A University of Cape Town (UCT) author and academic Melissa Steyn has scooped an international book award for her work that examines the conflicts expressed by ordinary white South Africans in casting off the old and reaching for the new.
Steyn, the Director of the Institute for Intercultural and Diversity Studies at the university, won the Outstanding Book Award for ”Whiteness Just Isn’t What it Used to Be: White Identity in a Changing South Africa”.
Steyn will receive the award by the International and Intercultural Communication Division of the National Communication Association in the United States when she presents two papers at the NCA Convention in New Orleans next month. The book is published by State University of New York Press.
Internationally renowned academic Henry Giroux, in whose series Steyn’s book was published, commented that the book exemplified both what good scholarship should be and what it meant to be a public intellectual.
Steyn said she was excited about the award. ”This is truly my proudly South African moment.” She said the writing process mapped a painful personal journey.
”I continue to struggle through the multiple fences of white identity that my heritage constructed to define me,” Steyn said.
”But bits of flesh remain caught in the barbs. A white skin is not skin that can be shed without losing some blood.” One of the papers Steyn will present at the New Orleans conference is a continuation of the work she’s been doing on white privilege.
The other is ”Unlikely leaders: White, Afrikaans women in the Anti-Apartheid Struggle”. – Sapa