HUMA Book Launch

Author: Wisani Mushwana, PhD Candidate - English Literary Studies - University of Cape Town

To access the book:

Introduction: Andzani’s childhood community has become a shadow in his Cape Town life that holds him hostage. He minimises his visits back home to Mbambamencisi as a way to evade unpleasant, long-repressed memories. But as the past ruptures in the present, another Grindr binge fails to offer respite.  A Soft Landing is a powerful coming-of-age story about trauma, healing, family, and the courage to love and be loved. 

About the author:

wisan

Wisani Mushwana is a creative writer and a literary scholar. He’s the author of A Soft Landing (Kwela Books, 2023). He holds a MA in Creative Writing from UCT and his doctoral project is currently titled: 'Writing Against Shame: Contemporary African Writers Writing about Gender and Sexual Non-Conforming Subjectivities'. The project examines the different ways contemporary African writers of fiction, writing about queer subjectivities, challenge notions of postcolonial queer erasure from historical consciousness. It seeks to understand how these writers grapple with ideas of nationhood, national belonging, shame, and silencing. It further explores the different modes of resistance employed by these writers in responding to the violence of the archives that invalidate queer existence in the African continent.   

His research and teaching interests lie at a nexus between gender and sexuality studies, memory studies, creative writing, and contemporary African fiction.

About the Discussant:

fanidh

Fanidh Sanogo is a Mandela Rhodes alumni and a PhD fellow at the Institute for Humanities in Africa, UCT. Her PhD research in the field of Anthropology on digital makeup is a continuation of her masters research on the art of make-up and making up among young women in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Passionate about the politics of knowledge production, girlhood and digital subjectivities, she hopes to contribute further in this field through future research and collaborations.

Convenor: Sandile Ngidi

More about the HUMA Book Lunch Series

Light refreshments will be served at 12:30 SAST (GMT+2).

RSVP to attend: send us an email at huma@uct.ac.za

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