Welcome To Our Hillbrow Analysis

Great Essays
Freedom is not free when your identity is the price. Throughout the semester we read literature that has honed in on the idea of apartheid and post-apartheid affecting a nation. Zoe Wicomb 's You Can 't Get Lost in Cape Town and Phaswane Mpe Welcome to Our Hillbrow both share the themes of identity crisis through language. This theme has shaped what I grasped from South African literature is that identity does not belong to you but is shaped by what others perceive. Who you are is not defined by what you do in the world by how others label you based on race and language. If you look a certain way or speak a certain way you will be judged and that judgement will be who you are despite knowing your entirety.

Zoe Wicomb 's You Can 't Get Lost in Cape Town is set in the time when Apartheid was ending and
…show more content…
Phaswane Mpe’s novel Welcome to our Hillbrow portrays South Africa post-apartheid through two characters. The story shifts between two central characters Refilwe and Refent ̆se but we are focusing on Refilwe. Refilwe is a young black woman given the opportunity to study in Oxford and receive a better education. This is something she is grateful at first until she comprehends what the English perceive her as. “She was of course grateful, but not entirely happy about her privileged South African status.” (Mpe 100). Refilwe had gained the privilege to come and go as freely as she pleased without restrictions. However she witnessed other cultures being violated at custom checks based on where they came from which is racial profiling. These events lead to Refilwe to truly observe the area around her and obtained that the English did not distinguish the different culture. Her identity in England was belittled down to Africans. Like Freida the idea of language is touched up, but in an opposite

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    The way we identify ourselves is very important in today’s society. We can identify ourselves through morals, clothing styles, or even by the foods we eat. Our identity can be part of our culture, but it can also us stand out from those around us. However, society often takes part in determining our own identity. Everyone falls victim to at least one or two generalized stereotypes, normally based upon race, and others often identify us by these.…

    • 1391 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    When it comes to racial crimes and segregation there is nothing more depressing than talking about how many times our world has been through it. It has happened throughout our entire lives and sadly it still happens today. The devastation and violence from these acts have shaped the way our society is and it’s not necessarily good. As a white male I can’t say I have ever been part of any minority group, but as a white female in South Africa during the 1960s you could say it was quite shocking to be on the opposite side. In the book The Unlikely Secret Agent by Ronnie Kasrils a woman, Eleanor was living amongst the South African Apartheid.…

    • 1372 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    South Africa has a complex political history. It is filled with intricacies and subtleties which are difficult to understand from an outside perspective. The power and volatility of South Africa’s political climate was enough to drive hordes of South African’s to find refuge in other countries while still longing for their homeland. This review is about Rian Malan’s 1991 book “My Traitor’s Heart, Blood and Bad Dreams: A South African Explores the Madness in His Country, His Tribe and Himself” published by Vintage Press in London.…

    • 1621 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    My three identities are America’s worst fears. My identity is what prevents those who are closed-minded to sleep at night. Men disrespect me. Those who are privileged look down on me, and the racist fear I will bomb their “Land of the Free.” Kwame Anthony Appiah wrote his article “Racial Identities” explaining our different identities and how each of our “collective identities” makes up a script or narrative of shaping our life.…

    • 732 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Analysis Hillbilly Elegy

    • 1106 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Marca Kaplar Longer Paper #1 Hillbilly Elegy, Trump and the Death of a Culture President Trump's appeal to the culture, identity, and ideology of the often forgotten working class people was successful by simply allowing a group of disenfranchised, forgotten, and loyal citizens the capability for the hopes and belief that they can be great again. Through the promise of “Making America Great Again,” he sparked a fire in many who have gone from a level of wealth that to them allowed for a very good life to the exurban and now abandoned areas such as Middleton, Ohio in J. D. Vance’s, Hillbilly Elegy. Through the promise that there would be employment possibilities, improvements of our infrastructure, a medical program that they could choose…

    • 1106 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Their freedom was limited as they found themselves belonging to two greatly contrasting identities: African and American. The African identity brought them values of their past and the their long strife which concluded with a longing to attain self-conscious manhood, much of what they saw on the other side of the veil in the white man. Unfortunately, the Americans…

