Yvette Christianse and Rachel Holmes, “Writing and the Colonial Archive”
Date:    February 15
Time:    4:00 pm
Place:   Room 7191, Helen C. White Hall
Co-sponsored by the MidMod Colloquium
Organizer: Rob Nixon

Two writers, each of whom has a new book about a 19th century South African woman, will discuss the challenges of research and writing that draws on scant historical materials. Rachel Holmes is a biographer and author of African Queen. The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus (Random House). Yvette Christianse’s historical novel, Unconfessed (Other Press), is based on the court case of a nineteenth century South African slave accused of killing her son. The authors will discuss such issues as: how to deal with silences and tendentiousness in the colonial records; historical testimony and imaginative license; the advantages and possible disadvantages of biography and historical fiction; and their techniques for converting archival materials into dramatic stories that can reach mainstream audiences.

In a starred review, Library Journal calls Unconfessed “impossible to put down: this work deserves a place beside such classics as Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Edward P. Jones’s The Known World.”

The New Yorker has praised African Queen as “this intelligent biography in which Holmes uncovers the remarkable and tragic life of Saartjie Baartman, a South African indentured servant who was smuggled by her master to England in 1810 and promptly became the most popular “human curiosity” in Piccadilly—the Hottentot Venus.”