Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

When Zoë Wicomb was awarded the Windham Campbell Prize for fiction at Yale University in 2013 her citation was as follows; “Zoë Wicomb’s subtle, lively language and beautifully crafted narratives explore the complex entanglements of home, and the continuing challenges of being in the world.” From her first collection of short stories, “You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town,” to her most recent novel, “October,” Wicomb constantly deals with what it means to live in a world that is changing. Her characters move between different spaces and through this process negotiate what home and belonging means. The themes that are explored in her work center around characters who have been dispossessed of home because of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. In this way her fiction is concerned with the impact that South African history has on the present and how it continues to home, and unhome, people who move between different parts of the world. In her most recent novel, “October,” Wicomb’s protagonist finds herself disorientated when she is left by her partner of twenty-four years in Scotland and in her return to her homeland, South Africa, finds that she cannot call the place home as she had hoped it would be. She consequently longs to live in a place where she does not know anyone and does not have a history but quickly finds, contrary to her expectations, that this is an impossible desire to attain. What this paper therefore hopes to explore are the ways in which Wicomb’s work makes us think differently about home and belonging. It is clear in Wicomb’s work that characters can no longer assume that their places of birth are their homes and with this realization have to confront, and implement strategies, that will make them survive the unpredictability of having a sense of belonging in the twenty-first century.