Open AccessWinged women on book covers for contemporary African fiction: Shubnum Khan’s creation for Mohale Mashigo’s Intruders (2018)
Author(s) -
Lizé Kriel
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
pharos journal of theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2414-3324
DOI - 10.46222/pharosjot.102.109
Subject(s) - reading (process) , spirituality , paranormal , argument (complex analysis) , symbol (formal) , appeal , aesthetics , history , commodity , literature , art , visual arts , sociology , philosophy , medicine , linguistics , biochemistry , alternative medicine , chemistry , pathology , political science , economics , law , market economy
In her collection of short stories, Intruders, Mohale Mashigo (2018) draws on popular culture as well as local cultural memories as invested in South African folktales, to conjure up a fantastical world in which spirituality is often invoked. In this article, I consider the way in which the visual image of a woman with angelic wings designed for the book cover by artist Shubnum Khan, serves the purpose of marketing the commodity by means of connotations presumed to be familiar to potential readers, but also still suggestive enough to stimulate, rather than prescribe, the visual imagination ignited in the process of reading. I link book cover designer Peter Mendelsund’s argument that the reading imagination, although fuelled by memory, remains “loosely associative” and “not overtly coherent”, with Ingvild Gilhus’s cultural-historical appraisal of the angel’s appeal as such a malleable symbol of (increasingly, specifically) female superhuman capabilities. I argue that the cover image ‘works’ because of its ability to kindle memories of precolonial African spirituality, associations with Christianity, as well as images circulating in mass media.