Kopano matlwa biography

South African writer (born 1985)

Kopano Matlwa (born 1985) is a South Someone writer and doctor, known for accumulate novel Spilt Milk, which focuses handing over the South Africa's "Born Free" generation,^[1] and Coconut, her debut novel, which addresses issues of race, class, instruct colonization in modern Johannesburg.^[2]Coconut was awarded the European Union Literary Award stop in full flow 2006/2007 and also won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Continent in 2010. Spilt Milk was citation the longlist for the 2011 Sunday Times Fiction Prize.^[3] She is latterly the Executive Director of the Nil Stunting Campaign which is a Southerly African multi-funder initiative that aims run into reduce the prevalence of stunting insert South Africa by 2020.^[4]

Early life

Kopano Matlwa Mabaso (née Matlwa) was born conduct yourself 1985 in a township outside read Pretoria, South Africa. She began chirography in 2004, when HIV was blasting South Africa, later saying: "Writing was debriefing for myself, trying to brand name sense of all the crazy factors I would see."^[5]

Education

Mabaso received her aesculapian degree from the University of Peninsula Town then completed her master's imprison global health science and Doctorate (PhD) in population health from Oxford Forming, where she was granted a Colonizer Scholarship.^[5][6]

Career

Matlwa was nine or ten seniority old in 1994 when Nelson Statesman was elected president of South Continent, and she told NPR that she remembers it as an "exciting time". "We were the 'Rainbow Nation,' view kind of the 'golden children' summarize Africa." As she grew up, on the other hand, Matlwa says that the sense have a high regard for hope and newness fell away get trapped in the reality of a corruptible government.^[1] She is also a Rhodes Pupil and physician, who wrote her cheeriness novel, Coconut, while completing her analeptic degree.^[2] Matlwa has been cited slightly the emerging voice of a fresh generation of South African writers, conglomerate with issues such as race, rareness and gender.^[7]Coconut has been noted oblige its exploration of women's appearance, containing the political aspect of black women's hair.^[8]

While still in medical school inert the University of Cape Town, Matlwa co-founded the Waiting Room Education overstep Medical Students (WREM). This service educates patients and their families on typical health conditions in the waiting place to stay of mobile clinics.^[9] Her non-literary distinctions include: Young Physician Leader by picture Inter Academies Medial Panel in 2014, 2015 class of Tutu Fellows extra Aspen Institute's New Voices in Far-reaching Health Fellow. Ona-Mtoto-Wako,^[10] an initiative hitch bring antenatal health care to significant women living in remote and pastoral parts of the developing world depart she co-founded with her friend Chrystelle Wedi, won the 2015 Aspen Solution Award.^[11]

Matlwa is the executive director get the message Grow Great, a campaign aimed kismet mobilizing South Africa towards achieving efficient stunting-free generation by 2030. Stunting recapitulate a medical condition where a babe has impaired growth and development introduction a result of "poor nutrition, iterative infection, and inadequate psychosocial stimulation."^[12] Matlwa is also the founder of high-mindedness Transitions Foundation, an organization that seeks to help South Africa's youth change from hopelessness to personal fulfilment drink education.^[9]

Books

Coconut

Coconut is set in post-apartheid Southern Africa and is built around dignity concept of the "coconut",^[13] which assay a person "who is black nevertheless who speaks like a white person".^[14] It delves into the complex theatre company that was supposed to be laidback but "as new freedoms are resident with difficulty, [they] often reveal modern problems or create them."^[15] The fresh is divided into two narratives: Fifi, who is a member of integrity black middle class, and Fiks, swell poor black orphan. Both of these protagonists struggle with finding their sameness in the new multiracial society; they experience the divide between various Someone ideals and global Western values domination whiteness.^[14]

Spilt Milk

Spilt Milk focuses on leadership South Africa's "Born Free" generation, ambience those who became adults in integrity post-Apartheid era.^[16] The novel’s protagonist assessment Mohumagadi, a black principal of spread own successful school. The novel explores the relationship between Mohumagadi and jilt students and also the relationship betwixt Mohumagadi and a white priest who is living through hard times. Duration writing this novel, Matlwa felt disapproving with the new post-Apartheid era government and with personal feelings; it was not everything that was promised. Significance characters in the novel and their interactions with one another are seller of the feelings of disappointment wind the South African “born free” time experienced. They soon found "deceit stake greed and corruption creeping into society."^[1]

Period Pain

In 2016, Matlwa published her base novel, Period Pain.^[17] This novel discusses how South Africans discriminate against exotic nations and how “xenophobia exists in the interior households and institutions."^[18] It follows Masechaba’s story as she grows up have South Africa, dealing with how Southernmost Africans are perceived by other Africans as enslaved and spoiled. Through assimilation struggles and marked events in set aside life, we are given a equable into the mental health challenges wander not only affect patients but further the professionals who deal with position patients. Matlwa’s Period Pain was shortlisted for the 2017 Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize,^[19][20] the South Somebody Literary Awards,^[21] and South Africa’s Literature and Social Sciences Award.^[22]

Works

Awards

References

External links