'A clearing in the bush': Teaching South African women's writing

This essay takes its title from a short story by Zoe Wicomb (1987), so as to begin to locate and find a way of expressing the experiences of reading, discussing and teaching a selection of South African women's writing to student groups in the UK. This paper looks specifically at teaching South African women's writing on a 'Black and Asian women's writing' module, with some reference to other classes in which South African women's writing has been part of this study. In doing so, post-colonial and feminist critical practices are usefully integrated with the learning theories of phenomenography and experiential learning in order to better explore the developing learning experience. From where we are located, it has been important to find our own voices with which to articulate our responses to these texts. Our own locus of experience, our 'clearing in the bush' is something we have grown gradually to recognize and identify. It is hoped that we have been learning to appreciate the writings available to us without translating them into the discourse of the colonial, nor filling them up with our own particular meanings and the interpretations of a white feminist criticism. The post-colonial imaginary, and the discourses available to us have meshed with our own experiences as students and teacher, learners and readers in the process.