For Your Bookshelf: COLOURED – How Classification Became Culture
Tessa Dooms and Lynsey Ebony Chutel shed light on the often forgotten, erased roots of Coloured people.
For too long, the identity of Coloured people in South Africa has been dismissed as fragmented, incomplete, and undefined.
Authors: Tessa Dooms, Lynsey Ebony Chutel
Genres: Non-fiction
Format: Paperback
Pages: 210 pages
Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers
Published: 2023
Book Details
The story of Coloured people in South Africa has often been reduced to silence — defined more by what we are not than what we truly are. Caught in the crossfire of history’s oppressive forces, we’ve been told for years that we don’t have a place, a history, or a culture that matters. The reality is far different.
Tessa Dooms and Lynsey Ebony Chutel take a deep dive into the complex, often painful origins of the Coloured community, which blends African, Indigenous, and colonial legacies into a unique story of survival. They explore how centuries of slavery and colonialism shaped us, but also how these forces couldn’t destroy our spirit. Far from lacking culture, Coloured people have created traditions — through food, music, and everyday acts of defiance — that have endured through the hardest of times.
This book invites those within our community to reflect on their heritage and claim it fully, while challenging the outside world to recognise the immense value of these identities. It’s an invitation to understand the richness of the Coloured experience, not as a shadow of someone else’s history, but as an integral part of South Africa’s future.
Meet The Authors
Tessa Dooms is a director at Rivonia Circle and a trustee at Kagiso Trust, specialising in sociology, political analysis, and development. Lynsey Ebony Chutel works as a reporter for the New York Times, with experience across South African and international media platforms. Both are from Eldorado Park, Johannesburg.
About The Author
