Colonial Travel Narrative to Present Transculturation and Hybridity in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People

Abstract

Several South African intellectuals used their writings as powerful weapons against the racial segregationist movement Apartheid that they judged unfair and inhumane. Nadine Gordimer’s devotement to this scholarly struggle is basic in most of her novels, critical essays and short stories. Despite historical context displayed in her works, this world-renowned writer has kept her strong artistic individuality shown throughout her literary style. This paper explores the way in which the relation between history and literature appears reflected in her work July’s People (1981). In this work, Nadine Gordimer records the experiences of Black South African migrants and the falsehood of the liberal bourgeois whites by refiguring colonial travel narrative genre through the plot of Black revolt and White flight to the homelands to offer a nuanced view of cultural exchanges occurring between Black and White South Africans resulting in transculturation and hybridity between the two different sociocultural communities.