October 26, 2006
Lecture, photo exhibit tell tales out of Africa
When Sindiwe Magona was a little girl in South Africa during the ’40s and ’50s, she anxiously looked forward to the days when white folks’ threw out books because they eventually came to her, and she was delighted.
Magona grew up desperately poor, eventually becoming the single mother of three children she supported in a hand-to-mouth existence. Along the way, however, she earned a high school diploma and both undergraduate and graduate degrees, much of the studying done by candlelight.
Magona has written about herself and the Xhosa people, the South African group to which she belongs. She and Italian photographer Silvia Amodio will present Local Choices, Global Consequences, a combination lecture and photo exhibit at UW in early November.
The event begins with the photo exhibit, which opens at noon Nov. 6 in 101 Suzzallo. The exhibit grew out of Amodio’s visit to Langa Township, Cape Town shortly after a fire in an informal settlement of shacks left more than 12,000 people homeless. Amodio photographed many of the people in a tent city that sprang up after the fire.
Magona will lecture at 7 p.m. Nov. 7 in 210 Kane. She’ll read from her most recent book, Mother to Mother, a fictionalized account of the murder of American Fulbright scholar Amy Elizabeth Biehl as considered by the mother of one of the killers.
For more information, contact David Giles at 206-949-0322 or at other@u.washington.edu.
