Mobility and rebel women in South African chick lit

Abstract

The article explores notions of resistance in South African chick lit through Zukiswa Wanner’s novels The Madams (2006) and Behind Every Successful Man (2008). An analysis of chick lit’s potential for resistance needs to consider its use of ambivalence and its process of localization. In addition to a postcolonial close reading approach, this article draws on concepts from mobilities studies. Engaging with the symbolism of the car and patterns of embodied mobilities in the novels offers further insight into the process of adapting a global genre to a local context, as well as the tension that localization creates. Chick lit is characterized by postfeminist ideals of female subjectivity, by ideas of neoliberal individualism, and by western consumer culture, which cannot easily be transferred to contexts with different histories of gender and racial emancipation or of different class structures marked by uneven economic development. For chick lit to function on the global level it needs to be localized along intersectional axes. A mobilities perspective offers a comprehensive approach to the genre’s localized potential for resistance to different matrices of oppression.

Chick lit is often considered a superfluous, commercial genre that presents well-worn cultural tropes of postfeminist, materialist, and economically independent women struggling to find Mr Right in formulaic plots. As genre fiction, chick lit is associated with regressive norms of gender and sexuality, yet as a cultural phenomenon, it has pushed women’s voices into greater mainstream recognition (Mißler, 2017; Rudin, 2022). Despite the genre’s formulaic character, chick lit novels consistently present a modern woman’s life as a tension between individual happiness and societal constraints around what it means to be a woman. In spite of their well-known tropes and formulaic plots, these novels put forth ambivalent forms of female subjectivity that hold space for resistance and are therefore worthy of critical exploration. Furthermore, because female subjectivity is never simply defined by gender but articulated at the intersection of different identity categories (Crenshaw, 1989), the potential for resistance can take various forms, making it a genre of interest for postcolonial literary scholars. For this purpose, the following analysis will discuss the localization of the global chick lit genre in the South African context and end with an exemplary exploration of representations of mobilities as an instrument of localization in Zukiswa Wanner’s The Madams (2006) and Behind Every Successful Man (2008).

Chick lit, ethnicity, and mobility

This analysis is not a comprehensive study of South African chick lit, yet the discussion of the two novels shows how the genre’s potential for resistance and ambivalence is a precondition for a successful localization of chick lit in South Africa. Furthermore, it points to an often neglected aspect in the scholarship on chick lit: mobility. Even though mobility is a recurring topic of analysis, it usually features as upward social mobility in combination with chick lit’s representations of neoliberalism. There is rarely a discussion of embodied mobilities despite the potential to bring these together. Mobility is intrinsically linked to Western ideas of progress and modernity (Cresswell, 2006), and its literary representations are frequently racialized and gendered. Therefore, the concept offers a useful focal point to discuss the localization of chick lit in South Africa. In the nation’s past, colonial rule and the ensuing apartheid regime racialized and gendered Black mobility heavily through restrictive legislation and social practices. After the end of apartheid, “the body [had to] be imagined anew: as free, mobile, flourishing” and Wanner’s novels do just that for the female Black body (Gqola, 2016: 120). Therefore, the analysis of Wanner’s work as genre fiction will be supplemented by a mobilities analysis to understand the genre’s potential for resistance, renewal, and reconfiguration of what it means to be a Black South African woman.

The genre came of age during the mid-1990s in the anglophone West with such foundational texts as Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City (1996) and Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996). At the centre are often single, white, middle-class women in their twenties and thirties (Ferriss and Young, 2006: 1) woven into humorous empowerment narratives and representations of consumerism (Butler and Desai, 2008: 2). Compared to traditional romance novels with their overly idealized heroic romance, chick lit evolves around the daily life of its postfeminist heroines, their desires for material consumption, financially empowering careers, and fulfilment of (romantic) relationships. On the tails of the 2008 recession, the genre’s omnipresence decreased, with some even heralding its death (Mißler, 2017: 36, 45). However, Mißler states that it is more plausible to talk of a diversification of the genre regarding its authorship and formulas than of its death (2017: 2).

