Mother to Mother The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and analyze the book "Mother to Mother" by Sindiwe Magona. Specifically, it will critically analyze the book. The book "Mother to Mother" is a touching and elegant story of race relations and misunderstanding in South Africa. The author bases her book on a true incident, but looks at it from the eyes of a mother who loves her son but recognizes his inadequacies. It is a devastating look at apartheid, violence, and anger in a society long split between black and white. Well-written with emotion and pathos, it is a book that discovers the difficulties of reconciliation and continuing with life after the death of a loved one. This emotional book looks at
His mother wryly notes, "We live here, fight and kill each other" (Magona 3). This is an exceptional point in the novel, for the reader understands that the blacks can kill each other all they like, but when they step into the white world, they have crossed a line, and they will pay. Here is another reason the young black men rebel, they know there is a double standard, and the white do not care if they kill each other. It is a depressing and hopeless thought, and it is no wonder the young men lash out with violence and hatred. Magona herself asks the perplexing question, "What was the world of this young woman's killers, the world of those, young as she was young, whose environment failed to nurture them in the higher ideals of humanity and who, instead, became lost creatures of malice and destruction? (Magona, Preface). She answers this throughout the book when she portrays the children on their own over a long weekend when Mandisa's employer kept her instead of sending her home, or when the leave the political meeting chanting "one settler, one bullet." Throughout the book, the differences between blacks and white are continually apparent, and the illustration of the ease of the idealistic young white's girls life, compared to the hardships the blacks face is sometimes difficult to read. The young white girl really has no idea of the conditions in the