Peter Abrahams

Writer

• Born: March 19, 1919
• Birthplace: Vrededorp, South Africa
• Died: January 18, 2017
• Place of death: Kingston, Jamaica

Biography

Peter Henry Abrahams was the first nonwhite South African to publish a novel in English since Solomon Plaatje, whose Mhudi was published in 1930. Once his literary career began with the short-story collection Dark Testament in 1942 (a volume of poetry had previously been published by a small publisher), Abrahams established himself as a prolific writer.

Abrahams was born in Vrededorp, a mixed ghetto, on March 19, 1919. When he was five, his father died, and Abrahams was sent to live with relatives in rural Elseburg. He returned to Johannesburg at age seven and worked to help his family. He entered school at about age eleven. After a few years, however, his education was interrupted by the Depression, and he was forced to seek work. Working at the Bantu Men’s Center, Abrahams was exposed to the works of African American authors, principally W. E. B. Du Bois and such Harlem Renaissance writers as Langston Hughes, Countée Cullen, and Sterling Brown. He would later be influenced by Richard Wright as well.

After working at the Bantu Men’s Center, Abrahams attended the Diocesan Training College in Grace Dieu, though he did not complete his studies there. Next, he attended St. Peter’s Secondary School, one of the best South African schools for nonwhites. There, Abrahams had essential experiences that shaped his vision as a writer. While at St. Peter’s, Abrahams had his first contacts with white people, influencing his ideas about the possibility of interracial harmony among certain individuals—a theme that runs through his works. Moreover, he was exposed to left-wing politics. Later, he began a brief flirtation with Marxism; his classic novel Mine Boy exhibits this interest in its focus on the possibility that workers could achieve a revolutionary interracial friendship.

After attending St. Peter’s, Abrahams left South Africa. He began work as a stoker on a freighter around the time of the beginning of World War II. At the end of two years at sea, he arrived in England, where he lived for much of the next decade. Soon after settling in England, he published his first work, Dark Testament (1942). During the 1940s, Abrahams established a reputation as a novelist—with the publication of Song of the City, Mine Boy, and The Path of Thunder—and as a journalist. Pursuing a journalism career, he returned to South Africa in 1952 to write about the issue of race relations for the London Observer.

After visiting Jamaica to write the history Jamaica: An Island Mosaic, published in 1957, Abrahams and his family went to live there in 1959. While his subsequent writings have focused on South Africa, as in A Night of Their Own, they have also focused on the West Indies, as in This Island Now. Thus, Abrahams established himself as a truly international writer.

The major themes of Abrahams’s works are intraracial and interracial conflict, the possibilities for resolution of such conflict, and the chances for the transcendence of racism between black people and white people. These issues spanned his literary career. Mine Boy, for example, which is considered Abrahams’s first major novel, begins in a manner well known to South Africans: An innocent young man from the country moves to the decadent city. The theme of Mine Boy, however, is that interracial harmony can exist in the midst of a country corrupted by racism. Furthermore, the early The Path of Thunder and the later A Night of Their Own not only dramatize the question of intraracial and interracial harmony but also ask whether interracial love could serve to help people reject the rigidly racist system of South Africa. Thus, Abrahams’s works explore whether segregation and apartheid can be transcended by interracial relationships among people of good will.

Although Abrahams was concerned with transcending race, he also consistently wrote about those who are corrupted by the racist system. This theme is evident in The Path of Thunder, as well as in Abrahams’s nonfictional study of South Africa, Return to Goli, and in the autobiographical Tell Freedom. In considering Abrahams’s career, therefore, it is evident that his works present an argument on whether people can transcend the racial discord of their society.

Many critics note Abrahams’s idealism in writing of the possibility of resolution of racial discord. Some are critical of this quality, finding Abrahams’s handling of the theme overly sentimental, pointing particularly to the books Mine Boy and The Path of Thunder. This criticism is answered by those who maintain that Abrahams is, in fact, emphasizing the difficulty of finding such a solution. Mine Boy, for example, argues that interracial harmony can be established only among a few people of goodwill. Furthermore, The Path of Thunder ends violently with the deaths of the black and white lovers and the triumph of racial hatred. There is a strong defense, then, against the charge that Abrahams was a sentimental idealist.

