Writers bear witness: ‘do angels wear brassières?’ The child in post-colonial literature

WRITERS BEAR WITNESS: ‘DO ANGELS WEAR BRASSIÈRES?’ THE CHILD IN POST-COLONIAL LITERATURE

Dr Rohan Quince, author; Jillian Vigrass, teacher and author; Jeremy Fogg, researcher

Wednesday 28 January  5.00 pm  COURSE FEES R115; Staff and students R58

What is life like after independence from colonial rule? Is it the longed-for Utopia? What new challenges must people face? And what is the experience of the child?

In this performance-lecture we explore how the themes of post-colonial writing, such as identity, heritage and power, are refracted through the figure of the child in post-colonial writing by authors from countries that gained independence from Britain in the twentieth century.

From one hundred countries in the world in 1950, the number rose to one hundred and ninety by 1979, as new nations gained independence from European empires. But the joy of Uhuru was soon challenged by the harsh realities of the modern world. The myriad questions that arose proved to be rich fodder for a new generation of writers from across the world, whose works have immeasurably enriched the Western canon and created the vast body of world literature we enjoy today.

Chinua Achebe, Salman Rushdie, Olive Senior, Imtiaz Dharker, Wole Soyinka, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Bernadine Evaristo and Trevor Noah are among the many writers whose child characters voice the dramatic, sad and funny stories of our brave new world.

Recommended reading

Achebe, C. 1958. Things Fall Apart. London: Heinemann.

Adichie, CN. 2003. Purple Hibiscus. North Carolina: Algonquin Books. Noah, T. 2016. Born a Crime. New York: Spiegel and Grau.

Rushdie, S. 1981. Midnight’s Children. United Kingdom: Jonathan Cape.

Senior, O. 1989. Arrival of the Snake Women and Other Stories. United Kingdom: Longman Caribbean Writers. Soyinka, W. 1994. Ibadan. New York: Methuen Publishing Ltd.

TO BOOK: https://www.webtickets.co.za/performance.aspx?itemid=1575248146

Dr Rohan Quince grew up in Johannesburg. He taught English for forty years at schools and universities in South Africa and the United States. He is the author of Shakespeare in South Africa: Stage Productions during the Apartheid Era. He teaches a U3A course on Shakespeare and his Contemporaries and runs a weekly Shakespeare Club at the National Children’s Theatre in Johannesburg. He and Jeremy Fogg have performed together at the National Arts Festival. Together with Jillian Vigrass, he presented a series of Writers Bear Witness lectures at UCT Summer School in 2025.

Jillian Vigrass Gorton studied for a BA and a Secondary Teacher’s Diploma at UCT, graduating in 1972. She has been a life-long teacher of English, in state schools in South Africa, the United Kingdom and, after independence, in Zimbabwe, and then in international schools in Ethiopia, Portugal and Switzerland. Her play, Chimurenga Children , set on Zimbabwean Independence Day, was staged in 2022 in Geneva. Her children’s book, Ozzee the Mozzee, on how to avoid getting malaria, was published in April 2024. Together with Rohan Quince, she has presented Writers Bear Witness lectures in Europe and South Africa

Educated in Johannesburg, at the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town, Jeremy Fogg taught for some years in both cities. He became Researcher at the National English Literary Museum (now Amazwi Museum of South African Literature) in Grahamstown/ Makhanda, in 1986 and retired from that institution as Deputy Director in 2013. With Professor Paul Walters, he has published widely on the life and writings of Olive Schreiner. Together with his school friend, Rohan Quince, he participated in the National Arts Festival in 2017 - 2019.