The act of reading, for me, is deeply personal—an intimate ritual that unfolds in solitude. I devour books, often late into the night, stealing moments of stillness from days that pass too quickly. Although I am a lifelong voracious reader, I seldom discuss what I’m reading. It is mine, and it is for me.
Yet, this morning, bleary-eyed from yet another sleep-deprived night, I feel compelled to share something about several phenomenal books that have kept me awake over the past few months. These books, wildly different in genre, style, and subject matter, seem strangely connected, each offering a generous gift. They have left me thinking, feeling, and profoundly grateful for the power of reading, writing, and storytelling.
The Cinematic Power of Storytelling
The Comrade’s Wife, a political thriller set in post-apartheid South Africa, explores themes of power, betrayal, gender, and violence through the relationship between a highly ambitious, mid-level politician, and a woman who pauses her academic career after experiencing deep institutional betrayal. It is the latest novel from Barbara Boswell, the award-winning South African novelist and literary scholar who writes and teaches African women’s writing at the University of Cape Town. The Comrade’s Wife compels one to read it in a single sitting—or, if that’s not possible, to keep reading into the early hours, regardless of the inevitable effects of sleep deprivation. It kept me awake, urging me to seize stolen moments for reading despite a demanding, deadline-filled schedule. The engrossing plot and cinematic storytelling captivated me, even as I felt the urge to shake up the protagonist, wishing her to see how she was being swayed by flattery, material wealth, and lavish gifts. Like all great page-turners, The Comrade’s Wife kept me pursuing the next revelation. And I was not disappointed.
The visual quality of Boswell’s writing is striking. I could picture the film adaptation unfolding before me, with each scene translating effortlessly to the screen. The last time a cinematic South African novel moved me this way was Damon Galgut’s Booker Prize-winning novel, The Promise, penned shortly after he completed a film script. Boswell’s work, too, is imbued with cinematic potential.
The Quiet Revolution of the Sensitive
Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul: How to Change the World in Quiet Ways, by Asian-American writer and columnist, Dorcas Cheng-Tozun, who has survived multiple encounters with burnout, provided me with a deep, measured exhale—a counterpoint to the breathlessness of our hyperactive world. A notable columnist who has written several books on her experiences in the non-profit and social impact sectors, mirrored my own observations of how extroverts are rewarded in social change organisations. They ascend through the ranks, their voices amplified, their presence commanding. Meanwhile, the sharpest insights—the most thoughtful provocations—often originate from those who do not push to the front.
I recall a colleague from a global organisation: a person of colour among an all-white senior leadership team. Engaging deeply with the team, his thoughtful contributions left me thinking for weeks. Although he matched the elite educational backgrounds of his colleagues, he lacked their class and racial privilege; nonetheless, he possessed more academic credentials than his colleagues, yet remained in a more junior role. He also stuttered, and his stuttering demanded listeners to slow down and focus, with patience. His brilliance was all too easily overlooked in cultures obsessed with speed, where ableism excludes diverse forms of intelligence, insight and creativity impatiently lost or ignored, to maintain haste. Cheng-Tozun unpacks this phenomenon through rigorous and compelling research. She explores how leadership cultures—particularly in social justice spaces—favour extroversion, often overlooking the quiet revolutionaries. She reminds us that introverts, sensitives, and deep thinkers have shaped history without spectacle, without loud charisma, and without the relentless networking that our world often mistakes for value. Her book is a revelation, affirming that visibility is not the only pathway to impact.
Rest as Rebellion
If Cheng-Tozun’s work offers a quiet validation, Tricia Hersey’s Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto is a battle cry. Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry, reclaims rest as an act of defiance against capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and the relentless grind of modern life. She reminds us that many of our ancestors—especially those who endured slavery, indenture, and forced labour—were denied rest. For generations, rest, if possible, was a stolen luxury.
Reading Hersey, I thought of the women farmworkers, domestic workers, informal traders, and garment workers whose labour sustains us. They rise before dawn and collapse long after nightfall, their exhaustion an inevitable fact of life. Even those of us with steady incomes and professional careers are caught in the churn of productivity, often supported by the invisible labour of others — most often poor women.
Moved by Hersey’s argument, my partner and I conducted a simple experiment: we allowed ourselves to sleep until we naturally woke up. No alarms. No obligations. Just rest. For several nights, we slept more than ten hours — a stark contrast to the six to eight we usually manage. And yet, even after nights of uninterrupted sleep, we did not wake refreshed. The sleep deficit ran too deep. We were not simply catching up on days or weeks of lost sleep. We were contending with something far older: generational exhaustion, ancestral fatigue, and the weight of histories and herstories that never allowed rest as a possibility. Hersey’s manifesto insists that rest is not merely self-care — it is reparative justice. And yet, I cannot ignore the reality that in our current world, rest remains a privilege. Refusing the grind is a function of class and economic privilege. Not everyone has the luxury to resist.
The Urgency of African Feminist Praxis
Even as I resolved to sleep more, African Feminist Praxis: Experiments in Liberatory Worldmaking by East African feminist activist Jessica Horn, who currently heads up the Ford Foundation East Africa Office, and previously worked at the African Women’s Development Fund, pulled me right back into late-night reading marathons. A meticulous and encyclopaedic work, it maps the vast landscape of African feminist thought and organising as a communal, freedom-seeking project.
Horn’s survey of African feminist praxis — rooted in resistance, defiance, refusal, and subversion — documents the intellectual and activist labour of generations of African feminists who continue to fight for liberation against staggering odds. The African feminist intellectual, Pumla Dineo Gqola, who herself has multiple non-fiction books to her name describes African Feminist Praxis, on the book’s back cover, as “meticulous.” I can only agree. It is an extraordinary labour of love, and a cartography of feminist world-building.
As I read, I wondered: how did Horn and these other visionary thinkers and creators find the time to produce such monumental work? How much sleep did they lose to make something so urgent and necessary? And here I am, willingly losing sleep to absorb their brilliance.
Between Sleep and Wakefulness
Books have always cost me sleep, but they have given me far more in return. I may be exhausted, but I am also energized — by Boswell’s cinematic storytelling, Cheng-Tozun’s quiet validation, Hersey’s radical call to rest, and Horn’s liberatory vision of African feminist world-making.
Tonight, once again, a book awaits me. And while sleep calls, I know I will turn just one more page. And then another. And another.
Sarita Ranchod is a South African writer, researcher, and sculptor whose work explores freedom and power through a feminist and decolonial lens. Her writing, spanning creative nonfiction, feminist critique and policy-influential media, engages with colour, class, place, gender and persisting inequalities. She has published in Feminist Africa, Agenda Feminist Journal, the Mail & Guardian, City Press, Rhodes Journalism Review and Huffington Post. Her memoir-style essay, Border Crossings was published in the Commonwealth Writers anthology, Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction. Her sculpture articulates Black feminist beauty as resistance and reclamation. She co-leads Under the Rainbow – Creative Strategies for Positive Change, a feminist social change practice, with Sonja Boezak. Her work, regardless of form or medium, is an ongoing act of storytelling—one that reimagines the world as both freer and more just.