By: Natasha Archary
Midday Joy celebrates Women’s History Month with a focus on women who have influenced various aspects of the South African landscape.
The focus this Wednesday, 23 March is on the first black woman in SA to publish a novel, Miriam Tlali.
It was whilst she was employed as a bookkeeper at a furniture store, in 1969 that Tlali penned her first novel, Muriel at Metropolitan.
A semi-autobiographical novel which was only published six years later in 1975. The novel was banned in 1979 by the apartheid government but was published internationally under the title, Between Two Worlds by Longman African Classics.
Sharing an African woman’s perspective on apartheid, people who read the book were given insight into what life as an oppressed South African was like.
The novelist and short-story writer said, “a good book, if it has the right message, can change a human being into something he never thought he could be.”
With her mother’s focus on education, Miriam Tlali matriculated at the age of 15. She was an excellent student with a passion for English.
Tlali went on to write several novels, including Amandla, which was translated into Dutch, Japanese, Polish and German.
The novel based on the 1976 Soweto riots, was published in 1980 and was banned until 1986.
Due to racial predispositions, she was denied entry into the university of her choice, but as a visiting scholar at Yale University between 1989 and 1990.
Miriam Tlali died on 24 February 2017, leaving behind a legacy of published work.
Also read: Midday Joy: Outgrowing prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination
