Souls Forgotten

Souls Forgotten

Author: Francis B. Nyamnjoh

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 9956558125

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One day, Mama Ngonsu told her son: "Normally, a child grew up and stayed around to help his parents. The world has changed, and things are no longer as they used to be. Things must not be normal all the time, otherwise life would not be life." When Emmanuel Kwanga gets a University scholarship, he travels from the lake and hills of Abehema to the Great City. Everyone in the village has invested in him their hopes for the good life. When the life they've imagined is cut short by the University guillotine, Emmanuel Kwanga must struggle to make sense of what the good life means - for himself and for Abehema - in a world where things are no longer as they used to be. This novel is about coming of age and coming to terms in Mimboland. It is also about the fragility of life and the strength of the human spirit. The filth and screaming splendor of the city and the perplexed tranquility of the village are juxtaposed, as the tension and conviviality between tradition and modernity are lived and explored. Roads and drivers, dreams and public transport link different geographies. Faltering along or speeding away, these spaces of risk, frustration and solidarity are filled with popular songs as vehicles for understanding events and relationships. With every crossing of the Pont de Maturit the story flows, and its mysteries surge. In this novel, the worlds of the living and the dead intermingle, as do the natural and the supernatural, the visible and the invisible.


Maids' and Madams' Moral Topographies

Maids' and Madams' Moral Topographies

Author: Johanna Vogel

Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 3643909969

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This qualitative study asks whether structural transformation brought about by modernization in contemporary urban India can induce growing equality in the sense of mutual respect between the lower and the middle classes. From the idographic context of female domestic workers and their employers in Chennai (Tamil Nadu) a general type of modernity for the periphery is outlined. Even though changes in this relation are apparent and various forms of respect and recognition are developing, the deep hierarchical differences persist despite - or precisely because of - modernity in the form of capitalism. Johanna Vogel (Dr.) studied Intercultural Business Studies at the University of Passau and received 2017 her PhD in Human Geography at the University of Bayreuth.


Like Family

Like Family

Author: Ena Jansen

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2019-04-01

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 1776143531

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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 social hierarchies and patterns of behavior that persist today. To support her argument, Jansen examines the representation of domestic workers in a diverse range of texts in English and Afrikaans. Authors include André Brink, JM Coetzee, Imraan Coovadia, Nadine Gordimer, Elsa Joubert, Antjie Krog, Sindiwe Magona, Kopano Matlwa, Es'kia Mphahlele, Sisonke Msimang, Zukiswa Wanner and Zoë Wicomb. Like Family is an updated version of the award-winning Soos familie (2015) and the highly-acclaimed 2016 Dutch translation, Bijna familie.


The Madams

The Madams

Author: Zukiswa Wanner

Publisher: Oshun Books

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1770070583

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Maid in India

Maid in India

Author: Tripti Lahiri

Publisher: Rupa Publications

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9789384067335

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We eat first, they later, often out of food portioned out for them; we live in the front, they in the back; we sit on chairs and they on the floor; we drink from glasses and ceramic plates and they from ones made of steel set aside for them; we call them by their names, and they address us by titles: sir/ma'am, sahib/memsahib... Every year, thousands of poor, illiterate, unskilled women flock to Delhi from villages across the country to work as domestic help. This is how Fullin from Athgama in rural Jharkhand, Lovely from a tiny settlement in Malda, Golbanu bibi from Doparia, Mae from Kokrajhar and a Santhali girl from Annabiri, in the heart of Maoist country-find themselves in the nation's most powerful city, working for its richest people. This is how tycoons and refugees, politicians and orphans-India's one per cent and her 99 per cent-rub shoulders every day, under the same roof. In the not so distant past, everyone's place- whether maid, ayah or cook, sahib or memsahib- was well understood. There were clear rules for negotiating (and maintaining) the vast chasm between the two sides. Today, it's a little different. There are housekeepers who are part of the middle class who ensure their children join white-collar India. There are teenage girls brought to the city by 'aunts' and 'uncles' to serve as '24-hour' help, who find themselves virtually, and sometimes literally, caged. There are employers who wrestle with the guilt of spending more on an Italian meal in a fancy hotel than on those who clean their homes- and other employers who insist 'these people' are all thieves. With in-depth reporting in the villages from where women make their way to upper-class homes in Delhi and Gurgaon, courtrooms where the worst allegations of abuse get an airing, and homes up and down the class ladder, Maid in India is an illuminating and sobering account of the complex and troubling relations between the help and those they serve.


Maid in SA

Maid in SA

Author: Zukiswa Wanner

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781431408962

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Maid in SA is a laugh-out-loud take on a woman's home, but is as serious as the security guards in gated communities. It is a quirky, lighter look at one of South Africa's most important, yet most overlooked, relationships: that between a domestic worker and her madam. In this book you 'll find the women in your life - your mothers, your sisters, your cousins, your friends and yourself.


Global Cinderellas

Global Cinderellas

Author: Pei-Chia Lan

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2006-04-03

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 9780822337423

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Migrant women are the primary source of paid domestic labor around the world. Since the 1980s, the newly prosperous countries of East Asia have recruited foreign household workers at a rapidly increasing rate. Many come from the Philippines and Indonesia. Pei-Chia Lan interviewed and spent time with dozens of Filipina and Indonesian domestics working in and around Taipei as well as many of their Taiwanese employers. On the basis of the vivid ethnographic detail she collected, Lan provides a nuanced look at how boundaries between worker and employer are maintained and negotiated in private households. She also sheds light on the fate of the workers, “global Cinderellas” who seek an escape from poverty at home only to find themselves treated as disposable labor abroad. Lan demonstrates how economic disparities, immigration policies, race, ethnicity, and gender intersect in the relationship between the migrant workers and their Taiwanese employers. The employers are eager to flex their recently acquired financial muscle; many are first-generation career women as well as first-generation employers. The domestics are recruited from abroad as contract and “guest” workers; restrictive immigration policies prohibit them from seeking permanent residence or transferring from one employer to another. They care for Taiwanese families’ children, often having left their own behind. Throughout Global Cinderellas, Lan pays particular attention to how the women she studied identify themselves in relation to “others”—whether they be of different classes, nationalities, ethnicities, or education levels. In so doing, she offers a framework for thinking about how migrant workers and their employers understand themselves in the midst of dynamic transnational labor flows.


Global Woman

Global Woman

Author: Barbara Ehrenreich

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780805075090

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Two social scientists chart the consequences of the global economy on women across the world, revealing the underground economy that has turned many poor women into virtual slaves.