Lizanne de Beer, 2014120162 Essays - Archaeplastida, Tshepo, Coconut

Lizanne de Beer, 2014120162 ENGL 3728 Dr Philip Aghoghovwia / Ms Manuela Lovisa 21 August 2017 COCONUT RESPONSE PAPER Coconut , written by Kopano Matlwa , sets up a double narrative of two black girls, Fikile and Ofilwe , growing up in post-apartheid South Africa, and narrativises each girl's struggle to define her own identity in a space where culture is conflated to signify class position. Matlwa's story depict how young black women negotiate the ways in which their home cultures mix with the increasingly globalized and media-saturated reality they see around them. Education is a component of this as well and schools are the setting for much of the girls' interactions with different cultures, while simultaneously being depicted as racially problematic institutions in the novel. Education is seen not only as a status marker in the novel, but as an escape from troubled home-lives. Coconut 's structure mirrors Stuart Hall's concept of differences in cultural identity as the unstable points of identification which are made, within the discourses of history and culture (Hall, 2011: 226). Hall's concept of identity illuminates the reading of Matlwa's text which is not simply a narrative of black and white or occurring in one fixed time and space. Rather, it stages the identities of these young girls in an intensely diverse South Africa and the complexities and hindrances they face in their search for themselves. Matlwa's investigation of the issues of black identity in post-Apartheid South Africa is focalised through the two accounts of Ofilwe and Fikile , which run parallel to each other and at times intersect. The novel's title derives from a derogatory term used to refer to a person who is black on the outside but white' on the inside. This white on the inside refers to many cultural markers of identity, particularly language. Lynda Spencer elaborates that "the term coconut' refers to one who speaks English most of the time, choosing it over an African language, or who is unable to speak an African language, and who is considered to act white." (67). Matlwa uses dual protagonists and narrators to examine the cultural identity of contemporary Black South African women. In order to showcase the identities of the protagonists, Matlwa details intricate cultural landscapes for the characters. The construction of the novel is peculiar since it is not chronological a nd has a break in the middle where a different story is told with a different narrator. What makes the term coconut' so particularly cutting is that its use is also drawn along racial lines but it loses some of its potency when used by someone white. The remark is most cutting coming from another black person because it represents an attack on the authenticity of blackness'. The generation who made it through the struggle is now suddenly drawing lines in the sand. Black identity in South Africa cannot escape the political and social past and yet comments like these seek to trivialize the sacrifices and strife of those who prospered so astoundingly after 1994 and moved from the rural townships to the suburbs. Intriguingly, the role of education is also complicated through its sometimes negative effects on the characters in the novel. Both the girls and their families have a complex relationship to education, Ofilwe's mother is judged and ridiculed by the family for not having completed high school while Ofilwes rebellious brother, Tshepo , an accomplished high school student, is urged by his father to study actuarial sciences rather than African literature. Tshepo himself realises that the status accorded to a prestigious education is illusory ( Matlwa , 2007: 80). Language is a divisive subject for the Tlou family. Education is more than a status marker for the Tlous ; it is not only about which schools are attended but, in the case of university education, what subjects should be studied. It is interesting that there is a very singular goal of education in the views of the adult characters. Education is seen as a necessary tool for advancement and procur ing a suitable career that will facilitate a spouse and children. Tshepo is the most politically conscious and self-aware character we come across in this novel: " Tshepo reckons that