|
You are invited to participate in the College of Arts and Sciences South African initiative through an online book club. We will read one book a month from October through April (with November and December combined). The books were chosen with an eye to some of the major themes of our year-long program “Kentucky & South Africa: Different Lands, Common Ground” — such as, mining, sports, race, public health, the anti-apartheid movement, and contemporary South Africa. They are all fascinating reads. There will be real-time discussions on Facebook once a month and a discussion forum where you can post questions and opinions any time. Feel free also to start a book club with friends and neighbors, reading these books and meeting face-to-face. To participate, simply click "join" on our Facebook page. You must be a member of Facebook to join. Our first book is coordinated with the smell of pigskin that accompanies October. It is Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation by John Carlin. The inspiration for the film Invictus, this non-fiction piece relates the story of how the Springboks’ victory of the 1995 Rugby World Cup helped unite the torn nation of South Africa. Rugby, which had always been an Afrikaner sport, became a tool that Mandela was able to use to bring both whites and blacks together in a common cause.
-
The inspiration for the film Invictus, this non-fiction piece relates the story of how the Springboks’ victory of the 1995 Rugby World Cup helped unite the torn nation of South Africa. Rugby, which had always been an Afrikaner sport, became a tool that Mandela was able to use to bring both whites and blacks together in a common cause.
-
This novel employs magical realism to examine the South African past. Extremely creative story tells the story of how Xhosa people split into two groups, the Believers and the Unbelievers, after hearing a prophecy in the nineteenth century. Now, 50 years later, their descendants are at odds over plans to build a casino and resort.
-
Non-fiction account of the horrific AIDS epidemic in Africa centered on one young man’s personal struggle with disease, its stigma and the rampant fear it spawns. In the author’s own words, “This book is an exploration of the place of blame and resentment in one man’s decision whether to test his blood for HIV.” The author was inspired to write this book after reading an account of how 85,000 people dying of AIDS in Botswana did not come forward to receive free treatment. They chose to die. So horrified was Steinberg that he set out to a poor village in South Africa to attempt to understand why anyone would make such a choice. The book explores the racial, political and cultural politics that are inseparable from the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
-
The first novel published by a black South African, Mine Boy depicts the life of a new migrant to Johannesburg and the brutal work in the gold mines. The author’s straightforward and restrained depiction of racial discrimination stirred audiences around the world when it was first published. It continues to be a major classic in South Africa and will prompt comparison with the lives of miners in the Appalachians.
-
Toni Morrison writes, “I was immediately mesmerized…Van Niekerk’s achievement is as brilliant as it is haunting.” The novel is about an aging Afrikaner and her maid in the waning days of apartheid. Their complicated relationship illustrates the vast shifts in the culture that are happening around them. The novel offers a glimpse of what reconciliation might look like for the nation of South Africa.
-
“The extraordinary strength and almost inconceivable grace in these pages are as mind-blowing as the justice and peace Ahmed Kathrada helped bring about." -Bono “Ahmed Kathrada has been so much part of my life over such a long period that is inconceivable that I could allow him to write his memoirs without me contributing something, even if only through a brief foreword. Our stories have become so interwoven that the telling of one without the voice of the other being heard somewhere would have led to an incomplete narrative.” -Nelson Mandela
|