Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.09 AVERAGE
4.09 AVERAGE
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
I don't really want to/ can rate this book, so I just won't. This is a very powerful book (I cried several times) and I feel like people should read it. I don't really have anything else to say, I'm sorry. It just feels weird to review this like any other book
South Africa's transition from apartheid to a democracy was difficult and complicated. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was one way to bridge the gap and unite the country. Antjie Krog was a journalist who followed the commission around the country, listening to both victims and perpetrators stories. Here she not only recounts their stories, but her own experiences and opinions of the commissions work. She eloquently gives expression to both victims and perpetrators and did an admirable job in showing the complexities of the commission and the reaction of the public. The TRC received more criticisms than praise, and Krog did a good job in showing why this was the case.
[mother identifying her dead son...] I asked them, "Show me the mark on his chin, then I will know it's my son." They showed me the mark on his chin, and I said: "It's not my son."I've never taken an ethics course, but in my ignorant imagination of that field, I see an entire ethics course simply going through every last point this book raises. But it would probably have to span several semesters, maybe several years, because there's so much here to think about. Has there ever been a harder or more human task than the one the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed to address? The one that Antjie Krog attempts to write about from the inside out? Every testimony, every question, every decision to forgive or not to forgive is wrapped in the messy details of painful personal and political histories. Of frailty, weakness, judgement. Very little here is cut and dry, though there are perpetrators and there are victims.
Will a Commission be sensitive to the word 'truth'? If its interest in truth is linked only to amnesty and compensation, then it will have chosen not truth, but justice. If it sees truth as the widest possible compilation of people's perceptions, stories, myths and experiences, it will have chosen to restore memory and foster a new humanity, and perhaps that is justice in its deepest sense.Questions loom above the individual incidents, and the questions are not simply who was right and who was wrong. Questions such as--how does a nation heal? How do we reconcile when there is no ideal past to reconcile back to? How do we get past the bitterness? What is the purpose of a reconciliation commission? Will it become a witch hunt? Is it just a publicity stunt or will the truth come out? Is it truth we're after or justice and what's the difference? Does the larger goal matter, if it is a noble one, does it justify smaller cruelties? How does a journalist write about such events--or an artist? Should she stick to the facts, or insert her artistic license to bring out the truth behind the facts?
I hesitate at the word [“truth”], I am not used to using it. Even when I type it, it ends up as either turth or trth. I have never bedded that word in a poem. I prefer the word 'lie'. The moment the lie raises its head, I smell blood. Because it is there… where the truth is closest."And that's not even going into racial and women's rights issues--which as you can imagine are both front and center as well.
Mthintso says a man who didn't break under torture was respected by the police. 'There was a sense of respect, where the torturers would even say – “He is a man.” But a woman's refusal to bow down would unleash the wrath of the torturers. Because in their own discourse a woman, a black meid, a kaffermeid at that, had no right to have the strength to withstand them.Though the book could easily have turned into a mind-numbing litany of wrongs, and it would have been justified in doing so too, it wasn't. Antjie Krog goes above and beyond relaying testimonies, beyond the duties of an impartial un-biased fair-and-balanced journalist, into the territory of thinking, feeling, occasionally dead-wrong human-being. She wrestles with each idea, with each personal and national struggle in a chameleon-like display of writing that can at times be insightful, inspiring, poetic, analytic, emotional, political, historical, and even humorous--but always thinking and feeling deeply. What I really appreciated was that she did not disconnect from the pain, but faced it full on with all she had even though it was sometimes not enough. I appreciated that she was a white Afrikaner woman, that she was not some outside journalist, but someone highly invested and inside the process trying to work out the pain of her own nation.
It has to be this part of the country that turns us inside out, that renders us: bare lips. It has to be this region of fierce opposites—meadows & plains, waterfalls & dongas, ferns & aloes—that sparks from a speechless darkness the voices of the past. And at long last, flicking cigarette ash from our shoulders, we can weep in the certainty of this April; in the assurance of the testimony of fellow South Africans.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Deeply moving, lyrical and politically engaged--she explores complex issues with delicacy and honesty.
I am going to purchase a hard copy of this book. I need to have one to lend out to people. I have loved this book, and cried for the stories portrayed within. If you want a human grasp on the horrors of South Africa during Apartheid, this is you book. Written by a poet/journalist/Afrikaner. It is a great wrestle with truth, guilt, and reconciliation. Highly. Highly recommend.
A journalists-eye view of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
I'm reading it 20 years after the TRC submitted its report to the president, so it's a bit late. Several people have mentioned it to me, and I've been told it is the definitive book on the TRC, so when I saw it in the library I thought I'd better read it.
As a record of the findings of the TRC it is rather disjointed and confusing. There are lots of out-of-context accounts of atrocities that give a vivid picture of the nasty things that people will do to each other in pursuit of a political aim or idea, or perhaps just because of genera nastiness and sadism. And the accounts show the effects on those who suffered as a result. But there is not enough context given to give a coherent picture. I would therefore say that it fails as journalism, if the aim was to help people understand the history of what happened, of the events that the TRC was investigating.
It does, however, tell somewhat more about the effects that hearing of these atrocities had on the people who heard about them, including the journalists themselves. In that sense it is rather introspective. So it's not the story of South Africa, but rather the story of the story. To the extent that the TRC itself is part of the story of South Africa, I suppose it is part of the wider story, but perhaps I was expecting too much.
I'm reading it 20 years after the TRC submitted its report to the president, so it's a bit late. Several people have mentioned it to me, and I've been told it is the definitive book on the TRC, so when I saw it in the library I thought I'd better read it.
As a record of the findings of the TRC it is rather disjointed and confusing. There are lots of out-of-context accounts of atrocities that give a vivid picture of the nasty things that people will do to each other in pursuit of a political aim or idea, or perhaps just because of genera nastiness and sadism. And the accounts show the effects on those who suffered as a result. But there is not enough context given to give a coherent picture. I would therefore say that it fails as journalism, if the aim was to help people understand the history of what happened, of the events that the TRC was investigating.
It does, however, tell somewhat more about the effects that hearing of these atrocities had on the people who heard about them, including the journalists themselves. In that sense it is rather introspective. So it's not the story of South Africa, but rather the story of the story. To the extent that the TRC itself is part of the story of South Africa, I suppose it is part of the wider story, but perhaps I was expecting too much.
An incredibly, powerful and moving account of newly post-apartheid South Africa. Although based on factual events, in this book Krog is free to remove objective constraints and write about the emotional impact on the lives of the people who underwent so much trauma. Written primarily as a 1st person narrative, and yet discussing the TRC proceedings, Krog makes an interesting new genre of factual novel.
It is incredibly difficult to read, the prose is simple enough, but that simplicity and clear elucidation of the distress of not only the participants in the TRC but the reporters as well, makes it very hard to emotionally disengage from the words, and is thereby difficult to read.
It is not wholly a depressing read though as it promtes the redemptive power in the admission of guilt and fear. It is essentially an exposure to the core morality of human beings, and the consequences of a restrictive unethical regime.
It is incredibly difficult to read, the prose is simple enough, but that simplicity and clear elucidation of the distress of not only the participants in the TRC but the reporters as well, makes it very hard to emotionally disengage from the words, and is thereby difficult to read.
It is not wholly a depressing read though as it promtes the redemptive power in the admission of guilt and fear. It is essentially an exposure to the core morality of human beings, and the consequences of a restrictive unethical regime.