Today, media industries on all continents make substantial profits with works that may still be classified as chick lit, often categorized into different subgenres, such as by ethnicity. Such labels may be of value to an analysis of the cultural phenomenon in the US and Britain, where forms of chick lit developed that centre on specific ethnic communities marginalized by the society beyond community boundaries (Mißler 2017: 34). Nevertheless, the inherent hierarchical positioning caused by the label makes it easier to overlook contributions from racialized authors. This is perhaps one of the reasons why it took a while to consider Waiting to Exhale (1992) by African American writer Terry McMillan as a foundational work of the genre. This repositioning of McMillan’s work highlights the need for more comprehensive, plural genre genealogies (Konchar Farr, 2009: 203; Guerrero, 2016; Mißler, 2017: 15; Folie, 2018). In addition, the categorization of ethnic chick lit as a subgenre runs the risk of leaving the hyped texts of the 2000s, and their successors, as unmarked in their whiteness, thus reinforcing racialized gender stereotypes. The usefulness of the category is also questionable when it comes to the discussion of chick lit in in the context of Africa, Asia, or Latin America. For the purpose of this analysis, neither the concept of ethnic chick lit nor the idea of subgenres seems to be productive.

Localization of chick lit

Since the mid-2000s, South Africa has seen the establishment of several imprints that focus on chick lit, with many still in operation, including Nollybooks (imprint of MME Media), Melinda Ferguson Books (imprint of Jacana), or Kwela Press, which published both of Wanner’s novels. It seems chick lit is quite alive and one might say it has gone global (Ommundsen, 2011: 110) on the tail of the economic globalization following the Cold War. This means female independence is negotiated through Western discourses of freedom, consumption, and postfeminism (Chen, 2012). However, this globalization should not be equated to universalism. The genre needs to be localized and anchored in a particular socio-cultural context for it to function, as Narunsky-Laden argues in her discussion of chick lit’s role in reconfiguring South African identity after the nation’s transition to democracy (2010). The genre amplifies female voices in popular cultures across the globe and increasingly those of Black women, women of colour, and authors writing from queer perspectives (Folie, 2018). The commercial potential of chick lit is an opportunity to widen the representations of female and queer lived experiences. The classification of a text as chick lit, however, is not clear cut despite the global nature of the genre. The genre is heterogeneous, with many variations of its formula (Mißler, 2017: 15), and its definition is therefore complicated (Harzewski, 2011: 5, Mißler, 2017: 12). Mißler argues that chick lit “is aligned with many literary traditions” and that its uniqueness stems not from innovative plot lines or writing styles but rather from the sociocultural context of the 1990s (2017: 16), which became global through consumer discourses (Chen, 2012). The 1990s were marked by complex simultaneities of different feminisms in Western societies (Budgeon, 2011: 45). On the one hand, basic women’s rights found a certain permanence in public discourses with the rise of popular feminism. On the other hand, this process simultaneously coincided with a rise of neoliberal individualism and postfeminism that questioned the value of a continued feminist struggle. The focus shifted from approaching gender oppression from a structural perspective to an individualist approach that shifted responsibility for equality to the personal level. Nevertheless, feminism had impactfully deconstructed popular ideas of womanhood leading to the development of new norms of womanhood (Mißler, 2017: 16-19).

These different representations of female subjectivities converge into particular formal and narrative characteristics that many chick lit publications share globally and that one might use as a tentative definition of an otherwise very heterogeneous, elusive genre. The narratives evolve around the heroine’s quest to fulfil her desires, which cannot simply be reduced to a romantic happy ending. The narratives include other daily struggles of women, such as friendships or job complications (Mißler, 2017: 31). However, what constitutes daily life for a woman looks very different globally. Therefore, a certain degree of localization increases relatability for the readers and subsequently the genre’s success. The stories are often told from a female point of view in a humorous (Mlynowksy and Jacobs, 2006: 41), often ironic, confessional tone (Mißler, 2017: 33). The texts are also characterized by their intertextuality, embedding references to the language of women’s magazines or designer brands, trendy hot spots, and luxury getaways which place the characters “firmly in a contemporary cosmopolitan culture” (Mißler, 2017: 33). The portrayal of daily struggles in love and life offer room for the representation of different female subjectivities while the ironic tone opens the representations to different interpretations by readers. These readings can affirm or subvert existing gender norms, thus holding a space for resistance. In combination with the confessional tone of many narratives, which often take the form of a direct, intimate address to the reader (Ferriss and Young, 2006: 4), these chick lit characteristics create relatable, localized depictions of women’s lives that are constitutive of the genre’s success (Guerrero, 2016: 91). Wanner’s novels stick to the proven formula but centre on representations of the New South African woman and the entanglement that intimate relationships are caught up in because of the transition from institutionalized racism under apartheid to a more equal society after 1994 (Nuttall, 2009: 33). The themes of home and family in South African cultural production explore new geographies of kinship in this phase of transition, according to Bystrom (2016). Therefore, the New South African woman represented in Wanner’s novels remains closely entangled in domestic and familial relationships, as these are a means to work through the nation’s past trauma and explore new forms of intimate relations. Gqola defines the New South African woman as “financially independent” with “access to public and political spaces” (2016: 83). Therefore, literary representations of the New South African woman offer a way to localize the genre’s characteristic themes of female empowerment and consumption by exploring them at the intersection of race, class, and gender specific to South Africa.

