Miriam's Song: A Memoir [Paperback]

Mark Mathabane (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 12, 2001

Mark Mathabane first came to prominence with the publication of Kaffir Boy, which became a New York Times bestseller. His story of growing up in South Africa was one of the most riveting accounts of life under apartheid. Mathabane's newest book, Miriam's Song, is the story of Mark's sister, who was left behind in South Africa. It is the gripping tale of a woman -- representative of an entire generation -- who came of age amid the violence and rebellion of the 1980s and finally saw the destruction of apartheid and the birth of a new, democratic South Africa.

Mathabane writes in Miriam's voice based on stories she told him, but he has re-created her unforgettable experience as only someone who also lived through it could. The immediacy of the hardships that brother and sister endured -- from daily school beatings to overwhelming poverty -- is balanced by the beauty of their childhood observations and the true affection that they have for each other.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Mark Mathabane, the author of Kaffir Boy, helps recount the life of his sister, who remained behind in South Africa after he left and witnessed its struggle to throw off apartheid.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

From the South African–born Mathabane (Kaffir Boy, 1986; African Women, 1994, etc.) comes this unsparingly graphic account of his sister's growing up in the last days of apartheid--when violence turned black townships into killing fields and schooling ceased as young Comrades insisted on liberation before education. The story told by Miriam, now studying in the US, is a searing indictment of the violence to women engendered both by apartheid and by traditional African attitudes. Both quashed human potential and aspirations, and good daughters and students like Miriam were as penalized as their more recalcitrant sisters. Born in 1969 and raised in Alexandria, a sprawling black township to the north of Johannesburg, Miriam offers vivid details of township life: the food eaten (a whole chicken was an undreamed-of luxury), the small houses (spotless despite the number of people living in them), and the ubiquitous scrawny dogs picking over the uncollected trash. She describes growing up as the middle daughter in a family made dysfunctional by circumstance. Her illiterate father, unable to find better-paying jobs, is often unemployed, drinks, gambles away their food money, and beats the children; her mother, a devout Christian, lacks the proper documentation and also has employment problems; and her elder brother steals Miriam's savings. The black schools are poorly equipped, the teachers are sadistic, and Miriam (who wants to become a nurse) soon finds her ambition thwarted by the times and by custom. A teenager in the 1980s, when anti-government violence made life in townships dangerous, she has to stay home when the schools are forced to close. Then, in a society where black men traditionally are free to do as they please (to take 13-year-old girls for wives, for example, as one of her uncle does), she is raped by her boyfriend and finds herself pregnant. But brother Mark, who has used his tennis talents as a passport to the US and success, will change Miriam's life. A moving story of a survivor, but Miriam herself often seems more a reporter recalling an eventful past than a reflective memoirist. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1st Touchstone Ed edition (June 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743203240
• ISBN-13: 978-0743203241
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #898,341 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mark Mathabane does it again!, July 8, 2000

By 

Dr. Gilbert Huffman (Mount Airy, N.C. United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Miriam's Song: A Memoir (Hardcover)

MIRIAM'S SONG is the heartbreaking, but hauntingly beautiful, story of a black girl's struggle to overcome the difficulties of living in South Africa under apartheid to achieve her one goal in life. Her brother, Mark Mathabane, writing in the first person present tense, reveals the horrors of living in a ghetto of Alexandra where poverty, filth, violence, abuse, and fear are everyday occurrences.

In spite of a dysfunctional family headed by an abusive father more interested in buying alcohol for himself than food for his family of eight living in a two-room shack with an open sewer in the front door, Miriam is determined to get an education. The Bantu (Black) Education system is staffed by cruel teachers who are more interested in clean hands and fingernails, combed hair, and clean bloomers (or if they have bloomers) than the quality of education in overcrowded, and understaffed classroom with inadequate teaching materials. Miriam is encouraged by her mother to do her best to succeed in spite of the handicaps.

The book is a social commentary on a society where women are subservient to men, where polygamy is the accepted way, and where physical, mental, and sexual abuse are a way of life in the ghettos. Miriam resides in a culture where witchcraft, divination, and the casting of spells are accepted, and she and her mother are criticized for attending church services.

