Spilling everything that threatens: a collection of poems that explores the role of the black matriarch in the nuclear family in South Africa

Abstract

In my mini-thesis for my Masters in Creative Writing, I intend to explore the role of the black matriarch in the nuclear family in contemporary South Africa. Matriarchy, defined by Karen McGee “as the social system in which the mother is the head of the family or a family, community or society governed by women,” has existed for centuries and has evolved in a unique historical form in South Africa (1). In my creative project I will examine the struggles and burdens that black women carry in silence in order to uphold the respectability and dignity of the patriarch, and the ways in which this “increase[s] alienation” and abuse, according to bell hooks (130). My project will represent the voices of three generations of women: mother, daughter and granddaughter. My intention is to give these women voice in a household and in a society that has taught black women that their role is in silent household duties and motherhood. Furthermore, this approach will allow for a deeper and more intimate examination of their lives, unpacking their traumas of loss and death, while also revealing moments of love and happiness. The creative collection will be accompanied by a reflective essay that examines the role of the matriarchy, investigating how it has evolved, how it is presented in contemporary South African society, as well as the many myths surrounding matriarchy. It will further speak to the gaps that exist in existing scholarship on matriarchy, and how my collection of poems might attempt to address these gaps and thus, as Eloghosa Osunde argued at the Open Book Festival in 2024, to “bring the future closer.”