YOU CAN’T GET LOST IN CAPE TOWN
Women Writing Africa
A Project of The Feminist Press at The City University of New York
Funded by The Ford Foundation
Women Writing Africa is a project of cultural reconstruction that aims to restore African women’s voices to the public sphere. Through the collection of written and oral narratives to be published in six regional anthologies, the project will document the history of self-conscious literary expression by African women throughout the continent. In bringing together women’s voices, Women Writing Africa will illuminate for a broad public the neglected history and culture of African women, who have shaped and been shaped by their families, societies, and nations.
The Women Writing Africa Series, which supports the publication of individual books, is part of the Women Writing Africa project.
The Women Writing Africa Series
ACROSS BOUNDARIES
The Journey of a South African Woman Leader
A Memoir by Mamphela Ramphele
AND THEY DIDN’T DIE
A Novel by Lauretta Ngcobo
CHANGES
A Love Story
A Novel by Ama Ata Aidoo
HAREM YEARS
The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, 1879–1924
by Huda Shaarawi
Translated and introduced by Margot Badran
NO SWEETNESS HERE
And Other Stories
by Ama Ata Aidoo
TEACHING AFRICAN LITERATURES IN A GLOBAL LITERARY ECONOMY
Women’s Studies Quarterly 25, nos. 3 & 4 (fall/winter 1998)
Edited by Tuzyline Jita Allan
ZULU WOMAN
The Life Story of Christina Sibiya
by Rebecca Hourwich Reyher
Published by the Feminist Press at the City University of New York
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406
New York, NY 10016
First Feminist Press edition, 2000
Copyright © 1987 by Zoë Wicomb
Introduction copyright © 2000 by Marcia Wright
Afterword © 2000 by Carol Sicherman
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Originally published in 1987 in the United Kingdom by Virago Press, London, and in the United States by Pantheon, New York. This edition published by arrangement with Little, Brown.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wicomb, Zoë
You can’t get lost in Cape Town / Zoë Wicomb ; historical introduction by Marcia Wright ; literary afterword by Carol Sicherman.—1st Feminist Press ed.
p. cm. — (The women writing Africa series)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 978-155861-915-9 (e-book)
2. Coloured people (South Africa)—Fiction. 2. Young women—South Africa—Fiction. 3. Cape Town (South Africa)—Fiction I. Title. II. Series
PR9369.3.W53 Y6 2000
823—dc21
99-053119
This publication is made possible, in part, by a grant from The Ford Foundation in support of the Feminist Press’s Women Writing Africa project. The Feminist Press is grateful to Florence Howe, Joanne Markell, Caroline Urvater, and Genevieve Vaughan for their generosity in supporting this publication.
CONTENTS
A Clearing in the Bush
You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town
Home Sweet Home
Behind the Bougainvillea
A Fair Exchange
Ash on My Sleeve
A Trip to the Gifberge
Glossary
Literary Afterword
Carol Sicherman
Although You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town, Zoë Wicomb’s portrait of a young coloured1 woman’s coming to age in apartheid-ruled South Africa, spans the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s, this episodic novel is not a period piece. Indeed, to grasp the complex consciousness of those known in the twentieth century as the Cape Coloured people, one must reach back not just fifty years, but to a time far anterior to apartheid. What is more, this portrayal of one young woman’s life and expanding awareness is highly relevant to the present, when the struggle in South Africa is defined not by race-led laws but rather by class aspirations and economic disadvantages that carry forward a history of vulnerability.
Wicomb’s protagonist, Frieda Shenton, and her immediate family resolutely defy easy categorization, even when the characters themselves indulge in stereotyping. The Shentons are exceptional among coloured people in Little Namaqualand, an impoverished, semiarid area beyond the rich wheat farms and vineyards north of Cape Town. With respect to their neighbors, the Shentons are well educated and, invested in social improvement, proud of their growing command of the English language and of their patrilineal name-giver, a Scot. Frieda’s father, a primary school teacher, is recognized as a local notable, above the “commonality,” while Frieda’s mother has something more equivocal in her identity: Griqua parentage.2 Mrs. Shenton has embraced the ideal of the “lady” and continually warns her daughter against compromising behavior. The young and then mature Frieda must cope with and transcend essentially conservative anxieties that feed the stereotypes purveyed by her mother, which reveal a perspective prevalent among the coloured petty bourgeoisie. In telling Frieda’s story, Wicomb explores class, race, gender, and culture across a wide register.
LITTLE NAMAQUALAND
The social arena in Little Namaqualand into which