was across the road from my school. I would go multiple times a week and stay for ages. The reason I went was because Dr Sleigh was the curator of that museum and I absolutely adored him. I would go and talk to him and he would tell me all kinds of stories about the history of South Africa, and about different fashions and gadgets and ideas. Years later, when his novel came out, I was surprised. I had not known that he was working on a novel, nor that it was such an impressive work. Looking at the novel’s almost 800 pages and small font, one can feel quite daunted. But what Dr Sleigh—I can never bring myself to call him Dan!—managed to do was to create a compelling narrative out of a painful and problematic history, doing so with nuance and sensitivity, yet never relinquishing the historical facts. Dr Sleigh was a historian, and an admirable one at that. As a historian he took a very no-nonsense approach. He sought the facts. In his fiction, he took the same approach. Where there are gaps in the record, Dr Sleigh would fill them by researching further and making informed decisions. He did not give way to flights of fancy or fantasy – something that perhaps happens too often in historical fiction these days."

"This amazing novel looks at the complexities of Black girlhood, mental health, and the legacy of racial exclusion in post-apartheid South Africa. The protagonist, Nomandla, comes from an informal settlement and is awarded a prestigious scholarship to attend Cameron House for Girls in Durban. While she initially views this as a path to a better life, the reality proves to be a source of profound struggle. At her new school, Nomandla is treated as a token of “transformation” and is expected to show constant gratitude for her position. In addition, she battles poverty and racism while experiencing terrifying and sometimes heartbreaking visions that eventually lead to her hospitalisation. The novel is painful, funny, beautiful. Braids is the kind of novel that I would like all South Africans to read, regardless of race. I think, too often, there is ignorance about how people from different races and cultures experience certain situations. In Braids , Nomandla is given a scholarship to a private “white” school and is asked, for example, to dress in traditional Zulu clothing and perform a traditional dance in the school concert. While the school authorities might see this as a way of including her, she sees it as being asked to showcase her difference in an attempt to make the school look inclusive and welcoming. She views the request as exploitative and false. This is simply one example, but what it does, as all good literature does, is give readers an opportunity to experience, learn and understand from a different point of view. Andile and I are more or less the same age. We grew up in the same country. Yet her sister died of malnutrition. Her family lived without many of the opportunities my family had – even after the end of apartheid in 1994. These are things we must remember. Apartheid is over, but what has it meant for different people, and what are the consequences of it that still hang over us to this day?"

"You name it, this novel has got it! Strong female protagonist. Romance. Fighting against patriarchy. Fighting against white dominance. Inter-racial relationships and friendships. Building a better world through interracial, intercultural, male and female understanding. At a time when the world is becoming more and more right leaning, this book can serve as an antidote. This is, sadly, a big problem. Afrikaans, as far as I know, still tends to outsell South Afrian English fiction. But in South Africa we have 12 official languages—one of which is sign language. Imagine English only being your second or third or even fourth language. Imagine loving to read, wanting to read, but not being able to find books in your language. That is the problem. There are a number of small publishers trying to work on improving this situation, but it is a struggle."