When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided by Race
Synopsis from Barnes & Noble:
During the worst years of official racism in South Africa, the story of one young girl gripped the nation and came to symbolize the injustice, corruption, and arbitrary nature of apartheid. Born in 1955 to a pro-apartheid Afrikaner couple, Sandra Laing was officially registered and raised as a white child. But when she was sent to a boarding school for whites, she was mercilessly persecuted because of her dark skin and frizzy hair. Her parents attributed Sandra’s appearance to an interracial union far back in history; they swore Sandra was their child. Their neighbors, however, thought Mrs. Laing had committed adultery with a black man. The family was shunned. And when Sandra was ten, she was removed from school by the police and reclassified as “coloured.”
As a teenager, Sandra eloped with a black man, and her parents disowned her. The young woman, who had only known the privileged world of the whites, chose to begin again in a poor, rural, all-black township, where life was a desperate, day-to-day struggle against poverty, illness, and a legal system designed to enslave.
I also just finished rereading the Twilight series in pre-movie anticipation and I have to say, as much as I loved reading the series, if you are a human who finds herself in a relationship like Edward and Bellas, SEEK HELP. All romance aside, your boyfriend should not be treating you like an adorable moron and holding you hostage, okay? Some other, more thoughtful, critiques here in an amazon review and here in Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to Read Stephenie Meyer.
2 comments:
hey, let me know what you think of the book. it looks like a good read.
The book was a bit dry at first as it covered the social structure of South Africa at the time, including relevant history but as it got going it was more about Sandra and her story and what she represented. The story wasn't as engrossing as The Glass Castle or other non-fiction memoirs I have read, but it was definitely very interesting and fascinating in some ways, a lot of recent history about South Africa I had never been aware of.
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