Customer Reviews

Forced to Grow

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The author tells her story, which has had a lot of strife in her native land. She is a black woman in South Africa, during the unrest, and aparthid. The story does tell how she helped the black movement in South Africa.

The story also tells of a woman who leaves the raising of her children to her mother and her neighbors. She works, which is what many women do all over the world, however, she also leaves her children in the poverty and descrimination to take several trips out of her country, eventually getting a Master's degee in the US. We don't hear the story of the children, who are left in a black neighborhood, without electricity or indoor plumbing. We do not hear of the conditions they live in. We do hear of her going to school, of going to developed countries to continue her education, while her children are left behind, with no schooling, as the schools were not able to keep going during the unrest.

Yes, she did work for what she got, but while she was being flown around the world to conferences, most of the people of her country were living on much less per year than her air fare.

To me, it was a very selfish book, one where the author showed how she put herself before all else. It was a great dissapointment, while she worked to get her education, and get jobs, it seemed that after that, she left the past, including her family behind her. I was hoping for more of how changes were made in the country, if changes helped the people of the country, if the children who were not educated were ever educated and able to obtain positions above an existance, or if yet another generation was left with the ravages of the war, with not much to show for it.