In her new biography of South African writer Lauretta Ngcobo, Barbara Boswell shows how the publishing industry historically excluded Black women, and how they wrote in spite of that.

This article examines creative agency in the lives of four black South African women writers during South African apartheid: Miriam Tlali, Lauretta Ngcobo, Gladys Thomas, and Sindiwe Magona. Drawing theoretically on Mamphela Ramphele’s conceptualizations of space, it analyzes life review interviews with these writers, who were among the first black women to publish novels and poetry in apartheid South Africa, about the ways in which they came to understand themselves as writers and creative subjects within a political system that severely curtailed their political and creative expression. It considers agency a key tool for understanding how these authors transcended their received identities as laborers and reproducers of labor for the apartheid nation, to become authors of their own lives and works. In elucidating how writing increased personal agency for these writers, the article posits the concept of creative re-visioning – a subject’s ability to re-envision what is possible for her to achieve beyond received expectations for her life. It theorizes such creative re-visioning as a strategy of resistance during apartheid and an additional dimension to feminist conceptualizations of human agency.

Lauretta Ngcobo was a formidable writer and activist who gave voice to the often-overlooked struggles of women in exile and under apartheid. Through her powerful storytelling and political service, she preserved a legacy of resilience, justice, and remembrance for generations to come.