Mother to Mother - Softcover

Magona, Sindiwe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807009482 ISBN 13: 9780807009482

Publisher: Beacon Pr, 1999

Synopsis

A fictional account of the real-life murder of Amy Biehl, a Fulbright scholar helping to organize free elections in Guguleta, South Africa

About this title

About the Author

After leaving the black township of Guguletu, South Africa, Sindiwe Magona earned her master's degree at Columbia University. She currently lives in New York, where she works at the United Nations. She has contributed to The New York Times and her work has been anthologized in Under African Skies.

From Kirkus Reviews

A black South African writer, now New Yorkbased, debuts with a novel that, as it seeks to explain the real-life 1993 murder of young American Amy Biehl, is often more an angry indictment of apartheid (justified) and of whites in general (less justified). Biehl was an idealistic Fulbright Scholar who, while working on a democracy project, was dragged from her car in a black township and stabbed to death by a mob of young blacks. The Biehl family has been remarkably forgiving, though the youths were subsequently released. The narrative takes the form of an imaginary letter written to the young womans mother by Mandisa, the mother of one of the accused, 20-year-old Mxolisi. She attempts to elucidate why her gentle son became a killer, recalling her own childhood and the brutal relocation of her entire community to Guguletu, a segregated area in a barren place far from the city. At 15, she accidentally became pregnantwhich, as much as apartheid, led to a hard life for both mother and son: Mandisa, forced to leave school, became a maid and reared Mxolisi alone. Eventually, bright Mxolisi also dropped out of school, in his case because Mandisa could no longer afford his textbooks. He was soon active in the ``No Education Before Liberation'' movement of the late 1980s, as black children left the classrooms for the streets to protest apartheid in increasingly violent ways. Popular and gifted, he became a leader of the gang that would turn murderous. The story, a heartfelt brief in support of a son and a lost generation, has a vehement, polemical tone. Whites are described as the ``scourge `' that must be removed; Mandisa tells Mrs. Biehl that ``people like your daughter have no inborn sense of fear. They so believe in their goodness'' that it ``blinker(s) their perception.'' The prose is also uneven, and the voice far too sophisticated for a narrator of supposedly limited education. A disappointing take on a vital, relevant subject. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Beacon Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0807009482
• ISBN 13: 9780807009482
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 210