South African chick lit: The Madams and Behind Every Successful Man

Wanner’s two chick lit novels follow, in general, the conventional plot structure, formal features, and character design discussed above. The Madams, “South Africa’s first Black chick-lit blockbuster” (McNulty, 2007: 13), introduces Thandi, the heroine, through the different roles she must navigate: she is a mother to her son Hintsa, a wife to her husband Mandla, a girlfriend to Nosizwe and Lauren, as well as a manager at the Gauteng Office of Tourism. The novel immediately situates its heroine at the intersection of different discourses of womanhood that are commonly available to “sistahs” “living in the age of the liberated woman” (Wanner, 2006: 3) while also creating ambivalence by asking in the very next sentence: “But are we really liberated?” (4). ¹ Thandi serves as the first-person narrator as well as point of focalization which creates a heightened level of immediacy and intimacy, given the light-hearted, casual, humorous tone of the narrative. The plot uses many established and cherished cultural tropes of the genre. There is the incompetent boss, a complicated romantic relationship, too much care and household work, but also the regular brunch dates with her friends (accompanied by the obligatory bubbly alcohol), and retail therapy. The plot is initially driven by Thandi’s desire to have a break from wearing her “Superwoman cape” by hiring a maid. Later, her desire to take revenge on her cheating husband is added to drive her quest for happiness forward.

Behind Every Successful Man is Wanner’s second and most recent contribution to the genre. ² Although it does provide familiar cultural tropes and plot elements, it differs on the formal level. Readers are first introduced to the perspective of the heroine’s husband. “HiStory” is the title of the first chapter which introduces the husband’s name, Andile, before that of the wife and heroine, Nobantu. The third-person narrative alternates between chapters focalized through Andile and then Nobantu, with the latter taking up slightly more than half. Wanner’s stylistic choice beautifully underlines where the perception of daily life differs between a successful businessman and a stay-at-home mother of two teenagers. The novel thus creates ambivalence, which is supplemented by a humorous, self-reflective tone. Nobantu’s desire to find fulfilment beyond her role as mother and wife drives the plot. She comes to act upon this after Andile tells guests at her birthday party, “our Nobantu here does nothing. She is just a housewife” (Wanner, 2008: 21). ³ From then on, readers follow the quest for happiness of the upper-class Nobantu. This journey of maturation requires her to leave the marital home and her children to evolve into a successful designer of children’s fashion as well as to find supportive female friendships. In the process, the narration navigates different ideals of female subjectivity while laying bare the tension that this creates for the characters. The two diverging narrative perspectives eventually merge towards the novel’s end, suggesting a happy ending for Nobantu and Andile. While the setting in the world of the superrich is less common, it is not unheard of in chick lit. The setting plays well into the genre’s ambivalence and potential for resistance. Wanner’s portrayal of South African suburban life “provide[s] valid ways for people to imagine as plausible alternative realities that may be structurally opposed to their existing reality” (Narunsky-Laden, 2010: 65). Consequently, the reader’s lived everyday experience rubs against the presentation of a New South African woman from the Black upper middle class as aspirational (but not widely obtainable), causing ambiguity in the relatability of the work. This ambiguity nevertheless opens up room to re-evaluate gender and class relations. Chick lit in South Africa has the ability to deconstruct gender at “the nexus of intimacy, exploring new terrains of connection and disavowal […] within domestic structures” (Samuelson, 2008: 134).

