EVERYDAY MATTERS, selected letters of Dora Taylor, Bessie Head & Lilian Ngoyi

360 pp., paperback, Johannesburg, 2015

The private correspondence of three women who contributed to the struggle for liberation in southern Africa. Dora Taylor was a member of the Non-European Unity Movement and a writer. Lilian Ngoyi was an ANC leader, orator, and one of the organisers of the 1956 Women's March to the Union Buildings. Bessie Head wrote novels, short stories and social history. Dora Taylor's letters were written in the 1960s, Lillian Ngoyi's in the 970s and Bessie Head's from the late 1960s to the 1980s. Although these women didn't know each other they are linked by their political sympathies, the nature of their work, and the fact that each had to endure a form of exile.

Margaret Daymond is Professor Emeritus in the English Department at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a Fellow of the University.