Language

• In her novel, the author Sindiwe Magona incorporates other text elements such as excerpts of the Xhosa click language and traditional songs as well as ancestral tales of her ancestors into the narrative
• In this way, she enables the reader to get a more comprehensive impression of her and her son's life story and situation by not limiting herself to a continuous text in the novel
• By including sections such as the legend of the South African prophetess Nongqawuse (p. 177ff) in the novel, Magona highlights the deep roots that bind the black South African population to their ancestors and the pride and heritage that is deeply embedded in their genes
• Magona is passing on knowledge about the origins of South African culture and history functions on the one hand as an educational vehicle for the reading public and on the other hand as a manifestation of the sense of South African identity
• The dominance of white rule over coloured South Africans is not only evident in the government's oppression and discrimination, but also in more subtle indicators. The example of Mxolisi's mother illustrates that white South Africans place themselves above black South Africans: Her supervisor and boss Mrs. Nelson, for example, refuses to call Mandisa by her actual name. Mrs. Nelson says "she can't say any of [the] native names because of the clicks" (p. 20, l. 4f) and therefore calls her the American name "Mandy" (p. 20, l. 2)

Genre

• Literary fiction novel: Based on a true event, the tragic murder of American Amy Biehl in 1993, Mother to Mother contains both fictional and realistic elements
• In the case of the present work, we are dealing with a hybrid consisting of a novel and a fictional narrative. Usually, the literary genres of novel and fiction demarcate themselves from each other, but it is also feasible for a prose text, such as Mother to Mother, to incorporate fictional elements
• While the main event in the novel actually took place like this in 1993, author Sindiwe Magona adds imaginary details to present the events in context. Consequently, all of Mandisa's statements are fictional, whereby the truth of African legends is not to be doubted here, but only the personal additions are made up

Storytelling

• Narrators perspective: Mother to Mother was told from the point of view of the killer's mother. This means that the narrator is the first-person narrator Mandisa. The first-person narrator speaks to the victim's mother, who functions as the addressed "You" in the novel due to her addressee role. The narrative form varies from Mandisa's monologues to presenting the present circumstances in Mxolisi and Mandisa's life in the present tense. In addition, there are flashbacks throughout the narrative, in which the mother of three recalls her own childhood and youth and includes, for example, legends and stories about her ancestors in the past tense and perfect tense
• Climax: The rhetorical stylistic device of climax is used to emphasise the narrative and thus to focus attention on a particular situation. Magona uses this rhetorical device particularly at two striking points in the novel. On the one hand, a climatic narrative progression becomes clear at the point in the text in chapter 4 where Mandisa learns that her son is supposed to have killed Amy Biehl. The deed in the 12th chapter is also depicted as the events continue to build up bit by bit and then culminate in the description of the murder of the victim. Taking chapter 12 as an example, the figure of climax is applied through the chanting of the words "One Bullet! One Settler!" (p. 205, l. 27). The growing tension that accompanies the shouting and chanting of these words is then discharged in the killing act that Mxolisi performs on Amy
• Premonitions: Foreshadowing has the effect of subtly hinting at approaching events without directly naming them. Exemplary for the means of foreshadowing serves Dwadwa's warning to Mandisa, that Mxolisi "will bring [her] a big trouble one day" (p. 71, l. 3). These are the words Mandisa's husband utters before they all included the readers learn that Mxolisi is the victim's murderer. Accordingly, in a sense, they prepare the reading audience for the fact that there are far more serious reasons behind Mxolisi's disappearance than simple respect for the police
• Elements of irony: Two forms of irony can be found in Mother to Mother. One is dramatic irony and the other is situational irony. The stylistic device of irony is sometimes difficult to extract from a text. This rhetorical device is the pretence of a statement, although the opposite of this statement is meant. We will focus on dramatic irony in the course of this analysis. When Mandisa's parents learn of the rumours of the resettlement of black South Africans in the 1970s, they react to the circulating gossip with laughter (p. 55). Here, however, it is important to understand that it is not so much the joke that is at stake, but how absurd mass resettlement still sounded to the ears of South Africans at the time. So it was out of disbelief at the absurdity that people laughed, not out of amusement. The author thus uses the stylistic device of dramatic irony to point out obvious dramatic grievances and to sensitise the reader to the speechless powerlessness that was a result of social injustice