“I guess I realised, even then, that I was being asked to be the Sole Brown Representative in a book of essays about JM Coetzee. I couldn’t do it. Instead, I wrote about how that experience taught me a thing or two about the reification of ‘white’ culture by scholars of Southern African literature, via the objectification of JM Coetzee – using his person, as well as his writing.”

Neelika Jayawardane reflects on White Writing, JM Coetzee’s new selection of “winning stories”, African Pens 2011: New Writing from Southern Africa, and her experience at the 2009 Chimurenga Library Sessions over at Africa is a Country. Read it here.

Listen to the PASScast of Neelika Jayawardane presentation at 2009 Chimurenga Library Sessions in Cape Town here.

And from the Archives:

The Trouble with JM Coetzee by Gertrude B Makhaya.

Naming Names: Sean Jacobs and Grant Farred on black vernacular intellectuals.