    • 814 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    She suffers hardships as a slave, she had made a decision to escape from her master and headed to Cape Coast town. She then realized that she need a piece of document that says that she is free, but it wasn’t that easy. She would need a job and a place to stay; or the police would place her in prison. In this story there are important men a British judge and two Euro-African attorneys. William Melton played a major role in this story as a judge and magistrate, he was a…

    • 788 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    There was still prejudice and pride of the “whites” in South Africa. As mentioned earlier Gordimer wrote about her experiences and things she observed. Gordimer wrote this book with the probable expectation to get a different reaction than the reader first started. Some reactions the writer might want from the reader could be the realization of how bad or horrible things were post-Apartheid. Other reaction could be to break your heart as the parents had their heart broken.…

    • 1578 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Freedom is a sense or feeling when you decide or do something without restriction, it would not be being enslaved or imprisoned. We might think that freedom is innately and probably neglect the importance in our life. However, among the reading we read in this semester, they teach me that some people fight for the freedom and I should treasure the thing we have at this moment. I am most interested in “Narrative of The Life” written by Frederick Douglass and “From A Room of One’s Own” written by Virginia Woolf. Both influence me to have a deeper understanding of slaves in America and the women’s status in the past.…

    • 1461 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    To have a place in society is what ultimately determines a person’s direction and purpose in life. Unfortunately, not everyone in this world has the luxury of feeling like they have a place. Some are faced everyday with the internal battle of never feeling like they belong and the fear of the punishments that they will be subjected to if they overstep these unclear boundaries. Zoë Wicomb’s short story “You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town” powerfully demonstrates to readers the reality of life in a town where everyone is fighting to find their place. Her main character, Sally, is continually tormented by the battle of having to conform to societies standards in order to survive even if it means selling her soul.…

    • 1734 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Although, lately a generation of optimists have been pushing for the change South Africa has been waiting years for. The idea of feminism is ever more pressing in South Africa as opposed to the (comparatively) progressive United States, but older generations are still left in a climate of lethargic progress. While giving her readers context on the limiting social progress of South Africa, Adichie is also establishing…

    • 1580 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Apartheid was brutal system to live by and it was much like a caste system with the lightest skinned, white people, at the top of the system and the darkest skinned, black people, miserably suffering at the bottom. Anyone else was directly in between these two groups. The harsh realities of apartheid in South Africa are highlighted in the novel Kaffir Boy,…

    • 1134 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Race was everything in Mark Mathabane’s home land, is determined where families lived, whom you married, and what education you would receive. Apartheid changed everything. Whites grew up all around South Africa, sometimes in cities or in rural areas, but they always shared one thing in common. Each white man, woman, and child grew up in a comfortable home, some more luxurious than others. White South African children never woke up each morning with fear pumping through their veins.…

    • 1233 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    South African Apartheid

    • 1177 Words
    • 5 Pages

    QUESTION 2 “We believe that the world, too, can destroy apartheid, firstly by striking at the economy of South Africa”-Oliver Tambo . Apartheid can be defined as the racial-social ideology developed in South Africa during the 20th century, its name means “separation” in Afrikaans, the mother tongue of the colonisers. Apartheid was practically based on racial segregation, as well as race domination or superiority. It was about political and economic discrimination, which excluded black; coloured; Indian and white people. Who referred to themselves as Europeans and those who were not white were classified as either ‘non-Europeans’; Bantus or natives, these labels were the focus points on ruling out non-whites from using and enjoying the same…

    • 1177 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Stuart Hall in “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” says that Identity is not as clear or transparent as it appears to be, rather it is problematic (222). In postcolonial context identities can be seen as ever changing phenomenon and they are constantly shifting (10). According to him identities are not transparent and create problems for post-colonial subjects. Instead of thinking about identity as an accomplished fact, one must see identity as a product, which is never accomplished or which is never complete. In fact identity can be seen as a product, which is always in process (Hall, 222).…

    • 1711 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays