Laughing with a “Forked Tongue”: Subversive Humour in Sindiwe Magona’s Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night

Abstract

Domestic workers occupy a central place in South African society, representing the historical entanglements of race, class, gender and labour. Despite their significance, they have received limited sustained attention in literary scholarship. This article examines Sindiwe Magona’s Living, loving and lying awake at night (1991), a short story collection that draws on her own experiences of domestic work on the cusp of South Africa’s democratic transition. Focusing on the interlinked series “Women at work”, we argue that Magona employs humour as a mode of “doubled subversion,” simultaneously critiquing racial oppression and patriarchal authority while fostering solidarity among black women. The stories show how laughter emerges from the kitchens and servants’ quarters of apartheid households as a means of survival, critique, and community. Our analysis draws on Samuelson’s (2012) notion of the “forked tongue” and Bakhtin (1968) theory of the carnivalesque to illuminate how Magona’s characters use irony, satire, and parody to ridicule apartheid’s absurdities and expose gendered vulnerabilities. By foregrounding humour in the representation of domestic work, Magona anticipates the feminist comedic strategies of contemporary South African women writers. We position her as a foundational figure in a broader genealogy of African feminist humour that mobilises laughter as both critique and resistance.