Customer Reviews

MOTHER TO MOTHER

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I just spent my summer doing an internship teaching mothers from a squatter camp English literacy. Mother to Mother is one of the most impactful books I read while there. This book explains South Africa and the many complexities and discouraging factors that plague the beloved country. It has an excellent way of showing the heartache that a mother feels and the powerlessness of a mother to control her sons actions, but the unconditional love that a mother has for her child. I am very impressed by this book and would encourage everyone to read it. It will help you understand why things are the way they are in that country. It is easy to judge people, but this book puts the blacks actions into perspective. I love this book.

Ms Magona explains without any excuses why Mxolisi is a murderer. As a mother during apartheid the possibilities for Mandisa, Mxolisi's mother to direct her son's future did not exist. Mxolisi grew up in an enviroment where whites equal sorrow, death, distraction, poverty to name but a few. He never got the oppurtunity to grow up knowing that there are people like Amy Biehl. There are people who do look at blacks, as human beings. No mother comes from the hospital with a murderer in her arms. Every child deserves a chance, read the book to find out what Mxolisi's chances were. The book will take you on a tour of South Africa, it's past, and the possibilities of the future.

In Sindiwe Magona's Mother to Mother, the old cliché put yourself in my shoes takes an interesting and unheard of twist. It is an excellent novel that gives impelling testimony of history as a basis for the actions of youth. In the story she is the mother of an accused murderer speaking to the mother of the victim. She tries to explain her and her son's history so the mother of the victim could understand why or how her son would kill her daughter. At a glance you would think what! Or how dare she! But because Magona goes into such depth of her peoples' background and uses first person throughout the novel, you will find yourself empathizing with the trials of her people.

This book is riveting. The mother-daughter relationship is powerful. The mother-son relationship is heart wrenching and warming. I felt the pain of blacks in South Africa. The understandable rage of teens in an oppressive environment is so clearly described. The human spirit that helps people survive even the most miserable conditions is a thread through this book as well. This book is a powerful read. I feel like I have been given a window on the human condition.

Mother to Mother tugs at the heartstrings as it reveals the anguish that this mother experiences on developing and raising up her family under the harsh apartheid system of government in South Africa. It is a real eye-opener as the author takes the reader on a journey into the homes of families uprooted by change.

Drawing from the 1993 killing of Amy Biehl in apartheid-era South Africa, Mother to Mother, a novel by Sindiwe Magona, shares with us a different perspective. Literature about murders of white people by black people tend to avoid the women in the killer's life - unless it's framed in terms of pathology. In Native Sun, for instance, the women were silent [as well as the first to be killed]. It is very rare for such women to be allowed to narrate their own life stories. With her quietly powerful novel, Magona has changed that dynamic.

From the author's preface (abbreviated):

Fulbright scholar Amy Elizabeth Biehl was set upon and killed by a mob of black youth in Guguletu, South Africa in August 1993. The outpouring of grief, outrage and support for the Biehl family was unprecedented in the history of the country.

[---]

In my novel, there is only one killer. Through his mother's memories, we get a glimpse of human callousness of the kind that made the murder of Amy Biehl possible. And here I am back in the legacy of apartheid - a system repressive and brutal, that bred senseless inter- and intra-racial violence as well as other nefarious happenings; a system that promoted a twisted sense of right and wrong, with everything seen through the warped prism of the overarching crime against humanity, as the international community labelled it.

The mother, Mandisa, had her oldest child, Mxolisi - the one who, through his actions, catapults her into narration - when she was a 15 year old school girl. It has to be noted that, at the time of her pregnancy. Mandisa was a virgin. The inclusion of an African immaculate conception raises immediate questions concerning Magona's intent. Was it by design - the correlation between Mary and Mandisa and Jesus and Mxolisi. Or was it simply happenstance - a byproduct of the story line? Considering that Mother to Mother is Magona's first novel (although not her first book), the latter might be more legitimate.

The legitimacy of the questions, however. is overshadowed by the undeniable fact that both Mxolisi and Jesus were instrumental in bringing about changes in their respective status quos. As a result of the crucifixion of Jesus, Christianity became a potent force in the world. Subsequent to the killing of Amy Biehl, the death knoll for apartheid - which had been slowly but steadily ringing for decades - increased in volume to the point that it no longer was a "knoll" but a toyi toyi, the martial dance which symbolized the determination of South Africa's majority black population to never again live as a disenfranchised minority.

Going the Jesus route, however, in explaining the murder of Biehl sidesteps the question Mandisa herself asks, over and over again.

What was she doing, vagabonding all over Gugulethu, of all places; taking her foot where she had no business? Where did she think she was going? Was she blind not to see there were no white people in this place?

Or does it? Did Amy Biehl demonstrate a god complex by treading where no white person went? Did she think her presence in South Africa as a well meaning white person assisting with the transition to a democratically elected government would protect her from repercussions of apartheid? Was she so divorced from the harsh reality that produced slogans like one settler, one bullet that she thought it perfectly logically to drive her black companions to Gugulethu?

There will probably never be a definitive answer to such questions. However, Mandisa herself provides a perspective - one that both reinforces the primacy of her life as well as highlights of the consequences of disconnectedness.

Now, your daughter has paid for the sins of the fathers and mothers who did not do their share of seeing that my son had a life worth living.

Mother to Mother (Bluestreak)

Mother to Mother is one of the best books I have ever read! I truly enhoyed it. I had to read for a South African Lit course at my college. It was my favorite and I even did a research paper on it. I highly recommend it to all- because it gives a very different perspective on a tragic situation. A side of the story very rarely encountered when one is not the "victim."