Cape Town poet and actress Khadija Heeger, 56, says her latest book Thicker Than Sorrow is all about appreciating and honouring her roots and unearthing her history.
She performed at the Cape Flats Book Festival on Sunday at West End Primary in Mitchells Plain, where she highlighted mental health awareness.
The first poem in the book is called Where I come from, which Heeger says is self-explanatory.
“In general, this collection of poems is really about a growing love and appreciation for all of the ancestral lines and roots that I have and exist in my community,” she explains.
“Whether it be Khoi, Asian, East Asian or African, it is appreciation for this thing the apartheid government decided to call coloured.
“For many young people it is not a derogatory term, but for us who are older and who lived through apartheid, that term is extremely insulting.
“There is a poem in the book that talks about that particular term.”
You might know Heeger from your television screens as she has featured in a number of soaps – she played Mayor Tilla Cloete in Arendvlei and Ouma Motta on 7de Laan.
October being mental health month, Heeger speaks candidly about her struggles and having to spend time in a psychiatric hospital, and how the arts saved her.
“Art is always a form of expression, it doesn’t matter what artistic form it is,” she says. “Society makes it wrong for people to talk about how they feel.
“I have no problem sitting through my mental issues, regardless if you are an institution or in the mainstream, we always have things we need to deal with.”
Thicker Than Sorrow cost R180 and is available from leading book retailers.