Reading with empathy: Sindiwe Magona's Mother to Mother

Through a reading of Sindiwe Magona's Mother to Mother (1998), this article assesses claims for the empathetic potential of reading fiction, as a means of promoting cross-racial understanding. Drawing on feminist theorists Ann Cvetkovich, Clare Hemmings, and Sara Ahmed, I uncover the modes of political critique that can reside in resisting affective identification, and position Magona's rejection of empathetic cross-racial connection as a critique of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). I focus particularly on Magona's representation of black motherhood, and argue that Mother to Mother seeks to inscribe the systematic violation of the maternal relation under apartheid - a form of violence that was not registered by the TRC - and also to position the black mother's affective experience outside of the empathetic reach of the white mother, precisely because it is embedded in a long history of social, political, and material dispossession.