American Literature, Nadine Gordimer

1224 Words5 Pages
Topics in American Literature Nadine Gordimer Final Paper Born in 1923, Nadine Gordimer became the first South African and the seventh woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. A prolific writer, she has penned thirteen novels, over two hundred short stories and several volumes of essays. To further distinguish her as an author, her works have been translated into more than thirty languages. Personally, she has been awarded fifteen honorary doctorates and has received major literary prizes in addition to the coveted Nobel Prize for Literature. As Wastberg proclaims, “Gordimer has been the Geiger counter of apartheid and of the movements of people across the crust of South Africa. Her work reflects the psychic vibrations within that country, the road from passivity and blindness to resistance and struggle, the forbidden friendships, the censored soul, and the underground networks. Gordimer has painted a social background subtler than anything presented by political scientists, thus providing an insight into the roots of the struggle and the mechanisms of change that no historian could have matched.” In her speech delivered in Stockholm, this Nobel laureate clearly illustrates how her environment has influenced not only her motivation but also the content of her writing, thus enabling her readers to understand the world in which she lived. Through her speech, Nadine Gordimer clearly explains her commitment to exposing the harsh realities of South Africa during the time of apartheid. In Nadine Gordimer’s Nobel lecture “Writing and Being”, she speaks of “wondering dismay and early consciousness of racism that came of my walk to school.” This statement speaks to her early exposure to apartheid and the fact that if she had been of the lowest class of blacks, she would probably have not become a writer at all. Gordimer admits that since
Open Document