Literary Fire

You might know Chidera Eggerue as The Slumflower, the British-Nigerian blogger who fuses fashion and politics on her award-winning blog. Maybe you know her as the woman who inadvertently started a social movement around body positivity when…

Representation is the buzzword for Hollywood in 2018. Films like Black Panther, Love, Simon and To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before have been hailed as celebrations for People Of Colour (POC) representation. The latest film to add to the list…

“Growing up as a born free I was told there were a lot of things I could access - education, shelter, even food, sometimes. But I found them hard to attain,” writes Clinton Chauke in his debut book Born In Chains: The Diary Of An Angry…

There’s a lot of things Clinton Chauke would describe himself as: social critic, fierce debater, Pan-Africanist. But despite being born in 1994, one label he flatly rejects is that of ‘born free’. Chauke is also the author of Born In…

The current political climate is such that anti-immigration and Islamophobic right-wing policies are fast gaining traction. From this climate emerges Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, a gripping book that tells of a British family entwined with…

Love, death, magic, reality, immigration and the diaspora, Lesley Nneka Arimah’s book What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky has it all. Released in 2017, the book is a compilation of short stories, seemingly unconnected but all…

July 18, 2018 marks the centenary of Nelson Mandela. The first democratically elected president of the Republic of South Africa would have turned 100 years on that day. To honour Mandela’s life, Kate Sidley has compiled a collection titled…

A funeral is an important symbolic ritual. It brings together friends and family in a celebration of life, a grief of loss and an expression of beliefs, thoughts and feelings about losing a loved one. Nozizwe Cynthia Jele’s latest book The…

The importance of reading cannot be overstated. Words and stories are woven into the fabric of the progress of a society. In South Africa, however, a reading crisis is unfolding. Before it worsens further, we need to ask how we as a society…

Join The Daily Vox journalists SHAAZIA EBRAHIM and FATIMA MOOSA every week as they chat all things fun and serious around fan culture, fandoms and what it means to be a stan. They’ll be destroying tropes around the supposedly traditional…

Instapoets have become iconic. Racking up hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram, these poets are doing the impossible: making poetry accessible. They fill both books and social media with short-form, relatable, and even trending…

On June 25, the movie trailer for The Hate U Give or T.H.U.G book by Angie Thomas dropped at the BET Awards. The movie adaptation will be coming on October 19 in the US. The date when it will be revealed in South Africa is not yet…

“The writing happened much later in life but the reading has always been part of who I am,” South African writer Nozizwe Cynthia Jele said in an interview with The Daily Vox.  “I’ve always been a reader, I’ve always loved reading. I guess…

“My books are always an observation of where I am at that particular point in my life, what I’m experiencing personally or just my observations,” novelist Nozizwe Cynthia Jele said in an interview with The Daily Vox. Jele’s latest offering,…

In June this year, Thando Fuze, a 31-year-old performing poet from Durban will launch her show called ‘The One Woman Show’, and will also launch her book titled ‘Conversations With The Human’. Fuze, who has worked alongside various poets…

On 25 May, we commemorate Africa Day: a celebration of Africa’s independence, freedom, and liberation struggle from colonial imperialists. It also marks the first union of African countries on African soil: the Organisation of the African…

Nomvuyo Ngcelwane’s book Sala Kahle District Six was first published in 1998. For the 20th anniversary of the book, publishing house Kwela Books have produced a second edition, a very interesting read which tells the story of black people’s…

The title of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko’s compilation of writings called I Write What I Like has become a slogan of sorts. It is influential in conversations about racism, post-colonialism, and black nationalism. But more than…

South Africa, is a country that is inhibited by ghosts trying to find their homes and it is a country that knows no justice. History continues to socialise us to the space that it’s okay for Black women to keep dying and mama Nomzamo knows…

“I do want little black girls to see it and see themselves and see names that they recognise and hairstyles and places that they recognise,” poet and writer Lebohang Masango aka Nova said about her children’s book Mpumi’s Magic Beads.…