MIRIAM'S SONG is also a commentary on the conditions blacks endure in a country where they make up a vast majority of the population but have no voice in the government. The author skillfully paints a vivid picture of the struggle for equality and how peaceful strikes, stayaways, and demonstrations give way to violence and to the eventual triumphant overthrow of the white-only government.

Even though MIRIAM'S SONG recounts some of the struggles Mark Mathabane wrote about in KAFFIR BOY, it should join his earlier work on the list of required reading for students throughout the world. It is must reading for anyone interested in human rights and the struggle to overcome apartheid in South Africa. It reads like a novel but carries the impact of an atomic bomb.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable woman, her brother, and the Family he saved., July 3, 2000

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Miriam's Song: A Memoir (Hardcover)

This is the first I have ever read of the Mathabane Family and their remarkable accomplishments despite the contrived, race-based evil that was Apartheid. For this book to be referred to as "defused and vague" causes one to wonder what horrors constitute clarity, and how graphic must descriptions be of tortured children (by the government), rape, murder, and a uniquely gruesome form of killing referred to as being "necklaced" to satisfy the voyeur. "Unsparingly graphic" is succinct, accurate, and sorrowfully true.

Apartheid was another example of how deranged one group can be to another, and happily its ultimate fate was to become the abortion of hatred that it was, but during its reign prior to its predestined death, the horror it caused was epic. I felt I was fairly informed about the topic, this book proved that feeling to be very wrong.

"Bantu Education" will forever be a monument to the manner an enlightened minority was determined to keep the majority "in their place". Despite this system of abuse, humiliation, and a goal to keep a people ignorant, the oppressed broke the system's back. Whether it was a man spending 25 years in prison only to emerge as a World Figure, or students like Miriam who just would not quit, the delusion the minority of whites so badly wanted, was appropriately destroyed.

The story that Miriam relates through her Brother opened up new realities of Apartheid I was unaware of. The large demonstrations that became a fixture on World news were composed partly of students "impressed" like soldiers centuries ago into participating. Refusing to participate could court death. The treatment of women specifically and in general was again a horror, and one that was implemented not by the government but by the anarchy that reigned in the ghetto. Some was clearly based on tradition, tribal conflict, and superstition, but none of it was justifiable.

Mark managed to gain his way to the USA, and once here never forgot his family. With the help of some well-known celebrities he brought his Family to the United States. His best-selling book "Kaffir Boy" not only supported his Family until they could be brought to the USA, but brought even more attention to the malignancy that was Apartheid

I am glad they made it, I thank those who helped them, and I believe the spirit that kept them alive makes them a great addition to this Country, not only as citizens, but role models.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eye opening book, July 8, 2001

By 

Gowie "gowie" (CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Miriam's Song: A Memoir (Paperback)

How nice it is to sit in our American homes and vaguely read of the troubles of South Africa. I am ashamed to have never paid more attention to this subject. This is a riveting book that takes you past the superficial headlines and into the lives of the blacks who suffered under apartheid.

The Mathabane family lives in a suburb of Johannesburg, in a one-square mile ghetto that is home to over 200,000 people (400,000 by the end of the book). Employment is hard to come by--for one to work, one must have a permit. But to get a permit, one must have a job.

Their home is a two room shack, where four of the children sleep on the kitchen floor. There is a communal tap outside. Raw sewage runs in the street outside their door. Black children are only allowed to be taught certain subjects in a certain manner, and Miriam and her classmates are routinely beaten for any infraction--mistakes in schoolwork, uncombed hair, nails that are dirty/too long, wearing dirty bloomers, or not wearing bloomers at all. (These people live in complete poverty, and it was not uncommon for children to not have underwear.) The young teenage girls are easy targets of sexual abuse. Many become pregnant, single mothers, unable to finish school.

While the story is unbelievably horrifying, their outlook is one of constant hope and faith. I am unable to get this family out of my mind, and I will be reading Mark Mathabane's autobiographical books as soon as I get my hands on them...This is an amazing story of how people in other parts of the world live. I strongly recommend this book.