Noni Jabavu was a South African writer and journalist, one of the first African women to pursue a successful literary career and the first black South African woman to publish books on her life. Her memoirs Drawn in Colour and The Ochre People have been compared to Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road.

Her grandfather, John Tengo Jabavu, was a pioneer journalist and started the first black newspaper in SA in 1884. Her father, DDT Jabavu, was a journalist, academic, activist and first black professor at Fort Hare. Noni left for England at the age of 13 for her schooling and spent her life travelling, writing and becoming a cosmopolitan, free-spirited woman.

In 1977, she came back to South Africa and wrote a weekly column in the Daily Dispatch. Noni Jabavu: A Stranger at Home is a compilation of these cheeky, insightful and hilarious columns for a younger audience of empowered women. Noni Jabavu scholars Makhosazana Xaba and Athambile Masola provide illuminating commentary.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Helen Nontando (Noni) Jabavu was a South African writer and journalist, one of the first African women to pursue a successful literary career and the first black South African woman to publish books of autobiography.

Makhosazana Xaba is an anthologist, essayist, short story writer and poet. She is a researcher at WiSER where she continues her longterm project, writing a biography of Helen Nontando Jabavu (Noni), the author of Drawn in Colour: African Contrasts (1960) and The Ochre People: Scenes from a South African Life (1963).

Athambile Masola is a Mandela-Rhodes Scholar, who graduated with a Masters in Education. She has taught English in Cape Town and Johannesburg high schools. She is currently working on a PhD on Noni Jabavu’s memoirs while working at the University of Pretoria’s Education Faculty.

A Stranger at Home by Noni Jabavu is published by Tafelberg, an imprint of NB Publishers