Robert

A Queer & Crooked Memoir for the not so Straight & Narrow

Robert Hamblin

ISBN:

9781928420972

Epub ISBN:

9781928420989

Uitgewer:

Melinda Ferguson Books

Datum Vrygestel:

Junie 2021

Prys (incl. VAT):

R 335,00

Formaat:

Sagteband, 380pp


Oor hierdie boek:

Robert Hamblin's much awaited memoir  ROBERT A Queer & Crooked Memoir for the not so Straight or Narrow, traverses a childhood that has a cast of unique and marginalised characters. There's his queer conman father, his mother intent on pushing the feminine, there’s the mysterious Alexis, his teenage first love, who convinces him during his childhood, when he is still a girl, into the power of the feminine, and teaches him how to be a woman.  He loses her when she disappears into the underworld of the Joburg sex industry. It haunts him.

ROBERT is also about secrets and lies. It's about excavating the truth in a time in a South Africa where the law and the church decided which body could love another, based on colour or gender, who got to have power and who had to pander to it. The memoir explores the violence of men both in Apartheid South Africa as well as within Robert’s family, and the pressures and confines of the straight trajectory. With Robert as the eye in the centre it throws convention in the fire.

Although along the way,  Robert transitions in his 30's from female to male, this is not a predictable trans story of a girl who couldn't bear to be in a female body. Rather it's a tale of a human who refuses to live in a box, who questions the straight line. Throughout his journey, the author is bent on seeing what it is that real humans all around him are really doing. He is drawn to people who embrace humanity, pursue love and happiness despite the limited frameworks dictated by a patriarchal consumerist racist system.

ROBERT is ultimately a book about confronting and healing from gender confines and racism, embracing a family that refuses to buckle to convention, whose ethos is love. 

 
 

VERWANTE BOEKE

Takka Takka Bom Bom

Al Venter

Hooked

Melinda Ferguson

The Girl Who Survived Her Mother

Moshitadi Lehlomela

Whitey: Sakereus van Shoprite

Niel Joubert

Jwara! Induna's Daughter

Joyce Piliso-Seroke

Anton Rupert

Ebbe Dommisse

The Scholarship Kids

Robert Gentle

Magenge, We Need to Talk

Melusi Tshabalala

Kwanele, Enough!

Andy Kawa

Betting on a Darkie

Mteto Nyati

The Corporate Revolutionary

David Williams

Clare: The killing of a gentle activist

Christopher Clark

Yellow and Confused

Ming-Cheau Lin

The Lockdown Collection

Melinda Ferguson

Zephany (A)

Joanne Jowell

Die kind se naam is Anneke

Juliana Coetzer

Smacked

Melinda Ferguson

Putco Mafani: The Price and Prize of Greatness

Putco Mafani

Life Lessons

Alan Knott-Craig

Zephany (E)

Joanne Jowell

Meditating with Rhinos

Helena Kriel

IMPOSSIBLE SKIES

Frans Meyer

Andile Gaelesiwe: Remembering

Andile Gaelesiwe

Love and Above

Sarah Bullen

Anton Rupert

Ebbe Dommisse

I am Ella

Joanne Jowell

Now You Know How Mapetla Died

Zikhona Valela

A Childhood Made Up: Living with my mother's madness

Brent Meersman

Heart of a Strong Woman

Xoliswa Nduneni-Ngema, Fred Khumalo

Statues and Storms

Max Price

Derick Hougaard

Brenden Nel

Into Dark Water: A Police Memoir

Jeremy Vearey

Becoming a Doctor

Hloni Bookholane

GiGi

GiGi

The ANC Spy Bible

Moe Shaik

Kyk na my

Nataniël

Ghetto Ninja

Nikolaos Kirkinis, Junior Khanye

Robert McBride: The Struggle Continues

Bryan Rostron

The Legend of Zola Mahobe and the Mamelodi Sundowns Story

Don Lepati, Nikolaos Kirkinis

But He Speaks So Well

Ivan Johnson

Out of Quatro

Luthando Dyasop

Lansdowne dearest

Bronwyn Davids

Anton Goosen

Hanlie Retief

Comrade Editor

Gwen Lister

Witnessing

Pie-Pacifique Kabalira-Uwase

Look At Me

Nataniël

Whitey: The Rise and Rule of the Shoprite King

Niel Joubert

Matriarchs, Meze and the Evil Eye –

Costa Ayiotis

How I Took Back My Power

Nompumelelo Runji

Lucas Mangope

Oupa Segalwe