Students of Humanities

Njabuko S. Ndebele's 'The Cry of Winnie Mandela', discussed here by Meri Kajaia and Nina Hamann, is fictional narrative centred around the stories of several women, including Winnie Mandela. The novel is a meditation on what it is to be a woman in the struggle – on waiting, longing, catharsis, and redemption. 

In this episode, Joël Kous and Jeroen Kreis review Maaza Mengiste's 'The Shadow King'. The novel is situated in the Second Italian-Ethiopian War, 1935-37 and highlights the role of women in this war. 

Jung Chang’s 'Wild Swans' is a family history of three generation of women spread over a hundred years. The book, discussed here by Lin Monen and Hosoo Kim, examines the lives and struggles of Chinese women under different regimes. 

In this podcast, Julia de Wit and Mauricio Mandujano Manriquez discuss Chimamanda Adhichie's 2013 novel 'Americannah'. Americannah is a Nigerian slang for Nigerians who live in America and through her characters Adhichie explores the questions of migration, race and belonging.  

Rüya Erdoğan and Mirjam Wolting discuss Bernardine Evaristo's 'Blonde Roots'. Evaristo’s 2008 novel reverses the roles in the narrative of slavery, placing Africans as masters and Europeans as slaves through a fictional story of Doris, a white girl from England who is abducted and shipped to the fictional United Kingdom of Great Ambossa.