Always Another Country

by Sisonke Msimang

Paperback, 2018

Status

Available

Genres

Biography & Memoir

Biography

Politics, Government, Law and Public Policy

General Nonfiction

History

Nonfiction

Publication

World Editions (2018), 368 pages

Description

"Born in exile, in Zambia, to a guerrilla father and a working mother, Sisonke Msimang is constantly on the move. Her parents, talented and highly educated, travel from Zambia to Kenya and Canada and beyond with their young family. Always the outsider, and against a backdrop of racism and xenophobia, Sisonke develops her keenly perceptive view of the world. In this sparkling account of a young girl's path to womanhood, Sisonke interweaves her personal story with her political awakening in America and Africa, her euphoria at returning to the new South Africa, and her disillusionment with the new elites"--

User reviews

LibraryThing member MaowangVater

Msimang’s memoir is a series of biographical essays starting with her parents exile from South Africa. As a member of the outlawed African National Congress military branch her father is considered a terrorist by the White Supremacist government of South Africa. Born in 1974 in Zambia along with

her two younger sisters, where the ANC headquarters in exile were located, her earliest memories, including one of sexual assault, are set in Zambia. From there ger family moves to Kenya, and then Canada. Countries where she encounters formative incidents of class privilege and then racism. She attends college in the United States, where she embraces Black identity, love and romance and their occasionally painful difficulties. She come to South Africa after the institution of majority rule in the 1990s, and eventually moves with her husband to Western Australia.

Both political and personal, Msimang’s reminiscences insights are clear, honest, and powerful. Most interesting to me was her observation that South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, after the end of apartheid left, for members of her generation, a feeling that justice had not been done and this was a hurt that remains unreconciled.

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