So Many Ways To Stay Socially-Conscious As an African Writer—The Case of Lauren Beukes’ Charity Art Show

September 23, 2013

Beukes and Jacki Lang — Jacki Lang (curator) and Lauren Beukes

South African sci-fi writer, Lauren Beukes, shows us that there’s more than one way to stay socially conscious as an African novelist. It’s not always by writing some grand political fiction that a writer shows political commitment. Achebe may not see Beukes’s sci-fi/thriller fiction as novels that “teach” in his political understanding of the word.

But that’s because Beukes prefers fighting her ideological battle out there in the field. She does this by organizing charity shows around her novels and giving the proceeds to a cause of her choice.

The shows are designed and aimed at benefiting a cause that relates in some way to the themes explored in the novel. A story about crime, guilt, and making a life after incarceration, Zoo City became the basis of a charity show that helped fund organizations that work with ex-offenders.

Read my review of Zoo City HERE.

This past summer, Beukes’s latest novel, The Shining Girls, was tipped as one of the best beach novels of the season. It’s a crime thriller about a time-traveling serial killer who derives some kind of sexual pleasure from mutilating the bodies of the women he kills.

The Shinning Girls Art Show took place on the 6th in Cape Town where Beukes is based. The sold out event raked up almost 10,000 dollars, which Beukes says will benefit the South African rape crisis.

Read my review of The Shining Girls HERE.

Here are photos from the event.