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Abstracts and Bios

Joe Napolitano, Department of English, Georgetown University

My paper would situate Njabulo Ndebele’s 2003 novel The Cry of Winnie Mandela as a narrative of ‘exile’ and ‘homecoming,’ though perhaps ‘dislocation’ and ‘reclamation’ are more accurate descriptors. For the novel poses a pointed question – “Is a country of so much dislocation a home?” – and ultimately answers with an image of five women on a “pilgrimage to eternal companionship,” reclaiming the spaces (both public and private) of South Africa. I would argue that Ndebele assembles this particularly vexed constellation of women – Winnie Mandela and four ordinary South African ‘women who waited,’ and also, by extension, Sara Baartman and the mythical Penelope – in order to imagine for the South African woman a new experience of home that also offers unprecedented freedom of movement.
Additionally, my paper would explore possible ways in which Ndebele’s novel might extend the work of the South African TRC, ways in which this reclamation of home is inextricably linked to the ongoing process of reconciliation. Ndebele himself anticipated “the restoration of narrative” as one inevitable result of the TRC process, and welcomed this development as “a living example of people reinventing themselves through narrative.” In fact, I would argue that the novel itself is structured like a truth report: a series of victim testimonies designed, as Terry Phelps argues in Shattered Voices, to give victims “the power to speak…and to shape the experience of violence into a coherent story of one’s own, thereby allowing for a renewed (or new) sense of autonomy and sense of control.” If, as Phelps argues, justice is “an ongoing, dynamic process, of which storytelling is a vital part,” then Ndebele’s novel can clearly be read as an extension of that process, a necessary literary supplement to the TRC. Finally, then, I would consider both the limitations of the TRC process and the role narrative might play in overcoming these limitations, paying particular attention to the shifting status of ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ within this ‘ongoing, dynamic process.’