Love Child

by Gcina Mhlophe

Love Child is a collection for the new millennium generation. It is valuable not just for the deeply-felt personal and political insights it has to offer, but for the accessible ease with which it manages to capture the seminal moments of black South African history in the preserving amber of the author's personal recollection.

Paperback

Published April 30, 1996

About the author

Born in Hammarsdale, KwaZulu-Natal in 1960, Gcina Mhlope now lives in Johannesburg. Gcina Mhlope has been writing and performing on stage and screen for over 20 years. She has written many children's books as well as adult audience poetry, short stories and plays. She produced and performed on a CD for children with Ladysmith Black Mambazo. She has written music for the SABCTV series Gcina & Friends where she performed her own stories for television audiences.

In 2000 she released an award-winning storytelling CD called Fudukazi's Magic for German audiences. She has also written both story and music in collaboration with guitarist, Bheki Khoza, for the Animated Tales of the World TV series. In 2001 her CD and book of Nozincwadi Mother of Books was produced as part of her nationwide reading road show to South African rural schools. Her work has received awards from BBC Africa Service for Radio Drama, The Fringe First Award in the Edinburgh Festival, the Josef Jefferson Award in Chicago, and OBBIE in New York.

Gcina Mhlophe has received Honorary Doctorates from the London Open University as well as the University of Natal. This year sees the publication of her book and CD, African Mother Christmas by Maskew Miller Longman, as well as the re-publication of Love Child (now in English), and Have You Seen Zandile by University of Natal Press. Her work has contributed to preserving storytelling as a means of keeping history alive and has encouraged South African children to read.

Reviews

[Liv · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't quite what I expected it to be, not as useful as I would have liked. An interesting approach to such sad stories though. Also contained poetry which is not usually my thing.

[Ilze · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gcina Mhlophe came to Pietermaritzburg in 2008 to speak to a group of school children, to which a friend invited me. She's a charismatic speaker, able to hold the attention of young and old for some time, her genuine smile seldom leaving her face. What I find interesting about her writing is that she writes the way she speaks. There are no pretentions, no intricate literary tricks: What you see is what you get (which should inspire any novice writers out there - if she can do that, why can't I?!). The other interesting aspect of this writing (each chapter alternating between a short story and a poem) is that these are tales about her experience of apartheid and the way of life in the African culture. These are things one often hears of, but because people are too scared to write about it (the way Mhlophe does), one doesn't really see much of it in print - though I stand under correction!

[Carol]

cool