Scholarship on chick lit has, in the past, predominantly engaged with white, anglophone narratives, but the last decade has seen a steady increase in work that explores its diversity. Gichanda Spencer discusses the way South African chick lit refashions feminine subjectivity. Where Bushnell and Fielding present heroines that desperately try to overcome their single status, motherhood and marriage feature prominently in South African chick lit (2019: 157), which can be read as a form of localization of the genre. A look at Wanner’s novels quickly proves that. Thandi is married; so are all her female friends, and all of them are mothers, though one friend adopts a child due to infertility (Wanner, 2006: 156). In BESM, Nobantu’s motherhood is a central plot element and each novel features at least one birth. Wanner’s second novel shifts the focus slightly since one of Nobantu’s female friends is divorced and another is unmarried as well as gay. Both novels, however, point towards the romantic reconciliation of the heroine with her husband. Nobantu moves back in with Andile at the end of BESM (164) because “here he was making a real effort to save their relationship” (161). At the end of The Madams, Mandla has not quite moved back into the marital home but acknowledges his wrongdoings: “You are a good woman and you were a really good wife. […] I messed up first.” Upon hearing this, Thandi apologizes for her cheating out of revenge to finally ask if “it is too late” (211). The patriarchal institutions of marriage and motherhood are neither rejected nor presented as some ideal to be chased; rather, they are rewritten at a time when the South African nation was reconfiguring its relationships to intimacy (Bystrom, 2016; Nuttall, 2009). Dutifully fulfilling the roles of mother and wife can, in Gichanda Spencer’s words, be seen as “complicities” with patriarchal institutions but these can also be “the ground from which […] female characters construct alternative ways of being” (2019: 165). Literary representations of motherhood and marriage can thus challenge South Africa’s expectation of a woman doing gender “correctly” in the sense of “‘womanity’ [which] is still defined by how well [a woman] cook[s] and clean[s]” (Wanner, 2006: 4).

These heroines fulfil the societal expectations of marriage and wifehood and yet they are the active forces in their relationships. The stories advocate for female agency and the unmarried, divorced, or homosexual characters are not ostracized. This is perhaps best expressed in the fact that both novels feature alternative masculinities (Boswell, 2021) and both heroines consciously raise their sons to become self-aware men (Wanner, 2006: 80; 2008: 50). In addition, both texts reflect on instances of domestic and sexual violence, thus providing frameworks for how to address these through official processes such as police reports and trials in The Madams (133) or personal intervention in BSWE (114). In this way, an element of ambivalence that suggests moments of resistance is introduced into these established sociocultural institutions and patriarchal structures. In The Madams, Thandi’s best friend and neighbour Lauren has been physically abused by her husband for decades. Lauren’s abuse is resolved through Thandi’s physical intervention and subsequent support in filing a police report, with Lauren obtaining a restraining order and eventually a divorce (136). In BESM, one of Nobantu’s seamstresses, Lerato, is abused by her ex-boyfriend but does not press charges because “she was scared that if she pressed charges, and he went to prison, he would come back and kill her” (117). As an alternative, Lerato’s extended family network attempts to solve the situation, and her male relatives intimidate the ex-boyfriend (116). This incident highlights culturally different conceptualizations of family. Eventually, Nobantu offers to take Lerato to file a protection order for her safety (128). These subplots, in their realistic portrayal of the means to identify as well as end domestic violence in South Africa, have an instructional character and thus create awareness, knowledge, and a potential for resistance amongst readers. On the one hand, the portrayal of domestic violence points to its structural causes because the instances in Wanner’s novels take place regardless of the socio-economic or marital status of the victims. On the other hand, these episodes advocate for Black women’s agency and capability to intervene in instances of gender-based violence as well as to form protective relationships of solidarity across class and race differences. With regard to female empowerment and agency, consumption also plays a significant role in South Africa. Narunsky-Laden argues, in the context of South African chick lit, for the “stabilising effect” of “practices of consumption” for the new “emerging social order” (2010: 66). “Practices of consumption” refer in Narunsky-Laden’s analysis to conspicuous consumption and its role in South African culture to “proclaim membership in newly ordered social formations” (2010: 65). In the context of the consumption of chick lit, this might lead to the stabilization of the emerging trope of the New South African woman and a greater acceptance of the rewritten familial and domestic relationships she is entangled with.

