Nadine Gordimer is so legendary, when you Google her name today, you’ll find her Google Doodle as a tribute. She was not only a multiple award-winning South African writer and poet, but also a political activist and feminist icon that stood for equality and democracy. As a tribute to her on her birthday, we countdown some of things that make her one of the greats.
- Nadine Gordimer was a bonafide child genius having started writing at the age if nine. Her first published work, children’s short story The Quest For Seen Gold, appeared in the Children’s Sunday Express in 1937. Come Again Tomorrow was published in the liberal Johannesburg magazine, Forum at the age of 15. She already showed signs of being extraordinary from an early age.
- Growing up in Springs on the East Rand features heavily in Gordimer’s work and although she delved deeper into her experiences much later in her literature, her insight into the spectral differences between black and white are astounding.
- Nadine Gordimer was never afraid to confront the uncomfortable subjects in her novels. She addressed her own white privilege at a time when that term wasn’t trendy. She also dealt with conflicting relationships and apartheid in South Africa like no other female writer and for that, we salute her chutzpah.
- Although many of her works were banned by the apartheid government, they were widely read elsewhere around the world increasing her notoriety in South Africa and fame overseas.
- Even though the ANC was listed as an illegal organization by the South African government, she still joined in the fight to address inequality and institutionalized racism rather than merely criticizing it from afar.
- She said that her proudest day of her life was testifying at the 1986 Delmas Treason Trial on behalf of 22 South African anti-apartheid activists.
- She has at least 15 honorary degrees.
- HIV/Aids became a focus for Gordimer later in life and she even organised 20 major writers to contribute short fiction for Telling Tales, a fundraising book for South Africa’s Treatment Action Campaign, which lobbies for government funding for HIV/Aids prevention and care.
- Alfred Nobel called her “A Great Benefit to Humanity” and she not only won the famous Nobel Prize for Literature, but also won the Booker Prize, W. H Smith Commonwealth Literary Award, International Botev Prize and many more.
- She loved cats and cats loved her.
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