Margaret McCord
Margaret McCord Nixon (born November 7, 1916 in Durban , South Africa , † March 29, 2004 in Carlisle , Massachusetts , née Margaret McCord , also known as Peg Nixon ) was a South African author.
Life
Margaret McCord was born in 1916, the youngest of six children of English doctor and missionary James McCord and his English-speaking South African wife. She grew up in Durban, where her father founded McCord Hospital and provided medical care to the black population. In the mid-1930s she moved to the United States to study at Oberlin College in Ohio . There she met her husband.
McCord was friends with Katie Makanya (1873–1963) from the Zulu people , who worked in her father's hospital, when she was a child . Makanya introduced McCord to the history and traditions of the Zulu and gave her the Zulu name Ntombikanina . In 1954 McCord returned to South Africa and recorded Makanya's life story on tape in many sessions and then transcribed it.
The biography The Calling of Katie Makanya: A Memoir of South Africa , based on these tapes and transcripts, was published by McCord only 40 years later, when she was almost 80 years old herself. The book has won several awards and in 1996 won the renowned South African literary award Alan Paton Award .
McCord was married to Charles Nixon, Professor of Political Science, until their divorce in 1981 and lived in Venice , California . They had two children together. She died of cancer with her daughter in Carlisle, Massachusetts.
Works
- The Calling of Katie Makanya: A Memoir of South Africa. Wiley, New York 1995, ISBN 0-471-17890-X .
Awards
- 1996: Alan Paton Award for The Calling of Katie Makanya: A Memoir of South Africa
Web links
- Obituary in the Los Angeles Times , April 10, 2004
- Stephan Meyer: Collaborative Auto / biography: Notes on an Interview with Margaret McCord on The Calling of Katie Makanya. ( Memento of September 4, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) In: Oral Tradition. 15, 2, 2000, pp. 230-254 (English, PDF; 285 kB).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Beverly Beyette: A Journey 79 Years in the Making. In: Los Angeles Times . July 1, 1996
- ↑ Margaret McCord on prabook.com, accessed December 22, 2019
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | McCord, Margaret |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Peg Nixon |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | South African author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 7, 1916 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Durban , South Africa |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 29, 2004 |
| Place of death | Carlisle , USA |