Miriam Tlali

Miriam Tlali (11 November 1933 – 24 February 2017) was a South African novelist. She was the first black woman in South Africa to publish an English-language novel, Between Two Worlds, in 1975. She was also one of the first to write about Soweto. Most of her writing was originally banned by the South African apartheid regime.
Miriam Masoli Tlali was born in Doornfontein, Johannesburg, and grew up in Sophiatown. She attended St Cyprian's Anglican School and then Madibane High School. She studied at the University of the Witwatersrand until it was closed to Blacks during the apartheid era; she later went to the National University of Lesotho (then called Pius the XII University) at Roma, Lesotho. Leaving there because of lack of funds, she went to secretarial school and found employment as a bookkeeper at a Johannesburg furniture store.
Tlali drew on her experiences as an office clerk for…