Apartheid on a Black Isle
November 15, 2012
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13721954-apartheid-on-a-black-isle Apartheid on a Black Isle: Removal and Resistance in Alexandra, South Africa by Dawne Y. Curry…
Dawne Y. Curry
Dr. Curry's research examines resistance in the Black and Coloured township of Alexandra, nine miles northeast of Johannesburg South Africa. This vibrant community began as a Whites only area in 1905,but after dismal sales owner Herbert Papenfus converted Alexandra to a Freehold in 1912, thereby granting the aforementioned populations the opportunity to own land in the city center, one of the few places to offer this during apartheid. Her forthcoming monograph, tentatively entitled, Resisting on a Black Isle: Alexandra's Response to Apartheid, 1970-1979, explores the ways in which this community completely surrounded by affluent White residential areas maintained a culture of resistance even while under the constant gaze of encroaching White suburbs. One of the topics that Curry addresses in this work is the issue of death, particularly how people mourned when apartheid officials prohibited, inhibited or disrupted funerals. She argues that Alexandrans found other ways to grieve by visiting the site of death and by going about the township finding information on how the decedents died. Besides her interest in resistance in South Africa and the continent as a whole, Curry analyzes travel narratives of African Americans who visited the continent. Her interest in this topic piqued after living and visiting South Africa. There, her racial identity changed from being an African American to a Coloured. Curry charts this experience in her co-edited volume, Extending the Diaspora: New Histories of Black People. When she is not writing, teaching or traveling, Curry writes poetry, takes photographs and visits family.
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