Literary Birthday – 8 May – Mongane Wally Serote

Happy Birthday, Mongane Wally Serote, born on 8 May 1944.

Mongane Wally Serote Quotes

1. I feel I am too young to write an autobiography.
2. Writers still have a mission to communicate across barriers – even if apartheid is not the main motivation any longer.
3. We didn’t even know how very beautiful our country, South Africa, was, because we were stuck in the townships.
4. We saw writing as something that could inspire, record, express, but also entertain.
5. At primary school, I had very good teachers that had us tell stories. However, being influenced by European literature at school, I initially wrote a poem about snow and presented it to one of the teachers. She reprimanded me for writing about things that I have not experienced and advised me rather to write about what I experience and what I observe. (Source)

Source for quotes.

Mongane Wally Serote is an award-winning South African poet, novelist, and political activist. His writing is shaped by the struggle against apartheid. He became involved in resistance to the apartheid government at a young age and was arrested in 1969. In 1972, he published his debut poetry collection, Yakhal’inkomo, which won the Ingrid Jonker Prize for English poetry. His work explores themes of injustice, identity, exile, and liberation. Among his best-known books is To Every Birth Its Blood, a powerful portrayal of life under apartheid. After South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, Serote served as a Member of Parliament. He was inaugurated as South Africa’s National Poet Laureate in 2018 and he is regarded as one of the leading voices of South African literature.

Source for Image: Serge Aspeslag, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Serote.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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