Reading in the lives and writing of black South African women

Abstract

Black South African women writers in South Africa have generally written for foreign audiences and this raises interesting questions about black South African women readers, who are unlikely to be reading many of these texts. Taking this as a starting point, this article discusses interviews the author has done with black South African women readers about their reading lives. The interviews focus as much on reading as an ‘act’ in women's lives as on the interpretation of texts. This emphasis can be theoretically located against previous studies of readers and reading, many of which have tended to be text‐based and have dehistoricised notions of ‘woman’ and ‘reader’. Although the main focus of the article is on women readers, texts by black women writers, and specifically the portrayal of readers within them, are also briefly discussed, and suggestions are made as to how we might begin to theorise the relationship between the two.