Book talk by Brenna Munro at Books & Books
November 28, 2012. 8:00 p.m.
After apartheid, South Africa established a celebrated new political order that imagined the postcolonial nation as belonging equally to the descendants of indigenous people, colonizing settlers, transported slaves, indentured laborers, and immigrants. Its constitution, adopted in 1996, was the first in the world to include gays and lesbians as full citizens.
Munro asserts that the inclusion of gay people made South Africans feel “modern”—at least for a while. As South Africa’s reentrance into the global economy has failed to bring prosperity to the majority of its citizens, homophobic violence has been on the rise. Munro reports on how contemporary queer activists and artists are declining to remain ambassadors for the “rainbow nation” and refusing to become scapegoats for the perceived failures of liberation and liberalism.
Brenna Munro, Associate Professor of English, received her Ph.D from the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on the intersection between studies of gender and sexuality, postcolonial theory, and African literature. She is the author of “Caster Semenya: Gods and Monsters,” “Queer Futures: The Coming-Out Novel in South Africa,” and the forthcoming “Nelson, Winnie, and the Politics of Gender” for the Cambridge Companion to Nelson Mandela, and “Gender and Sexuality in African Fiction” for the Oxford History of the Novel in English, Volume 11.
Books & Books
265 Aragon Avenue
Coral Gables, FL 33134
305.442.4408
www.booksandbooks.com
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