Overview

"The classic story of life in apartheid South Africa 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."

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9781455157235

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Reviews

Kaffir Boy does for apartheid-era South Africa what Richard Wright's Black Boy did for the segregated American South...Mathabane reveals [that] troubled world on these pages in a way that only someone who has lived this life can. -- Amazon.com editorial review The autobiography of a young South African urban black growing up under apartheid depicts a struggle for survival under conditions of overwhelming brutality and deprivation...The searing indictment of the apartheid system stems from personal experience and social observation. An essential purchase. -- Booklist (starred review) Those needing graphic confirmation of the harrowing experience of growing up poor and black in apartheid South Africa will find it in Mathabane's autobiography...Mathabane writes with compelling energy, and the details of his struggle will grip readers with immediate intensity. His story, while only one side, is a microcosm of the black African's fight for independence. -- School Library Journal In this powerful account of growing up black in South Africa, a young writer makes us feel intensely the horrors of apartheid. -- Publishers Weekly 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 Like...Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land...In every way as important and exciting. -- Washington Post

The autobiography of a young South African urban black growing up under apartheid depicts a struggle for survival under conditions of overwhelming brutality and deprivation...The searing indictment of the apartheid system stems from personal experience and social observation. An essential purchase. -- Booklist (starred review) In this powerful account of growing up black in South Africa, a young writer makes us feel intensely the horrors of apartheid. -- Publishers Weekly Like...Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land...In every way as important and exciting. -- Washington Post Kaffir Boy does for apartheid-era South Africa what Richard Wright's Black Boy did for the segregated American South...Mathabane reveals [that] troubled world on these pages in a way that only someone who has lived this life can. -- Amazon.com editorial review Those needing graphic confirmation of the harrowing experience of growing up poor and black in apartheid South Africa will find it in Mathabane's autobiography...Mathabane writes with compelling energy, and the details of his struggle will grip readers with immediate intensity. His story, while only one side, is a microcosm of the black African's fight for independence. -- School Library Journal 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

Author Information

Mark Mathabane was born and raised in the ghetto of Alexandra in South Africa. He is the author of Kaffir Boy, Kaffir Boy in America, Love in Black and White, African Women: Three Generations, Miriam's Song, and The Proud Liberal. He lectures at schools and colleges nationwide on race relations, education, and our common humanity. He lives with his family in Portland, Oregon.

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