My Son’s Story | My Son’s Story

At a glance:

Author: Nadine Gordimer
First Published: 1990
Type of Work: Novel
Time of Work: The 1970’s and 1980’s
Setting: Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Rustenburg, South Africa
Principal Characters: Sonny, Aila, Baby, William (Will), Hannah Plowman
Genres: Long fiction, Social realism, Political fiction
Subjects: Social action, Teaching or teachers, Family or family life, Politics, Prisoners, Prisons, Racism, Revolutionaries, Blacks, Interracial relationships, Human rights, 1980’s, Adultery, South Africa or South Africans, Apartheid
Locales: Johannesburg, South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa, Rustenburg, South Africa

Both in her works and in interviews, Nadine Gordimer has made it clear that she disapproves of apartheid; it was her sympathy with blacks that caused South Africa to ban three of her novels, A World of Strangers (1958), The Late Bourgeois World (1966), and Burger’s Daughter (1979). As some of her more perceptive critics have pointed out, however, Gordimer herself is in two ways an outsider in the movement with which she sympathizes: She is white and she is a woman. It may well be that it is this sense of alienation, or at least of difference, that enables Gordimer to write...

My Son’s Story | My Son’s Story

At a glance:

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