The Calling of Katie Makanya: A Memoir of South Africa
(Winner of the Johannesburg Sunday Times Alan Paton Prize ...)
Winner of the Johannesburg Sunday Times Alan Paton Prize for Nonfiction Discover a people's enduring power through the inspiring life of a fascinating woman.
Margaret McCord was a South-African born American memoirist and biographer. She is best remembered for her award-winning biography The Calling of Katie Makanya: A Memoir of South Africa.
Background
Margaret McCord was born on November 7, 1916, in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa as the youngest of six children of doctor and missionary James McCord and a missionary Margaret Mellen. She grew up in Durban, where her father founded the McCord Hospital and provided medical care to the native South African population. There she befriended Katie Makanya, who was fluent in Zulu and English, when Makanya worked as a translator and assistant to McCord's father, and whose life would become a subject of her book.
Education
Margaret McCord left South Africa to study at Oberlin College in Ohio, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1939.
After spending a year as an art teacher in South Africa, Margaret McCord returned to the United States, was married in 1941, and spent her days as a homemaker while also working a variety of jobs, including as an executive secretary at Cornell University Nursery School during World War II, as a screen story analyst for Warner Bros. in the early 1950s, and as a travel agent in the 1970s and 1980s.
The work on her biography The Calling of Katie Makanya: A Memoir of South Africa began in 1954, just months before Makanya's death. McCord spent several weeks recording Makanya's personal story, but the writing did not come about until some four decades later. The result, however, was a very personal view into the racially divided nation of South Africa.
Margaret McCord died on March 29, 2004, aged 87 in Carlisle, Massachusetts, United States.
Achievements
Margaret McCord's biography won the 1996 Alan Paton Award, Central News Agency Literary Award, and a New York Library Young Adult Award. Her personal view into the racially divided nation of South Africa received the attention of critics and readers who were interested in researching the topic.
University of California at Los Angeles Faculty Women's Club
,
United States
Interests
snorkeling, traveling, bridge
Connections
Margaret McCord married Charles Nixon in 1941. He became a professor of political science and the couple settled in Los Angeles in the 1940s. They had two children, John and Margaret, and were divorced in 1981.
Father:
James McCord
Mother:
Margaret Mellen
Ex-husband:
Charles Nixon
Son:
John B. Nixon,
Daughter:
Margaret Rocco
Friend:
Katie Makanya
References
Contemporary Authors, Vol. 166
This volume of Contemporary Authors contains biographical information on approximately 300 modern writers.
