Botswana Women Write

Botswana Women Write is the first anthology to cover a broad spectrum of writing by and about Batswana women. It provides a record of their lives both now and in the past, and of their thoughts about the joyful and difficult issues they face. At the same time, it reflects the richness and challenges of their particular social, political and cultural context. The fictional worlds created in the anthology echo those documented in the non-fiction selections, and they speak to the lived experiences of women in Botswana and around the world: family tensions, sexual conflict, domestic abuse, poverty and single motherhood are explored alongside descriptions of sexual pleasure, intellectual engagement, expressions of joy and assertions of a political presence.

The writers include women with international reputations (such as Bessie Head, Unity Dow, Lauri Kubuitsile and Tjawangwa Dema), women being published for the first time, and women who probably never expected to find their words reproduced in print. This book also covers a wide range of genres, from archival letters, court statements and speeches to journalism, drama, stories and poems. It reflects the oral traditions that are at the root of Tswana culture as well as experimental and more conventional forms of literary style.