Class and race in The Madams and Behind Every Successful Man

The way domestic violence is dealt with differs between Lauren and Lerato. A possible explanation is the difference in class and race. In South Africa, class and race often converge because centuries of structural discrimination advantaged white South Africans, who could accumulate wealth and cultural capital for generations. Simultaneously, Black South Africans were drastically inhibited or outright excluded from gaining any form of capital or means of civic participation. The Madams particularly reflects on the continuity of colonial structures. The title refers to the initial conflict that sets the plot in motion. To minimize her domestic workload, Thandi hires a white Afrikaner named Marita as her maid, an uncommon practice in South Africa. It goes against “the sensitivities of South African society, New South African or not” (33), and Thandi describes the act as “a social experiment” (7). The conflict is an ingenious vehicle to reflect on racism in the new South Africa of the 2000s. A white maid drastically breaks with established social norms of class and race forcing the other characters to position themselves in relation to it. For example, the text reflects on the limitations of “liberal” white South Africans as represented by Lauren, who mistreats her own Black, domestic worker MaRosie (20). Thandi serves as another example, as she consciously wants to hire a white maid because she “would feel less guilty lashing out at a white person than a Black person” (7). The plot device also allows readers to reflect on the interactions between Black characters of different classes, through representations of Black madams with Black maids, to explore the link between neoliberalism and colonialism. The representation of the daily struggles of Wanner’s heroine reflects upon the way race and gender intersect in South Africa. Such a reflection cannot take place in narratives that leave whiteness unmarked, which makes scholarship on the localization of chick lit also valuable from a postcolonial perspective. In that sense, Wanner’s novels can be considered as texts of cultural history (Frenkel, 2019: 179) and should not be overlooked because of their genre. The chick lit label makes the novels more marketable (Narunsky-Laden, 2010: 64; Tasker and Negra, 2007: 5) but unfortunately also often constrains the perception of their value for scholarship (Fresno-Calleja 2019: 206).

Addressing class tensions in the novels establishes a general understanding of the localization of the global chick lit genre as well as its limitations. In The Madams, the ability to have a white maid makes Thandi feel “bourgeois” (5) which is an interesting remark since Thandi must already be part of South Africa’s upper middle class to afford her suburban, cosmopolitan lifestyle full of branded goods as well as spa and shopping trips. These are, to varying degrees, part of the global formula and logically require a sufficient amount of disposable income. Given the small size of South Africa’s Black middle class, the portrayal of Thandi’s lifestyle and the consumption-based solutions to her struggle are for many readers more aspirational than relatable. In The Madams, the impossibility, for Thandi, of combining motherhood, marriage, career, friendships, and being herself causes her to hire a maid. Even though the novel features representations of alternative masculinities, such as the South African “renaissance man” (4) who supports his wife in her career and changes his child’s diapers (64), it never suggests gender equality can be reached through equally shared childcare and household work. On the one hand, it might be that the representation of such a discourse is not feasible in connection with the lived experiences of the female characters portrayed. On the other hand, the rise of chick lit correlates with a rise of neoliberalism and most texts of the genre align themselves with its ideology through their central representations of consumption and heightened individualism in South Africa (Narunsky-Laden, 2010). In this context, solutions that are commodity-based and represent an individual choice function better for a text like The Madams. In Thandi’s case, this means care work becomes commodified and outsourced to a working-class woman. In BESM, Nobantu is a stay-at-home mother but also a member of South Africa’s elite. Domestic workers such as gardeners and maids are nonchalantly part of the setting (26), making the commodification of household and care work almost invisible. Chick lit presents the commodification of care work as an individualized solution to structural gender inequality, thus portraying a structural issue as one that can be solved at the level of the individual. This limits representations of female empowerment in chick lit to individuals or small groups. Therefore, the genre revolves around an inherent tension between structural compliance with patriarchal institutions and an individualized striving for empowerment, which is a central part of its ambivalence.

