Push-Push

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Push-Push!: And Other Stories

Sindiwe Magona

Format: Paperback, 168pp.
ISBN: 0807009679
Publisher: Beacon Press
Pub. Date: June 2001

A powerful collection of stories by the acclaimed author of Mother to Mother This collection of Sindiwe Magona's short fiction, following the publication to wide acclaim of her novel Mother to Mother, ranges in location from rural Transkei, her homeland, and the black township of Guguletu, where she struggled to raise her children, to New York, where she immigrated. With vivid and perceptive prose, Magona creates memorable characters, both hilarious and tragic, who bring to life the rich and varied backgrounds and cultures of South Africa.

Sindiwe Magona was born in the Transkei (a former South African homeland) in 1943 and grew up in Cape Town's black townships.

She attended the University of London and earned her B.A. in psychology and history from the University of South Africa in Pretoria. She also holds a Master of Science in Organizational Social Work from Columbia University. Magona's works include two autobiographies, To My Children's Children and Forced to Grow, the short story collection, Living, Loving, and Lying Awake at Night, and the novel Mother to Mother.

Magona's autobiographies recount her impoverished childhood in South Africa, her own and her family's struggle to gain an education and employment, the abandonment by her husband of her and her three children, and her involvement in efforts to achieve racial harmony in South Africa.

Magona lives in New York and works at the United Nations.

"Sindiwe Magona's [writing] is like holding a handful of bright African beads; each tale and her telling of it is part of the treasure; you are affected and altered." —Argus

"Sindiwe Magona claims for herself a special place. . . . The keen intelligence, the verve, the compassion, and the stylistic self-assurance that [have] marked her writing, and [a] crisp sense of character, [lend] a hard gleam to the stories in Push-Push!" —Andre Brink

Related Links

Sindiwe Magona Page
http://www.sbc.edu/seminars/magona.html

Beacon Press' Bluestreak
http://www.beacon.org/bluestreak/
Introducing Bluestreak, Beacon's new paperback series of innovative literary writing featuring works by women of all colors.