The heart of a woman: Black women's lives in the United States and South Africa as portrayed in the autobiographies of Maya Angelou and Sindiwe Magona

In this study I establish links between black South African women's autobiographical writing and its Afro-American counterpart. By showing women's autobiographical writing about children and home to be intricately involved with the racial and economic politics of the relevant country, I radicalize such writing and acknowledge its contribution to the struggle for racial equality. Concentrating on the authors' narratives of their childhood, their experiences as mothers, and how they use their autobiographical works in their roles as citizens, I advance the thesis that Magona's and Angelou's Afro-centric consciousness is embodied in their maternal politics.; I begin by distinguishing Afro-centric womanism from Western feminism. I then contextualize Magona and Angelou within their respective autobiographical traditions, emphasizing how they advance the womanist consciousness first articulated by their predecessors by also exposing chauvinism in the black community. I argue that in their childhood, the two protagonists move in opposite directions. Magona becomes more anxious as Angelou becomes more confident. This pattern reflects the contrast between the movement toward civil rights in the United States at the same time that South Africa was becoming more repressive to blacks. I then discuss how the protagonists' experiences of motherhood enable them to challenge the prevailing notions of maternity by questioning the supremacy of the nuclear family structure, showing how black working-class mothers are not domesticated, and by dispelling the idealization of marriage. In the final analysis, patriarchy exists in both countries in this moment of transition from traditional culture to modernism, but the protagonists strive towards self-empowering identities nonetheless.; In the last chapter I argue that the evolution from manual labor to the cultural work of writing autobiography enables Magona and Angelou to teach following generations how to survive and even thrive against the odds. In addition, because their volumes can be read coextensively with their short stories and poems, these writers challenge the hierarchical generic structures that often devalue women's autobiographies.