Furthermore, consumption and commodification also limit the genre’s localization. Narunsky Laden (2010) and Tandiwe Myambo (2020) point to the limitations in setting caused by the conspicuous consumption represented in South African chick lit. The heroines in Wanner’s two novels are frequently located in environments Tandiwe Myambo terms “First World”, such as “fancy hotels, office parks, restaurants, cafes, bars, boardrooms” (2020: 119). These spaces symbolize modernity and wealth on a global level as defined by “First World” spatial politics, endowing the novels’ characters with cultural capital in the form of cosmopolitanism (Tandiwe Myambo, 2020: 119-20). Simultaneously, such portrayals construct the heroines’ female subjectivity (and feminism) as an extension of these settings, pushing them out of reach for most local women in places with significant levels of uneven development, such as South Africa. The “global” setting enables but also constrains the heroine’s independence (Tandiwe Myambo, 2020: 126). This is reflected in Wanner’s novels by the few scenes set in the townships or rural areas, which, by contrast, predominantly feature more traditional forms of femininity. For example, in The Madams, there is Mandla’s mother who stays quiet about Mandla’s cheating or, in BESM, there is Lerato, the first-born daughter who cares for her siblings in the absence of her parents (114). These female characters lack cultural and economic capital and, unsurprisingly, do not seem to be endowed with the ability to make particularly independent choices. Interestingly, female characters that do not appear in these “global” (and middle-/upper-class) settings also seem to lack female support networks. I would not go as far as Tandiwe Myambo to argue that these fictional worlds portray “an almost seamlessly bourgeois, hermetically sealed, upper middle-class world with no unpleasant eruptions from other lived realities” (2020: 120), at least not for Wanner’s work. However, it seems that South African chick lit creates a correlation between an increased potential for female independence and a Western, consumerist lifestyle. This correlation limits the localization of the genre as much as its potential for resistance.

Mobility in The Madams and Behind Every Successful Man

The relationship between the genre’s potential for ambivalence, for resistance, and for localization can be further deepened by analysing representations of embodied mobilities in Wanner’s chick lit novels, especially automobility. The Western discourse of civic freedom is closely associated with the ability to move (Cresswell, 2006; 2013) and seems to find a universal application in the car as a global symbol of freedom and independence. However, it would be wrong to universalize the association between freedom, mobility, and progress as it would dismiss its foundation in “Western ethnocentric assumptions” and its link to colonization (Mavhunga et al., 2016: 43-44). Automobility is a complex system that intertwines its material aspects with cultural practices (Urry, 2004; Packer, 2008) and is “the dominant culture that sustains major discourses of what constitutes the good life” (Urry, 2004: 26). However, this global discourse, like chick lit, is locally gendered and racialized. Green-Simms points out the paradox of automobility, which produces “technologies of oppression” when used to exclude racialized and gendered minorities from accessing automobility and associated discourses of progress and independence (2017: 5). Simultaneously, automobility is “a sign of female empowerment” (2017: 10) that can endow women with independence. Analysis on gendered automobility, like that of Green-Simms, is still rare, a fact that corresponds to a general lack of empirical data on gendered mobility, to which South Africa is no exception (Pirie, 2015: 40, Rink, 2016: 62). This makes postcolonial literary mobility analysis valuable since it can give qualitative insights into gendering and racialization processes, as works by Upstone (2014) and Toivanen (2021) show.

Johannesburg, the metropolis in which Wanner’s books are set, shows especially well the complexity of the car as a symbol of freedom and colonization. The city is highly fragmented due to the socio-spacial racialization of its neighbourhoods under colonization and apartheid as well as the systemic restrictions on mobility that predominantly targeted the Black population during these periods (Pirie, 2014). Since the end of apartheid, all citizens have nominally been free, but the materiality of built infrastructures as well as cultural practices take time to change, which makes an analysis of Wanner’s work particularly interesting as it gives insight into this process. In addition to the racialization of neighbourhoods, which historically constructed the suburbs as white and townships as Black in Johannesburg (Crankshaw, 2005), Wanner’s novels help readers to understand shifts in the gendering of automobility after apartheid. Historically, femininity has been associated with stasis, immobility, regression, and the private sphere. These are not the attributes usually associated with automobility. Statistically, in the 2000s, the period in which the novels are set, only 4 per cent of Black South African women drove a private car (Graham, 2007: 72). This low number speaks not only to the gendered nature of automobility but also to the structural racialization of mobility and economic discrimination in the past. When Thandi and Nobantu get behind the wheel, their automobility situates them at the intersection of different forms of female subjectivity depending on where the road takes them.

