Sister outsiders draws attention to a neglected corpus of writing in South African literary criticism. The focus is on the exclusion of Indian women's writings in South Africa, which must be seen as a dimension of the larger exclusion of women's writings, white and black, from South African literature in general. The book provides an historical account of the events that contributed to the marginalisation of black literature - specifically Indian women's literature - amongst other things, the institutionalisation of English Studies which affected the reading and reception of texts written by Indian women, and the contstruction of an indigenous English literary tradition that did not include black writers as much as it did white writers of English descent, writing about South African experiences.

Contributions by: Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Alfred H. Marks, Harue Summersgill, Amy Reigle Newland, Monika Hinkel