ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Magona’s early texts which expose the “domestic side” of apartheid by detailing the lives of women under the extreme restrictions of a system built upon racial inequality and patriarchal control. Looking at the story collections first, it focuses on the stories’ situational ironies which capture the contradictions of apartheid as they are in the process of calcifying into paradoxes. The analysis covers all the stories contained in Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night and Push-Push! and Other Stories, since some have not received much critical attention to date. The examination of her autobiographies, To My Children’s Children and Forced to Grow (which features Magona’s need to narrate her victimization while also claiming agency in the face of oppression), includes a review of previous responses to these works, in particular the criticism that they were disingenuous in their use of the trope of motherhood and that they were so focused on race and gender that they glossed over class differences. This analysis rebuts these comments by insisting that Magona embraces both sides of the victim/agent paradox and uses that tension to create a template for all South Africans to use to manifest progress in their own lives.
