MATHABANE

		MATHABANE.COM KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
HOME Order Books Arrange Lectures Free Articles Sponsor a Student Order Serialized Chapters The Poet's Corner Famous Speeches Vocabulary Builder World News PREFACES Kaffir Boy Miriam's Song African Women Love in Black & White Deadly Memory The Last Liberal FIRST CHAPTERS Kaffir Boy Ubuntu Kaffir Boy in America Miriam's Song African Women Love in Black & White Deadly Memory The Last Liberal DUST-JACKET & REVIEWS Kaffir Boy Kaffir Boy in America African Women Love in Black & White CONTACT E-mail Feedback Author's Bio		KAFFIR BOY Reviews "Like Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land ... in every way as important and exciting." — The Washington Post "This is a rare look inside the festering adobe shanties of Alexandra, one of South Africa's notorious black townships. Rare because it comes ... from the heart of a passionate young African who grew up there." — Chicago Tribune Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa's most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage. Like every other child born in the hopelessness of apartheid, he learned to measure his life in days, not years. Yet Mark Mathabane, armed only with the courage of his family and a hard-won education, raised himself up from the squalor and humiliation to win a scholarship to an American university. This extraordinary memoir of life under apartheid is a triumph of the human spirit over hatred and unspeakable degradation. For Mark Mathabane did what no physically and psychologically battered "Kaffir" from the rat-infested alleys of Alexandra was supposed to do — he escaped to tell about it. "Powerful, intense, inspiring." — Publishers Weekly
		Review excerpts on the first page: Granny, a major influence on my life, holding her grandchild "An eloquent cry from the land of silent people, where blacks are assigned by whites to a permanent role of inferiority." — John Barkham Reviews "Compelling, chilling, authentic ... an emotionally charged explanation of how it felt to grow up under South Africa's system of legalized racism known as apartheid." — Milwaukee Sentinel "Despite the South African government's creation of a virtually impenetrable border between black and white lives, this searing autobiography breaches that boundary, drawing readers into the turmoil, terror, and sad stratagems for survival in a black township." — Foreign Affairs "Told with relentless honesty ... the reader is given a rare personal glimpse behind the televised protests and boycotts, of the daily fear and hunger which is devastating to both body and soul." — The Christian Science Monitor The courts in my hometown of Alexandra where I learned the game of tennis which ultimately became my passport to freedom "A chilling, gruesome, brave memoir ... Mathabane provides a straightforward, harrowing account of apartheid as it is practiced." — Kirkus Reviews Note: The word "Kaffir" is of Arabic origin. It means "infidel." In South Africa it is used pejoratively by whites to refer to blacks. It is the equivalent of the word "nigger." Read Preface Read Chapter One If you'd like to order an autographed copy of Kaffir Boy, simply click on this red button. top of page All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2000 mathabane.com