SOURCE: "Jump and Other Stories: Gordimer's Leap into the 1990s: Gender and Politics in Her Latest Short Fiction," in Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 18, No. 4, December, 1992, pp. 783-802.

In the following essay, Lazar examines Gordimer's attitude toward Feminism as evidenced in her short fiction collection.

There is something of a critical lacuna in relation to Nadine Gordimer's short fiction when compared with the extensive and scholarly criticism available on her novels. My aim is to go some way towards filling this gap, focusing on the anthology which came out more or less simultaneously with Gordimer's winning of the Nobel Prize and which has arguably received more readerly attention than her other anthologies. I examine Jump And Other Stories (hereafter Jump) in relation to its historical moment and in relation to the short fiction which precedes it in her oeuvre. Gordimer's trajectory on questions of race and class...