Example #2

What does racial identity and/or thinking of oneself as African "mean" in the minds and daily lives of the people depicted in Nadine Gordimer's My Son's Story or in Doris Lessing's A Perfect Marriage? What do the people in these novels, white and black, struggle against? What are their motives or reasons? What arguments do Europeans make on behalf of colonial or apartheid arrangements? In examining the situation of Rhodesia (as it was then called) and/or South Africa, what do you find distinct about these countries' experience from that of other countries in Africa? What do you find in common to those of other African countries in the 1950s and early 1960s? If you so choose, refer in your discussion to the political thought of some of the better known African leaders of that time, such as Nelson Mandela or Kwame Nkrumah and perhaps consider as well how well their ideas have faired the passage of time.