WRITTEN OUT, the silencing of Regina Gelana Twala

351pp., illus., maps, paperback, Johannesburg, 2023

Regina Gelana Twala (1908-1968) was a writer, researcher, politician and activist. She was born in South Africa and went into exile to Swaziland (now Eswatini).  Joel Cabrita argues that systemic racism and sexism blocked Black African women like Twala from establishing themselves as successful writers.

"A bold, ambitious, and necessary project ... An important and beautifully told tale of ‘sanctioned forgetting’ and glorious remembering." Sisonke Msimang, author of The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela

"Joel Cabrita’s Written Out, the silencing of Regina Gelana Twala is that extraordinary work of restoration that restores not just the historical subject herself, but Twala’s entire social milieu. This then allows us to contemplate the vicissitudes of her life and the processes by which she came to her life choices in great and intimate detail. Cabrita has given us an exemplary historical biography that will have ramifications well beyond the boundaries of African history itself." Ato Quayson, Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies and Professor of English, Stanford University

Joel Cabrita is Susan Ford Dorsey Director of the Center for African Studies and an associate professor of African History at Stanford University and a senior research associate in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Johannesburg.