Life Writing During a Pandemic: Making Sense of the ‘New Normal’ in Lockdown Extended: Corona Chronicles (2020)

In “Life Writing During a Pandemic: Making Sense of the ‘New Normal’ in Lockdown Extended: Corona Chronicles (2020),” scholars Walter K. Barure and Doreen R. Tivenga zoom in on Melinda Ferguson’s 2020 anthology Lockdown Extended: Corona Chronicles to analyze South African life writing narratives of the pandemic. By exploring the ways life writing enables sense-making in the face of adversity, they argue that its value lies in capturing “events both as they happen and as they appear in retrospect,” framing life writing as a mode of “self-exploration that often produces lessons and insights and enriches a person’s life in the long run” (Barure and Tivenga 3). Selected for their proximity to the crisis, these narratives offer layered insights through their exploration of overlapping themes from distinct vantage points.

For example, Lebo Mashile, actor and writer, critiques the South African state’s inadequate COVID-19 response and the resulting precarity of the creative sector, particularly the barriers in accessing government relief. Ferguson, by contrast, reflects on the elastic experience of time under lockdown and the affective significance of domestic space. For Barure and Tivenga, these personal accounts illuminate the shared conditions facing South African artists, publishers, and academics, underscoring the vital but undervalued role of cultural workers in sustaining emotional and mental wellbeing during crisis—and the structural neglect they continue to face.