Please use the Book as the only Source!!!
Remember: This is a
critical response paper written for a course in History, largely on a primary
document.
Select one
of the following two paper prompts as you craft your paper:
This book is a meditation on race as much as it
is gender. How does the triangular
relationship between Lily, Sibussiswe, and Mabel get complicated by their
differing raced positions? Does
race limit Sibusisiwe Makhanya in the same ways it does Lily Moya? How is this narrative of education
complicated by differing racial groups’ proximity and access to education? How might race and gender be inseparable
at this moment in South African society?
Mabel Palmer certainly saw what she was doing as
an educator and academic in South Africa as providing liberation for young
girls and women at the middle point of the 20th-century. She was, nonetheless, at times
uncomprehending of the effects of her actions, and also condescending on a
variety of issues related to education, based on her presumptions as a
liberated, white European women.
What do the primary documents here related to Palmer tell us about
the position of European women in colonial society at this juncture, and
how does the experience of colonialism further complicate these women’s
positions? Is Palmer completely
“free” here? How are her own
limited perspective about herself and as well as how she views other
women/girls at times contradictory?
What do these contradictions tell us, ultimately?
