Reflections on Voice: Women, Poetry, and Power—Xhosa and Zulu Considerations

Colonialism and a male-dominated print culture in the early twentieth century have occluded a vibrant tradition of Xhosa and Zulu women’s poetry and song. Hidden behind a focus on male practitioners of praise poetry are women’s everyday genres, like songs of marriage and initiation that are archivally present in oral recordings, interviews, and fieldwork notes. These domestic performances have a profound social weight and are a vital political act of remembering and source of cultural power. The lens of curation reveals how voices brushed aside later re-emerged, inspiring contemporary women poets who harness inherited performance practices to transcend the printed page.