Miriam Tlali’s Muriel at Metropolitan: Black Consciousness and the Search for Self-Affirmation

This article is an attempt to demonstrate the power of non-conformity with regard to literary projections. Though written in 1969, Miriam Tlali's novel, Muriel at Metropolitan exhibits forceful portrayals of Apartheid South Africa's socio-economic and political system. The novel explores, in the crudest manner possible, the realities of racial inequality in South African society. Tlali, as it is contended here, succeeds in her intentions of telling the South African story exactly as it was by ignoring the existing literary conventions. Her chosen form of literary creation was deliberate; as she was certainly not unaware of the conventional forms of literary expression. Her deliberate disregard of conventional forms of literary creation was frowned upon by such critics as Njabulo Ndebele and caused much debate on the relativity of literature in the 60's, 70's and 80's.