Sometimes you go into a bookshop and you see a shelf set aside just for women writers.” Sindiwe Magona is speaking at the launch of a book of essays on her work, collected by Siphokazi Koyana. The crowd of about 40 people is a mixture of academia, government and family; and a young Japanese man who has read Magona’s work in translation, a representative from O magazine, and Antjie Krog (who I deliberately try not to meet in an erroneous tactic developed in my rock groupie days. Antjie, of course, doesn’t notice my fey beauty and try to pursue me). As for the speech, I’ve become extra attentive — the new venture we’ve started at Struik is a women’s imprint.
“The reason we have a separate shelf,” Magona continues, “is not because we’re special, but because we’re an underclass.” She goes on to say that in New York she sees Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou in the shop windows, and when she comes to South Africa? Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou. (Magona, predictably, is more popular overseas than in her own country.) The question she is raising is: Are South African publishers doing enough to encourage and support local women writers? Her answer: no.
Struik has risen to that challenge with Oshun Books, an imprint that publishes books — fiction, memoirs, biographies, life guides and gift books — by and for women. Part of the motivation behind conceptualising a women’s imprint was that Struik was receiving excellent manuscripts by women that didn’t fit in with its publishing programme. Another, large, part of Struik’s motivation is that women buy more books. Oshun Books has a two-pronged manifesto: it is a platform for South African women writers and it will fill information and entertainment gaps for South African women readers.
Oshun Books publishes extraordinary stories by women. These won’t necessarily be read only by women — i by Anné Mariè du Preez Bezdrob, one of our launch titles, tells the gripping, moving story of how the author, a United Nations peacekeeper, survived two years in the besieged city of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war. This is a book that will appeal to men and women; many of our books will. However, by focusing too on what local women readers, specifically, might want to read, Oshun Books can tailor titles for its primary market. Coming up in the new year we have a book on surviving your first year of motherhood and a resource book for women golfers, among other targeted titles.
Do we know what women read? On my shelves at home, Sarah Waters snuggles with Isaac Asimov, Bessie Head and Marian Keyes, Toni Morrison sits next to Alexander McCall Smith who bumps covers with Peter Carey who rubs shoulders with Kathy Reichs who shares space with Diane Auwerbuck who squeezes in beside Umberto Eco who jostles with Jane Austen … Other than being rather revealing of my bookshelf cataloguing system (I don’t have one), it is telling of what women read. Women read what they want to read. Oshun Books will give them more of what they want.
www.struiknews.co.za/oshunbooks/