How do Muslims fit into South Africa’s well-known narrative of colonialism, apartheid and postapartheid?

South Africa is infamous for apartheid, but the country’s foundation was laid by 176 years of slavery from 1658 to 1834, which formed a crucible of war, genocide and systemic sexual violence that continues to haunt the country today. Enslaved people from East Africa, India and South East Asia, many of whom were Muslim, would eventually constitute the majority of the population of the Cape Colony, the first of the colonial territories that would eventually form South Africa.

Drawing on an extensive popular and official archive, Regarding Muslims analyses the role of Muslims from South Africa’s founding moments to the contemporary period and points to the resonance of these discussions beyond South Africa. It argues that the 350-year archive of images documenting the presence of Muslims in South Africa is central to understanding the formation of concepts of race, sexuality and belonging.

In contrast to the themes of extremism and alienation that dominate Western portrayals of Muslims, Regarding Muslims explores an extensive repertoire of picturesque Muslim figures in South African popular culture, which oscillates with more disquieting images that occasionally burst into prominence during moments of crisis. This pattern is illustrated through analyses of etymology, popular culture, visual art, jokes, bodily practices, oral narratives and literature. The book ends with the complex vision of Islam conveyed in the postapartheid period.

This special issue, edited by the co-directors of the African Feminist Initiative (AFI) at Pennsylvania State University, is a partnership between Meridians and the AFI. The issue builds on the AFI's work to promote the study of African feminist thought and activism within the U.S. academy and to create equitable partnerships between scholars and practitioners of African feminism. Through the multiplicity of feminisms theorized in this issue, contributors challenge patriarchal ideologies and structures on myriad fronts, both on the African continent and beyond. The issue includes poetry, memoirs, essays, interviews, reflections, and testimonials on African feminisms, addressing such topics as hip hop, ethnography, secessionist movements, "saving" Nigerian girls, and women's writing. Contributors. Gabeba Baderoon, Abena P. A. Busia, Ginetta E. B. Candelario, Msia Kibona Clark, Alicia C. Decker, Chipo Dendere, Abosede George, Tsitsi Jaji, Selina Makana, Patricia McFadden, Anne Moraa, Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoue, Neo Sinoxolo Musangi, Wambui Mwangi, Aziza Ouguir, Charmaine Pereira, Fatima Sadiqi, Toni Stuart, Makhosazana Xaba, Ntokozo Yingwana

What do African feminist traditions that exist outside the canon look and feel like? What complex cultural logics are at work outside the centres of power? How do spirituality and feminism influence each other? What are the histories and experiences of queer Africans? What imaginative forms can feminist activism take?

Surfacing: On Being Black and Feminist in South Africa is the first collection of essays dedicated to contemporary Black South African feminist perspectives. Leading feminist theorist, Desiree Lewis, and poet and feminist scholar, Gabeba Baderoon, have curated contributions by some of the finest writers and thought leaders. Radical polemic sits side by side with personal essays, and critical theory coexists with rich and stirring life histories. By including writings by Patricia McFadden, Panashe Chigumadzi, Sisonke Msimang, Zukiswa Wanner, Yewande Omotoso, Zoë Wicomb and Pumla Dineo Gqola alongside emerging thinkers, activists and creative practitioners, the collection demonstrates a dazzling range of feminist voices.

The writers in these pages use creative expression, photography and poetry in eclectic, interdisciplinary ways to unearth and interrogate representations of Blackness, sexuality, girlhood, history, divinity, and other themes. Surfacing is indispensable to anyone interested in feminism from Africa, which its contributors show in vivid and challenging conversation with the rest of the world. It will appeal to a diverse audience of students, activists, critical thinkers, academics and artists.

The History of Intimacy is the fourth collection by award-winning poet Gabeba Baderoon. These poems render various intimacies and private hurts with eloquence and tenderness: the lost innocence of a child, a loved one in an ambulance, young passion across a man-made divide, a mother visiting her son in jail, elegies to an admired musician, mentor and poet, and the reverberations of past injustices in District Six, the Cape Flats and Hangklip.

A Hundred Silences is the third collection of poetry by Gabeba Baderoon - recipient of the DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Poetry in 2005. In this new selection of poems, the poet explores how every room has its own silences, its own memories and secrets. She speaks of the quiet, gnawing loneliness of hotel rooms in 'Sleeping in hotels', of the ache of longing and how sometimes 'love is in the going away'. She also does not steer away from what is not said, from the silences between words, and how anger can spark 'the taste of blood never too far ...eyes watchful/heavy as bruises'. It is an eloquent, tender collection of poetry, affirming Baderoon as one of the most exciting new voices in South African writing.

The author's poetry collection attempts to probe the realm of the unsaid and the ripples that move between words, between people, between bodies. Sometimes the verses trace and explore details that have brought the poet to, in her own words, "arrested instants of loss or witness that break open the surface of the world".

Gabeba Baderoon's The History of Intimacy is a tender, tangled account of the heady days in South Africa following Nelson Mandela's release from prison. This award-winning poetry collection portrays the innovative forms of music, kinship, and even self in "the new, intricate country / we understood was impossible." Gazing at black-and-white photos from back home, a woman who has moved to the United States realizes, "Memory doesn't come to me straight." Conversations overheard in line at the DMV reveal the complex nature of identity. When asked to name the color of her skin, a girl confides, "It was the first time I admitted / I loved the skin of white boys." The poems are also light-hearted. In "Ghost Technologies," about romance in the early days of the internet, the speaker recalls "when we loved each other on dial-up." The collection begins and ends with poems on writing, paying tribute to poets such as Keorapetse Kgositsile and Archie Markham who taught her that "a border / is a place of yielding or refusing to yield / for after refusal might lie a new country." Born on the coastal shores of Port Elizabeth, Baderoon is one of South Africa's most acclaimed literary voices. In The History of Intimacy-originally published by Kwela Books-she crafts resonant poems about a writer's beginnings, love across boundaries, and "how not to be alone."