"We spend our years as a tale that is told" : oral historical narrative in a South African chiefdom /

For scholars interested in the effects of forced geographical and cultural invasion--including literacy--on an indigenous people's way of life, and how this is evidenced in their oral narratives about themselves and their history, this elusive research project is a valuable comparative resource. It is somewhat flawed by the author's imposing an unconvincing, diversionary feminist reading on the traditional society of the Ndebele. Also, since Hofmeyr's primary goal is to understand oral historical narrative as a literary form (as affected by event, teller, form and style, and the contexts of time and change), the narratives themselves, and a definitive description of this virtually extinct oral narrative form, should have been foregrounded in her analysis rather than buried and appended. Despite translation difficulties, there are moments of insight, clarity, and beauty when the tale-tellers can speak. In her struggle to understand the Ndebele's way of thinking, reflecting, remembering, and expressing themselves in the face of generations of devastating social and political upheaval, Hofmeyr is bedeviled by her background and training, her overwhelming concerns with clearing "conceptual space" and devising an "appropriate methodology and form of analysis." Photographs. Graduate, faculty. C. Packard; University of Massachusetts at Amherst