![]() ![]() This is especially the case when the author is black and has suffered the deprivations of apartheid oppression and the experience of listening to a voice intended to be silenced imparts an extra thrill to the writing. But their imbeddedness in a historical moment now passed lends them the supplementary aura of testimony and quasi-history. ![]() ![]() Childhood memoirs of apartheid-era South Africa written by both black and white authors evoke this same intensity all childhood memoirs are capable of. To approach these narratives with the wisdom, experience and world-weariness of adulthood is to experience the frisson of re-entering a moment of life which is closed forever and can never be regained in quite the same way, except tangentially or vicariously (and often through this genre). Not only does it deliver deep, intense memories filled with sensory information, it also often provides these details in the idiosyncratic language and mis/understandings of a child. Childhood is a rich and fertile terrain for the writing of memoir. ![]()
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