An art of hunger: Gender and the politics of food distribution in Zakes Mda’s South Africa

Abstract

This article examines the centrality of hunger and food in Zakes Mda’s Ways of Dying, The Heart of Redness, and The Whale Caller. While Mda’s work has been the subject of incisive readings of the politics of development in contemporary South Africa, attention to his treatment of hunger, specifically, helps to clarify the centrality of gender to Mda’s critical re-envisioning of development policies pursued by late and postapartheid governments.