Thandi’s automobility first serves as a symbol of status and privilege, which becomes more than obvious in her choice of car: “the Bond-machine, […] [a] metallic grey Aston Martin” (30). This is an expensive car model that communicates her income bracket and enables her independent mobility. Second, this car stands like no other for independent, white, British masculinity. By driving an Aston Martin and looking like a “cool single chick” (31), Thandi creates ambiguity about her marital status while also challenging the gendering of automobility and its racialization. Third, the text uses automobility to localize itself; Thandi’s automobility is an integral part of her comfortable, suburban life in Johannesburg’s “Lombarday East” (11). However, the suburb is still racialized as white since, there, she “is surrounded by white people” (19). This speaks of the past, in which the only visible form of Black femininity in white suburbs was that of a domestic worker. In contrast, Thandi represents an independently moving Black, female subjectivity. As a madam to her maid Marita, she assumes the master position previously reserved for white men and their white women. In addition, the car allows Thandi to stay physically connected to the township and its “loxion” culture (120), a racially connotated term that originated from a slang word for “location” and refers to townships and informal settlements in the South African context. The suburb is constructed as a “global”, westernized, and predominantly white place, as Myambo (2020) puts it, but it is connected to the township through automobility. For example, Thandi’s best friend is married to a man whose family lives in Soweto (16), where Thandi’s husband, Mandla, also practises as a doctor (50). Additionally, Mandla’s friends make regular trips from Soweto to visit his suburban home (38) and Thandi works at the Soweto office for the Department of Tourism (49). The fact that the protagonist’s daily life is closely intertwined with the township through automobility suggests that The Madams does not completely gloss over the complicated uneven development of South African society. In fact, Chen (2011) highlights in her discussion of global chick lit this tension between a supposedly global sisterhood and undeniable differences in cultural practices as well as economic development. A conscious incorporation of at least small hints at these differences is necessary to create relatability for readers, one of the defining features of the genre. Of course, this gives rise to potential for resistance, albeit in very limited ways, to keep the global genre’s formula still functioning for the majority of local readers.

The Madams’ representation of automobility also reflects on the intersection of gender and race in contemporary South Africa. The driver’s seat is often synonymous with the seat of the head of the family or, in other words, the husband (Jain, 2005: 195). He decides where the journey leads. In Thandi’s case, her husband takes her to work but neglects to pick her up later, instead spending time with his lover. Thus, Thandi is forced “to taxi her way home” (180), meaning a shared African taxi that betrays her class and independence as a woman. As revenge, Thandi takes a weekend off from her family affairs to cheat on Mandla at a luxury resort (195-201). On the way back, she firmly sits in the driver’s seat of her Aston Martin with “Chiwoniso Maraire’s ‘Rebel Woman’ blasting” from the radio and feeling “oddly liberated in [her] rebellion” (202). The song is a reference to the contribution of female fighters to Zimbabwe’s war of independence. The choice of song adds an interesting element of militarization, another very masculine domain, to connect it with national independence while remaining within the discourses of motherhood and marriage, as these are key points of reference in the lyrics. This scene exemplifies how the car as a masculine coded space enables embodied mobilities constitutive of female independence, hence creating ambivalence. Thandi is situated at the intersection of different forms of female Black independence, motherhood, and marriage, giving readers room to choose which subjectivities to relate to. The choice of song and the historical context of racialized mobility that are indirectly present also function to localize the global genre. It is an attempt to balance the genre’s established spatial tropes of consumerist, westernized settings with the lived realities of South African women.

As in The Madams, Wanner establishes the status and privilege of her heroine Nobantu in BESM through the introduction of a luxury car. The novel opens with a description of the birthday party that her husband throws in her name. “At just the right time” Nobantu receives “the latest Jaguar” “with personalised number plates reading, for all to see, Nobantu GP [Gauteng Province]” (20; emphasis in original). This gift of luxurious automobility characterizes Nobantu immediately as belonging to South-Africa’s new upper class. It further associates her with trendiness, a Western lifestyle, and modernity. However, this material and cultural capital allows Nobantu only limited independence as a woman. Her husband, the businessman Andile, thinks there is “no better way to show potential investors the type of Black person he is that would be leading them” because the gift would memorably cause “envy on every woman’s face” (8). The gift establishes the central conflict of BESM. The cultural capital of the Jaguar serves to define and strengthen Andile’s Black male subjectivity to which his wife appears to be an accessory. The symbolism of the car is here again used to situate Nobantu at the intersection of different forms of female subjectivity. A closer look at Nobantu’s subsequent embodied mobilities tells readers how she negotiates her position within the subjectivities available to her.

