ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how recently published novels for adolescents written by two "ex-South African" white women enact transition and explore liberatory and transgressive possibilities. Written post-apartheid and in the aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in each case their novel enacts a negotiation with the past under apartheid. In fact, in each case the text performs multiple functions, rather than simply an expression or representation of adolescent experience; it is also a hi-jacking of the coming-of-age narrative in order to perform a postcolonial function. This intensity is represented in the young adults' it considers: as the adolescent characters make the transition from child to adult, it is precisely the black caregiver who becomes key to this move to "knowing" adulthood. The chapter uses key ingredients of adolescent fiction in order to inform their young readers of events and issues in late 1970s South Africa. Each novel is thorough in its attempt to create accurate and historically sound narratives.