The charge is further refuted by those who note that Abrahams was greatly concerned with the possibility that racial hostility may remain fixed among the various racial groups in South Africa. He was not, therefore, merely a dreamer; in fact, his novels question whether interracial harmony is possible. Abrahams’s major concerns were exploring the negativity of race relations in society, considering whether this negativity can be overcome, and gauging the pressures against such a resolution in the context of a society corrupted by hatred and racism.

In 2000, Abrahams published another autobiography, The Black Experience in the Twentieth Century, in which he also offered brilliant vignettes and characterizations of such thinkers and activists as Du Bois, Wright, Hughes, George Padmore, Tom Mboya, Julius Nyere, Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah, and Norman Manley, among others. While he continued to contribute news commentaries for the radio until some of his final years, this would be the last book that he would publish.

Abrahams was found dead at the age of ninety-seven in his home in Kingston, Jamaica, on January 18, 2017.

Abrahams was married twice. He married Dorothy Pennington, an English woman, in 1941. They had one son and were divorced in 1948. He married his second wife, Daphne Elizabeth Miller, in 1948. Together, they had three children.

Author Works

Long Fiction:

Song of the City, 1943

Mine Boy, 1946

The Path of Thunder, 1948

Wild Conquest, 1950

A Wreath for Udomo, 1956

A Night of Their Own, 1965

This Island Now, 1966

The View from Coyaba, 1985

Short Fiction:

Dark Testament, 1942

Poetry:

A Blackman Speaks of Freedom!, 1938(?)

Nonfiction:

Return to Goli, 1953

Tell Freedom: Memories of Africa, 1954 (autobiography)

Jamaica: An Island Mosaic, 1957

The World of Mankind, 1962 (with others)

The Black Experience in the Twentieth Century: An Autobiography and Meditation, 2000 (also known as The Coyaba Chronicles: Reflections on the Black Experience in the Twentieth Century, 2000)

Bibliography

Adewoye, Sam A. The African Novel: Another Evaluative View. Lagos, Nigeria: Majab, 1996. Discusses works by Abrahams, Ousmane Sembene, Chinua Achebe, T. M. Aluko, Bayo Adebowale, Elechi Amadi, and Ngugi Wa Thiongo. Focuses on Tell Freedom.

Dathorne, O. R. “Peter Abrahams.” In African Literature in the Twentieth Century. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975. A helpful analysis.

Ensor, Robert. The Novels of Peter Abrahams and the Rise of Nationalism in Africa. Essen, Germany: Verlag Die Blaue Eule, 1992. From the series African Literatures in English. Includes bibliographical references.

Grimes, William. "Peter Abrahams, a South African Who Wrote of Apartheid and Identity, Dies at 97." The New York Times, 22 Jan. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/01/22/books/peter-abrahams-a-south-african-who-wrote-of-apartheid-and-identity-dies-at-97.html. Accessed 22 May 2017. Obituary covering Abrahams's life and career.

Heywood, Christopher. “The Novels of Peter Abrahams.” In Perspectives in African Literature, edited by Heywood. New York: Africana, 1971. From the proceedings of the Conference on African Literature held at the University of Ife in 1968.

Jacobs, Micayla. "Peter Henry Abrahams." South African History Online. South African History Online, 2015. Web. 21 Apr. 2016. Biography covering the major parts of Abrahams's career.

Lindfors, Bernth. “Peter Abrahams.” In Contemporary Novelists, edited by James Vinson. 3d ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982. A standard profile.

Ogungbesan, Kolawole. The Writing of Peter Abrahams. New York: Africana, 1979. Contains useful background information and sharp critical insights on Abrahams’s works.

Wade, Jean-Philippe. “Song of the City and Mine Boy: The ‘Marxist’ Novels of Peter Abrahams.” Research in African Literatures 21, no. 3 (1990). Emphasizes political context.

Wade, Michael. Peter Abrahams. London: Evans Bros, 1972. Includes criticisms of each of Abrahams’s works up to and including This Island Now.

Wauthier, Claude, et al. “Peter Abrahams.” In Modern Commonwealth Literature, edited by John H. Ferres and Martin Tucker. New York: Ungar, 1977. A standard source.