Our Ghosts Were Once People
Bongani Kona (ed)
‘I would get out of the car at every shopping centre and want to ask the stranger walking by with their trolley: “Why are you still shopping? Someone I love has died.”’ – Dela Gwala
Death is a fact of life, but the experience of grief is unique to each of us. This timely collection brings together a range of voices to offer reflections on death and dying, from individual losses to large scale catastrophes.
Karin Schimke revisits her troubled relationship with her late father, a Second World War survivor ‘whose brain had been broken by violence’. Madeleine Fullard, the head of South Africa’s Missing Persons Task Team, draws us into the search for activists who were ‘disappeared’ or went missing in political circumstances between 1960 and 1994. Caine Prize winner Lidudumalingani remembers his childhood in a small village in the Eastern Cape, and how his mother always listened to death notices read over the radio as a way of bearing witness to the grief of strangers.
The other contributors in this poignant and thought-provoking anthology turn their minds to subjects as varied as the ritual of washing the body of the deceased before burial, the ethics of killing small animals, and the extinction of humankind.
In a time of relentless grief, Our Ghosts Were Once People reminds us that one of the small consolations of literature is that all sorrows can be borne.
Duration - 8h 18m.
Author - Bongani Kona (ed).
Narrator - S K Tsubane.
Published Date - Sunday, 14 January 2024.
Location:
United States
Description:
‘I would get out of the car at every shopping centre and want to ask the stranger walking by with their trolley: “Why are you still shopping? Someone I love has died.”’ – Dela Gwala Death is a fact of life, but the experience of grief is unique to each of us. This timely collection brings together a range of voices to offer reflections on death and dying, from individual losses to large scale catastrophes. Karin Schimke revisits her troubled relationship with her late father, a Second World War survivor ‘whose brain had been broken by violence’. Madeleine Fullard, the head of South Africa’s Missing Persons Task Team, draws us into the search for activists who were ‘disappeared’ or went missing in political circumstances between 1960 and 1994. Caine Prize winner Lidudumalingani remembers his childhood in a small village in the Eastern Cape, and how his mother always listened to death notices read over the radio as a way of bearing witness to the grief of strangers. The other contributors in this poignant and thought-provoking anthology turn their minds to subjects as varied as the ritual of washing the body of the deceased before burial, the ethics of killing small animals, and the extinction of humankind. In a time of relentless grief, Our Ghosts Were Once People reminds us that one of the small consolations of literature is that all sorrows can be borne. Duration - 8h 18m. Author - Bongani Kona (ed). Narrator - S K Tsubane. Published Date - Sunday, 14 January 2024.
Language:
English
Opening Credits
Duration:00:00:38
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Introduction
Duration:00:10:04
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 01_Neither Here nor There
Duration:00:12:31
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 02_The Favourite
Duration:00:17:05
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 03_Visiting
Duration:00:03:46
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 04_The Used Car Salesman
Duration:00:03:05
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 05_All the Dead
Duration:00:26:01
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 06_A Death and Life Experience
Duration:00:09:41
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 07_This Nightmare of a Place_A Doctor's Story
Duration:00:25:44
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 08_Ferryman
Duration:00:09:47
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 09_The Grief of Strangers
Duration:00:12:42
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 10_How to Kill a Man
Duration:00:06:47
Our Ghosts Were Once People_ Story 11_The Pattern of Trees
Duration:00:10:47
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 12_A Man, A Fire, A Corpse
Duration:00:18:27
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 13_Investigation Pieces
Duration:00:36:37
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 14_The Descendants
Duration:00:25:10
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 15_What the Township Did To Us
Duration:00:00:53
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 16_Habeni
Duration:00:01:27
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 17_Living as Ghosts Do
Duration:00:17:32
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 18_Kukithi La_This House Is Not For Sale
Duration:00:02:39
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 19_Spiralling
Duration:00:11:20
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 20_The Girl Who Then Feared To Sleep
Duration:00:02:53
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 21_The Mystery of Death
Duration:00:11:54
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 22_Death and Dying in a Brutal World
Duration:00:32:17
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 23_Story of a Name
Duration:00:16:17
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 24_Brief Encounter
Duration:00:09:46
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 25_Record Keeping
Duration:00:25:38
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 26_Skull
Duration:00:02:41
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 27_A Postbox on the Corner of Eternity
Duration:00:12:23
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 28_Small Animals
Duration:00:18:18
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 29_Death and the Inner Wildlife
Duration:00:12:53
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 30_The Great Dying
Duration:00:26:46
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 31_We Become Women When Our Mothers Die
Duration:00:02:50
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 32_Years and Years
Duration:00:10:43
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 33_I Forget to Look
Duration:00:01:13
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 34_The Pen
Duration:00:01:54
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 35_A Phone Call from Craig
Duration:00:08:05
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 36_Ancestral Wealth
Duration:00:27:12
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 37_Afterlives
Duration:00:11:31
Our Ghosts Were Once People_Story 38_My Death
Duration:00:00:39
Ending Credits
Duration:00:00:14