A Luta Continua: The struggle continues. A postcolonial reading of Doris Lessing's 'The Golden Notebook'

A Luta Continua: The Struggle Continues explores Doris Lessing's portrayal of Africa (specifically Southern Rhodesia) in The Golden Notebook and Lessing's other early works. It considers Lessing's experiences in Africa in tandem with those of her white female colonial settler peers Olive Schreiner and Isak Dinesen. It questions the limitations of culturally-constructed colonial (and postcolonial) whiteness in apprehending and aesthetically representing Africa in Lessing's work. It contends that this "gap" in Lessing's fiction is a direct result of her experience of apartheid, the institutionalized separation of races in colonial Southern Rhodesia for political and economic ends. The "gap" also swallows unresolved questions of female freedom in Lessing's work. Finally, A Luta Continua: The Struggle Continues argues that Lessing's problematic relationship to the land in Southern Rhodesia as a white colonial is central to her experience and conceptualization of freedom.