Marginality, Cultural Positioning and Religion in ’Mpho ’M’atsepo Nthunya’s Singing Away the Hunger: Stories of a Life in Lesotho

Abstract

This chapter explores the lived experience of the socio-cultural and economic marginalisation of ’Mpho ’M’atsepo Nthunya in her autobiography Singing Away the Hunger: Stories of a Life in Lesotho (1996). Nthunya’s autobiographical writing is located within the oral traditions of storytelling of the local Basotho culture. Nthunya’s self-assertive voice positions her as a subject and an agent who proclaims her existence within the minority space of marginalised voices and narratives. This chapter seeks to demonstrate how Nthunya’s work articulates her understanding of the physical, emotional and spiritual violence of poverty in colonial and post-independent Lesotho. She interprets her experience of violence through the lens of her multiple roles as a marginalised Mosotho woman, a daughter, mother, wife, migrant, farmer, household head, a domestic worker and a Christian. It is from this perspective that the study is informed by Feminist Literary Criticism complemented by a Feminist Intersectional Framework. Both engage the author’s reflections and deal with interconnectedness of the issues of gender, race, class and religion; issues Nthunya experienced in Lesotho and during her sojourn in apartheid South Africa. The EcoBosadi Framework is another perspective which informs the reading of Nthunya’s rural identity and worldview which are central to her interpretation of what it means to be a Mosotho woman who navigates the struggles of her life journey. In essence, while on the one hand her national identity, cultural positioning and Christian religion are depicted as oppressive, they are also represented as resources that allow her to challenge and resist oppression. Nthunya reclaims her human dignity in an otherwise dehumanising space of belonging to a poor, marginalised group whose existential hope, in her words, is for “the hunger to stop”.