Automobility functions as a barometer of independence in the narrative. Nobantu’s action plan to professional independence begins when she gets “behind the wheel of the Range” on “the first day of the rest of her life” while playing Simphiwe Dana’s song “Zundiqondisise” (42). Again, Wanner’s combination of automobility and music serves as a cultural reference that anchors Nobantu, just like Thandi, in cultural discourses of conspicuous consumption, postfeminist female independence, and local histories of emancipation. The text also provides a translation to the lyrics in isiXhosa, creating easier access to South African cultural discourses for a global audience. The song’s title translates to “understand this”, declaring “I’ve got my own way of going” because “you are not my dream” and “not my sustenance”. In the following chapters, Nobantu increases her radius of automobility from the wealthy Sandton suburb to include her new office space in Soweto and the temporary home at the house of her supportive, new best friend. This process of maturation finds a condensed parallel in the scene where Nobantu’s daughter learns to navigate the city independently by taxi, thus outgrowing the need to be chauffeured around (130). The ability to move independently is presented as a necessity for successful maturation into womanhood. Nobantu’s journey is a move out of the private sphere and further strengthened by the novel’s multi-focalization. Since Nobantu moved out, the domestic day-to-day becomes focalized through Andile and the public sphere becomes focalized through Nobantu’s new business venture. Towards the end of the novel the focalization merges from two into one perspective. This structural change is reflected in the narrative’s portrayal of automobility. The spouses’ reunion is marked by Nobantu getting into the passenger seat of her husband’s car after he got “down on his knees in the middle of the parking lot” to signal the end of his previous sexist behaviour towards her (154). Focalization and mobility help to create ambivalence to reflect on the normativity of femininity and masculinity within the established institutions of marriage and motherhood in South Africa.

Nobantu’s automobility, like that of Thandi, connects differently racialized places of Johannesburg even though, adhering to the genre, the majority is taken up by the previously discussed “global” settings. Private automobility is a symbol of upward social mobility and becomes racialized as a marker of Black success, thus the novel’s social commentary stays foremost on the level of the individual rather than engaging in structural critique. Automobility serves two functions: it is presented as an opportunity to move socially upward through the means of being independently mobile, and, secondly, the car as a consumer good serves as a symbol of having achieved this upward mobility. However, consumption, in the context of South Africa’s past, is also linked to political freedom (Gichanda Spencer, 2019: 87) and the fashioning of a new self after the end of apartheid (Nuttall, 2008). The novels indirectly reflect on the tension between automobility as freedom and as a means of exclusion, which is inherent in the history of private automobility in South Africa and which further allows the individual to disengage from their surroundings (Graham, 2007: 74; Kriegel, 2024). This point is further supported in occasional references to “booms”, “gates”, and “guards” (122, 128) that create friction for the otherwise smooth automobility of the protagonists. This friction is created through the gated communities that increasingly shelter the wealthy from the poor in an unevenly developed country (Bremner, 2004). In effect, the novel measures the success of the national elite according to Western ideals of the neoliberal “good life” with only occasional points of friction shining through. This tension, however, is what helps to localize the global genre, albeit imperfectly.

Conclusion

Chick lit as a global genre uses localization to construct its heroines and their daily struggles as more relatable to local readers. The process by which a text is localized is not straightforward and must remain incomplete, as this analysis has demonstrated. The spatial tropes of shopping malls, upscale hotels, and spas that go hand in hand with the cultural practices of conspicuous consumption as an articulation of an independent female subjectivity are not evenly accessible in South Africa, creating tension in the process of the genre’s localization. Mobility serves as a suitable lens to better trace the tension in South African chick lit because of the nation’s past of racialized, gendered mobility policies. A mobility analysis further aids in identifying the discourses that construct the different positions of female subjectivity the texts offer, such as in relation to race, class, colonialism, neoliberalism, and postfeminism. A closer look at the function of mobility in South African chick lit also helps to read the genre from a more localized perspective, working against essentialization (Dosekun, 2015: 966-69). Chick lit’s ambivalence allows Wanner to hold space in her two novels for the co-existence of differently empowered women while reflecting on what has been achieved and what still needs to be done when it comes to equality. In this process of resistance, mobility is central because, as Mimi Sheller bluntly puts it, “without bodily freedom of mobility there may be no way to disrupt the ruling mobility regime and its kinetic elites” (2018: 55-56). At the same time, the genre’s close relationship to commodification, conspicuous consumption, and neoliberal individualism limits its potential for localization as much as that of resistance. As Thandi and Nobantu show, as a woman you can get behind the steering wheel and take your life into your own hands, but you cannot change the roads that you drive on by yourself. Structural changes and systematic resistance to oppression require a collective effort.