I just turned on my computer and the top news story on my homepage reminded me of a post that Cathy wrote earlier, when we were reading July’s people, about defining minority/majority. The article talks about how Asian and Hispanic growth have slowed due to immigration laws, causing the government to push back estimates on [...]
Time and time again, through our class readings, we have witnessed how an author’s personal experiences influence their writing. Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People is no exception.
I found a very powerful video that does a wonderful job at describing how Gordimer was immensely impacted by her experiences growing up in apartheid South Africa. The video also [...]
I took a cultural anthropology class this semester and one of our ethnographic readings had to do with the status of South Africa after the official ending of apartheid. This article shed light on a new type of apartheid: the one between the rich and the poor. I pasted the summary and analysis that I [...]
“If the children need eggs, I bring you more eggs…He smiled at the pretensions of a child, hindering in its helpfulness.-That’s not your work” (96).
-As can be seen from this quote, in a way, the Smales were dependent on July all along, not just during the fictional black revolt in South Africa that Gordimer describes. [...]
I spend more than 14 hours on either the bus or the subway every week and I try my best not to stay idle by catching up on my readings or listening to music. But for Gordimer’s July’s People, I wasn’t able to concentrate nor follow through with what she was saying because of the disturbing [...]
When I was applying for colleges and scholarships during my Senior year of High School, I remembered that being “Asian/Chinese” was considered a “minority.” The idea that Asian people are considered a minority when there is such a large population size of Asian people struck me as absurd. Eventually, the absurdity of that idea passed.
Until [...]
Although I haven’t finished reading the book yet, I could really see the antagonism and misunderstandings between black South Africans and White South Africans after the system of apartheid is violently overturned. July, who helps the Smales family escape Johannesburg, defends his actions to his mother and wife by recalling the violence in the country [...]