Like Family: Domestic workers in South African history and literature by Ena Jansen

ISBN: 9781776143511

Wits University Press, 1 April 2019

Paperback, 382 pages

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.