Frustratingly sketchy as a biography, but a good portrait of the absurdities of apartheid and the grievous harm it inflicted.
O magazine contributing editor Stone tries to piece together the story of a South African woman whose racial classification under apartheid was changed three times.
Born in 1955 to Afrikaner parents who repeatedly swore that she was their biological child, Sandra Laing was raised as white until the age of ten, when she was sent home from boarding school because she appeared to be of mixed blood. Her father fought her reclassification as “Coloured” under the country’s Population Registration Act and succeeded in having her reclassified as “White” when she was 11. But at 15, Laing ran away with Petrus Zwane, a married, 25-year-old black man who took her to Swaziland. The text shows her to be unable or unwilling to articulate her motives for leaving home, though Stone tried hard to elicit them and speculates that fear of her harsh, unaffectionate, pro-apartheid father may have been one. Although life in Swaziland was hard, Laing found acceptance and affection there, especially from Petrus’s mother. She left Petrus when he became abusive, but stayed in the black community and asked to be reclassified as Coloured so that she would not risk losing her children. She lived with other black men and had more children, giving up three of them to the welfare system for several years when she was unable to care for them. When Stone contacted her, she was in her 40s and had from time to time been filmed and interviewed by journalists—to the chagrin of her white brothers and parents. The author had a hard time getting coherent information from Laing, who provided contradictory versions of significant events and relationships in her life, as well as her feelings about them.
Frustratingly sketchy as a biography, but a good portrait of the absurdities of apartheid and the grievous harm it inflicted.Pub Date: April 4, 2007
ISBN: 0-7868-6898-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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