Es’kia Mphahlele

Es’kia Mphahlele, born in 1919, South African writer, best known for his autobiography Down Second Avenue (1959), which portrays his early life as a black South African. The characters in Mphahlele's fictional works are drawn with vivid realism and are portrayed not as victims but as survivors who overcome the harshness of their lives.

Born Ezekiel Mphahlele (in 1977 he changed his first name to Es'kia) in Marabastad Township, Pretoria, Mphahlele was educated at Adams Teaching Training College. He became a teacher, but in the early 1950s he was banned from teaching because of his opposition to the Bantu Education Act of 1953, which created an education system for blacks that was inferior to the one for whites. In the mid-1950s he worked as an editor for the literary journal Drum, and in 1956 he obtained a master's degree from the University of South Africa. Mphahlele went into exile from South Africa in 1957. He subsequently lived in Nigeria, where he was an editor for the periodical Black Orpheus; in Kenya; in Zambia; and in the United States, where he attended the University of Denver and taught at the University of Pennsylvania. He returned to South Africa in 1977 and later became a professor at the University of Witwatersrand.

Mphahlele's first book, Man Must Live (1947), is a collection of short stories about black life in South Africa. Down Second Avenue, his second and perhaps most famous work, achieved great critical and popular success and is considered a classic of South African literature. The Wanderers (1971) is an autobiographical novel dealing with themes of exile. His novel Chirundu (1979) focuses on the conflicts felt by a fictional African politician. Afrika My Music (1984) is another autobiographical work, describing Mphahlele's exile and return to South Africa. His novel Father Come Home (1984) is concerned with the suffering caused by the Natives Land Act of 1913, which restricted blacks from residing in certain areas in South Africa. Mphahlele's other books include the critical works The African Image (1962) and Voices in the Whirlwind, and Other Essays (1972). A collection of his letters, Bury Me at the Marketplace, was published in 1984.