Votes for women, the working classes, men, and the dangers of a single story

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Feminism, Human rights, Politics, Race, Slavery, Suffrage2 Comments

Women, the vote, and the stories told about it 100 years later On March 8th I will join friends to celebrate International Women’s Day. It is always fun. Its great to be celebrating a centenary since British women got the vote. The vote was only for women then, who, like me now, had property – but hold on! 100 years […]

Mythological me – images from a memoir of childhood

Ruth HartleyColonialism, Family, Imagination, Memoir, Race, Southern Africa6 Comments

For a child, facts are fantastical and fantasy, factual Somewhere in my infancy, there is a thick green privet hedge, clipped and trimmed to right-angled perfection. It encloses a perfectly square empty space brimful of desolation. It contains no house, no people live there and it is nameless. Its eternal position is located somewhere inside the fortnight when my mythical […]

Is White Writing Black, Right Writing or Wrong Writing?

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Politics, Race, Southern Africa, The Tin Heart Gold Mine8 Comments

Writing black and white people, men and women, good and bad. This is a rewrite of post on Marginal Scribbling that contains some complicated ideas that need thrashing out with other writers and readers. I intended to repost this anyway but it seemed more relevant after the launch of my novel The Tin Heart Gold Mine because I was asked […]

A Citizen of Nowhere embraces the Nowhere World

Ruth HartleyCitizenship, DisplacementLeave a Comment

Hello Reader, are you a Citizen of Nowhere, like me? I celebrate being a citizen of the world. And, no matter your citizenship, you’re welcome in my Nowhere World of books and stories. The Nowhere World is an imaginary dimension spun out of the dreams of writers like me for your pleasure and delight as well as for my own. […]