Like Family: Domestic workers in South African history and literature

An analytic and historical perspective of literary texts to understand the position of domestic workers in South Africa

More than a million black South African women are domestic workers. Precariously situated between urban and rural areas, rich and poor, white and black, these women are at once intimately connected and at a distant remove from the families they serve. Ena Jansen shows that domestic worker relations in South Africa were shaped by the institution of slavery, establishing soci...