The subject of motherhood is interwoven with themes of survival, power and identity. It is also at the heart of any consideration of women’s writing.

Conversations of Motherhood sensitively charts common themes, intersecting experiences and related tropes within the cultural specificities of South African society. Exploring this space, in turn, provides a lens for cross-cultural reading that draws on various local ways of knowing and the workings of agency.

`Dialogics’, the critical approach developed here, lies at the intersection of transnational feminist criticism, a postcolonial critique of modernity and a close exploration of Mikhail Bakhtin’s work. This method offers striking rewards when comparatively pairing Zoë Wicomb with Pamphilia Hlapa, Sindiwe Magona with Marlene van Niekerk, Ellen Kuzwayo with Antjie Krog and Elsa Joubert with Wilma Stockenström.