Recent Posts
Inspiration August 21, 2017
She was a colonialist who was also anti-apartheid.
Photo via Instagram/@infinitegestationNadine Gordimer was born into a privileged, white middle-class family during the South African Apartheid, and she used her privilege to shine a light on the racial disparity during this time.
For those of you who may not know her, you’re missing out on a truly incredible #WomanThatDoes.
So, here are five important facts you need to know about this Nobel Prize winner.
Gordimer was born on Nov. 20, 1923 in Springs, South Africa to Jewish immigrant parents. As colonialists, her maternal grandfather moved to Africa from England to look for diamonds. On the other hand, her father moved to Africa to get out of Lithuania, where opportunities for Jewish children were unavailable.
Her life and environment greatly influenced her writing.
Gordimer wrote over two dozen works, from novels to short stories to personal and political essays to literary criticism. Her works of fiction mostly explored the era of the apartheid, and her first work to get published was a book of short stories titled “Face to Face” in 1949. Her first novel, on the other hand, “The Lying Days” was published in 1953.
According to the New York Times, she never meant to start writing about the apartheid as a child, but she realized she couldn’t delve into South Africa without running into the issue.
“I am not a political person by nature,” Gordimer said. “I don’t suppose, if I had lived elsewhere, my writing would have reflected politics much, if at all.”
The New York Times explained that critics described her work as social history told through “finely drawn portraits of the characters who peopled it.” Other critics saw themes of her own personal life as well as political liberation in her fictional work that reflected growing up with a controlling mother in an unhappy marriage.
Gordimer explored her country’s oppression with full force. She wrote every book without fear of consequences. Unfortunately, three of her books were eventually banned in her country: “A World of Strangers,” “The Late Bourgeois World” and “Burger’s Daughter.”
All three of these novels portrayed storylines of characters opposing the apartheid. South Africa banned these novels during the apartheid era from 1948 to 1994.
Her novel “July’s People” explores a storyline of role reversal in the apartheid where the ruling majority was the target of this new oppressive regime.
Gordimer attended the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa but dropped out after a year. She decided to pursue a writing career instead, but her writing wasn’t inspired by the apartheid. Rather, her writing led her to the apartheid.
“On the contrary,” she wrote in an essay, “it was learning to write that sent me falling, falling through the surface of the South African way of life.”
Along with winning the Booker Prize in 1974 for “The Conservationist,” Gordimer was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1991. Gordimer was honored with the prize for being an author “who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity.”
Her novels ventured into territory most people were afraid to peek into due to censorship and persecution, which is why she was awarded the prize.
The Academy explained, “Her continual involvement on behalf of literature and free speech in a police state where censorship and persecution of books and people exist have made her ‘the doyenne of South African letters.'”
She was the first woman to win the literature prize in 25 years..
The Academy passed over her multiple times although she was a candidate for years. Eventually, the Academy critiqued her work, realizing that “Gordimer writes with intense immediacy about the extremely complicated personal and social relationships in her environment. At the same time as she feels a political involvement – and takes action on that basis – she does not permit this to encroach on her writings.”
The President of South Africa, F. W. de Klerk, congratulated Gordimer’s achievement, which was also an honor to South Africa.
“As South African head of state, I am always pleased when one of my countrymen does well and achieves international recognition,” Mr. de Klerk said in a statement. “The Nobel Prize for literature is unequaled in prestige in the world. Winning it is a noteworthy achievement from any point of view.”
Gordimer received the award the year South Africa’s leaders chose to dismantle the racist system.
As a child, Gordimer loved to dance and dreamed of becoming a ballerina. She even told The Paris Review, “I absolutely adored dancing. And I can still remember the pleasure, the release, of using the body in this way. There was no question but that I was to be a dancer, and I suppose maybe I would have been.”
But, Gordimer also had a rapid heartbeat due to an enlarged thyroid. Although it didn’t pose any danger, Gordimer’s mother told her convent school to keep her from running and swimming – basically, any potentially strenuous physical activity.
Her parents had an unhappy marriage, and Gordimer suspected this is what turned her mother into a smother. She told The Paris Review that although her mother was no longer in love with her father, her mother wouldn’t have ever had an affair.
“The chief person she was attracted to was our family doctor,” Gordimer told The Paris Review. “There’s no question. I’m sure it was quite unconscious, but the fact that she had this delicate daughter, about whom she could be constantly calling the doctor — in those days doctors made house calls, and there would be tea and cookies and long chats — made her keep my ‘illness’ going in this way.”
Her mother eventually told her she had to stop dancing. Her mother even pulled her out of school at the age of 11. For an entire year, she didn’t have an education, so she read a lot. And considering her successes, it’s good she did.
Outside of her novels, Gordimer made other efforts to contribute to the anti-apartheid resistance. During the 1963 Rivonia Trial, she worked on biographical sketches of Nelson Mandela to publicize the trial.
Mandela even admitted to reading Gordimer’s novels during his time in prison in his autobiography.
“I tried to read books about South Africa or by South African writers. I read all the unbanned novels of Nadine Gordimer and learned a great deal about the white liberal sensibility,” he said.
She later joined the African National Congress, which aimed to end economic sanctions against South Africa until it reformed its democracy. Mandela chose Gordimer as one of the first people to meet after he was released from prison.
In 1996, Mandela spoke at the President’s Budget Debate in South Africa’s Senate about culture.
“We think of Nadine Gordimer, who won international acclaim as our first winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, and whose writing was enriched by the cultural kaleidoscope of our country,” he said in his speech.
Her efforts helped Mandela in his fight.
Gordimer died July 13, 2014 at the age of 90. She was a woman who, despite her privilege and colonialist background, attempted to change a racist society.
