Book by Kathy A. Perkins
ISBN: 1919713158 / 9781919713151

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E-mail: editorial@agoracosmopolitan.com

This is the first anthology to focus exclusively on the lives of Black South African women. This collection represents the work of both female and male writers, including national and international award-winning playwrights. The collection includes six full-length and four one-act plays, as well as interviews with the writers, who candidly discuss the theatrical and political situation in the new South Africa. Written before and after apartheid, the plays present varying approaches and theatrical styles from solo performances to collective creations.

The plays dramatise issues as diverse as:
* women’s rights
* displacement from home
* violence against women
* the struggle to keep families together
* racial identity
* education in the old and new South Africa
* and health care.

“Black South African Women” is the first single-volume anthology to focus exclusively on the lives of Black South African women. These ten plays about Black South African women challenge simple understandings of life in South Africa both before and after Apartheid, and represent the leading edge of the arts in the emerging new South Africa.

These theatrical works, along with verbatim interviews with the playwrights, reach beyond the theatre doors onto a stage where a new nation with new prospects, and new challenges, awaits.

This collection of ten plays, written by playwrights diverse in age, educational background and theatrical experience, explores a wide range of experiences of black women, both during and after the apartheid era. “Sheila’s Day” by Duma Ndlovu examines the role of the poor, uneducated women in their struggle for survival, while Gcina Mhlophe’s “Have you seen Sandile?” records the personal journey of a young girl taken away from her grandmother by her long-lost mother. Health and labour conditions are the topic of “The Nurse”, and single black women who look for a better life in the city are the subject of “Kwalandlady”. “Women” explores domestic violence and power in a township home, while “A Coloured Place” by Lueen Conning and “Cheaper Than Roses” deal with the lives of coloured women.