Trapped childhood: a study of Athol Fugard's 'Cousins' & Isaac Mogotsi's 'The Alexandra tales'

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Periodical article

Title:	Trapped childhood: a study of Athol Fugard's 'Cousins' & Isaac Mogotsi's 'The Alexandra tales'
Author:	Oyegoke, Lekan
Year:	1998
Periodical:	African Literature Today
Issue:	21
Pages:	102-110
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subject:	literature
About persons:	Isaac Mogotsi Athol Fugard (1932-)
Abstract:	The theme of childhood in predemocratic South Africa is the main link between Isaac Mogotsi's 'The Alexandra tales' (1994) and Athol Fugard's 'Cousins: a memoir' (1994), otherwise the events they recount and the characters presented derive from two separate, or rather, separated worlds in the different worlds which make up South Africa. Both these works seem comparable, although the one is fictional and the other autobiographical. The deployment of the terms 'fictional' and 'autobiographical' in respect of these works, however, is problematical. Mogotsi's narrative strategy in his fictional account is autobiographical. The work is in fact closer to history than to fiction, while much of what Fugard describes as facts is actually fiction. The present author looks at the attitude of the two writers towards the use of photos and how they handle experiences of loss: of sexual and of political innocence. Ref.