Expanding the Territory: Creative Reading Interventions in Lauretta Ngcobo’s Prodigal Daughters

ABSTRACT

This essay argues that the various pieces of memoir collected in Prodigal Daughters: Stories of South African Women in Exile can be read as creative writing, and therefore research, within the terms of the discipline. These pieces of writing can be seen as a contribution to general knowledge about various facets of the human experience including political activism at a certain period in South African history, family relationships and living in exile, both in Africa and abroad. South Africa is currently experiencing a crisis in education. This essay finally asks whether this body of work could represent a contribution to a decolonised curriculum for a country that is immersed in the project of self-making, where marginalised voices write themselves into history and contribute to a working model of the society as a collective, a nation.

Keywords:

• gender studies
• South African literary studies
• popular culture
• language studies
• literary theory