Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona Analysis free essay sample

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 both sides of a young white womans murder in a black township in South Africa. The book begins with the haunting line My son killed your daughter (Magona 1), and that line grabs the reader from the beginning, and makes them want to learn more about the two families and their responsibilities to themselves, and the their community. We will write a custom essay sample on Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona Analysis or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The book covers only two days chronologically, but the author skillfully uses flashbacks to look back on her life and the life of her son, to illustrate the hatred and violence at work in South African society that created such a monster as her son and the other killers. The mother is not unaware that her child has turned into something she cannot control, but she is also aware that the lifestyle of poor blacks in a dominant white society has been the spark that created the fire under the murderers. Coming from a life without hope, how can they see anything else for themselves? The fictional mother understands the white familys grief, but she is also strong enough to stand up and place part of the blame on their daughter, who walked straight into a deadly situation. She chides the couple, Yes, the more I think about this the more convinced I am that your daughter must have been the type of person who has absolutely no sense of danger when she believes in what she is doing (Magona 2). This is a difficult position for any mother to take, but in recognizing the truth of the matter, she is not only healing herself, she is standing up to the white family and saying that their daughter was a responsible adult. Clearly, she should have known the dangers of what she was doing, rather than looking at her situation only idealistically. Mandisa, the mother in the story, does not make excuses for her son, she knows his act was reprehensible, but she does understand his young life has been filled with despair, betrayal, and difficulty. She notes, Understand the people among whom he has lived all his life. Nothing my son does surprises me any more. Not after that first unbelievable shock, his implanting himself inside me; unreasonably and totally destroying the me I was. The me I would have become (Magona). Mandisa gave birth to her son when she was only fifteen, and it changed her life, just as it would change the young white girls life eventually. In an interview about the book, author Magona elaborates: It is a well-known fact that children of children are at high risk of not finishing school. Mandisa is a perfect example of the success of apartheidshe is the perfect product of that systemher talent is stillborn; so is that of her children. Society will never benefit from the gifts they brought to the world. I firmly believe no child is born without potential. Thus, by neglecting the young, we deny ourselves great blessings and rewards (Gray). Her son is fighting out against a system that kept his people oppressed for decades, and it is no surprise that he fights back with violence, which is really the only weapon he has. 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 womans 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 Mandisas 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 whites girls life, compared to the hardships the blacks face is someti mes difficult to read. The young white girl really has no idea of the conditions in the townships, and if she did, she would never have placed herself there in harms way. Resented by blacks, she was not doing good, she was an idealistic fool. Despite the best of intentions, this book shows there were simply too many differences separating blacks and whites in South Africa for a young white girl and her friends to make any progress in stalling apartheid.