Like family : domestic workers in South African history and literature / Ena Jansen.

• Chapter 1. The Representation of Domestic Workers -- Chapter 2. Enslaved Women at the Cape – the First Domestic Workers -- Chapter 3. Migrant Women and Domestic Work in the City -- Chapter 4. Legislation and Black Urban Women -- Chapter 5. Domestic Workers in Personal Accounts -- Chapter 6. Oral Testimonies, Interviews and a Novel -- Chapter 7. Domestic Workers and Children? Chapter 8. Domestic Workers and Sexuality -- Chapter 9. Domestic Workers in Troubled Times -- Chapter 10. Domestic Workers in Post-apartheid Novels by White Authors -- Chapter 11. Domestic Workers in Post-apartheid Novels by Black Authors -- Chapter 12. Domestic Workers Bridge the Gap. 

• More than a million black South African women are domestic workers. These nannies, housekeepers and chars continue to occupy a central place in in postapartheid society. But it is an ambivalent position. Precariously situated between urban and rural areas, rich and poor, white and black, these women are at once intimately connected and at a distant remove from the families they serve. ‘Like family’ they may be, but they and their employers know they can never be real family. Ena Jansen shows that domestic worker relations in South Africa were shaped by the institution of slavery at the Cape. This established social hierarchies and patterns of behaviour and interaction that persist to the present day, and are still evident in the predicament of the black female domestic worker. To support her argument, Jansen examines the representation of domestic workers in a diverse range of texts in English and Afrikaans. Authors include André Brink, JM Coetzee, Imraan Coovadia, Nadine Gordimer, Elsa Joubert, Antjie Krog, Sindiwe Magona, Kopano Matlwa, Es’kia Mphahlele, Sisonke Msimang, Zukiswa Wanner and Zoë Wicomb. Later texts by black authors offer wry and subversive insights into the madam/maid nexus, capturing paradoxes relating to shifting power relationships. Like Family is an updated version of the award-winning Soos familie published in 2015 and the highly-acclaimed 2016 Dutch translation, Bijna familie. 

Ämnesord

Household employees in literature.  (LCSH)

South African literature  -- History and criticism. (LCSH)

Afrikaans literature  -- History and criticism. (LCSH)

South African literature (English)  -- History and criticism. (LCSH)

Household employees  -- South Africa -- History. (LCSH)

Women household employees  -- South Africa -- History. (LCSH)

Hushållsarbete  (kao)

Housework  (kao//eng)

Litteraturvetenskap  (kao)

Literary studies  (kao//eng)

Historia  (kao)

Muntlig tradition  (kao)

Oral tradition  (kao//eng)

Tjänstefolk  (kao)

Servants  (kao//eng)

History  (kao//eng)

Tjänstefolk  -- i litteraturen (sao)

Sydafrikansk litteratur  -- historia (sao)

Litteratur på afrikaans  -- historia (sao)

Tjänstekvinnor  -- historia (sao)

Sydafrika  (sao)

Sydafrika  (kao)

South Africa  (kao//eng)

Klassifikation

PT6510 (LCC)

839.3609352 (DDC)