Prison and Political Struggle in Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter

Abstract

Nadine Gordimer’s 1979 novel, Burger’s Daughter, makes a valuable contribution to the corpus of prison writing by responding to the socio-historical specificities of the South African prison during the apartheid years. Drawing on Barbara Harlow’s work on women and political detention, and with reference to Ruth First’s memoir, 117 Days (1965), this article analyses the potential for writing – both as fiction and memoir – to reinstate women’s roles in the anti-apartheid movement. It explores how the apartheid regime intended prison not for rehabilitation but as a space of de-activation and invisibility. Prison is, however, a liminal space that is simultaneously conducive to political struggle and de-activation, violence and communitas. This article examines how these contradictory aspects are registered in Ruth First’s memoir and, to a larger extent, in Burger’s Daughter.