Exploring the Challenges of Ethnic Fluidity within the Writings of Ronnie Govender

Abstract

This paper explores how the fiction writer and playwright, Ronnie Govender, narrates Asian diasporic identity in the context of South African society. I shall depart from the premise that this Indian presence is ambiguous inasmuch as its subjectivity must negotiate the ontological categories of both whiteness and blackness. With this triangulated relationship in mind, I shall proceed to evidence how Govender delivers a layered reading of ethnic fluidity and how this was historically curtailed by a white minority who, systematically, dynamited conviviality as a means to shore up its own privilege. The principal texts employed in this study shall be: The Lahnee’s Pleasure, At The Edge and Other Cato Manor Stories, and Black Chin White Chin: The Song of the Atman.