Collaboratively writing a self: textual strategies in Margaret McCord's 'The calling of Katie Makanya: a memoir of South Africa'

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Periodical article

Title:	Collaboratively writing a self: textual strategies in Margaret McCord's 'The calling of Katie Makanya: a memoir of South Africa'
Author:	Siméus, Jenny
Year:	2015
Periodical:	Research in African Literatures (ISSN 0034-5210)
Volume:	46
Issue:	2
Pages:	70-84
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	novels biography
About persons:	Katie Makanya (1873-1954) Margaret McCord
External link:	https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.46.2.70
Abstract:	This paper analyzes 'The calling of Katie Makanya' (1995) by Margaret McCord as a collaborative autobiography. Katie's motive for wanting her story to be told is not a desire to find her own voice and identity through narration, but seemingly rather to add to and complete the picture presented in the narrative 'My patients were Zulus' (1946), written by Katie's employer and Margaret McCord's father, Dr. James B. McCord. Moreover, Margaret McCord is portrayed in 'The calling of Katie Makanya' as finding it problematic as a white woman to write a black woman's story. Using the theories of Judith Butler, it is shown that the context of the narrative's emergence creates a complex framing of 'The calling of Katie Makanya'. This paper aims to highlight and examine instances where the effects of this complex framing rise to the surface of the text and create tensions in the narrative. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]