written by author Sindiwe Magona, published in 1998 in South Africa
Mother to Mother is a fiction novel based on true events. Sidiwe Magona lets the murderer's mother speak to the victim's mother, which explains the title of the novel
Sindiwe Magona was born in Cape Town South Africa and in addition to her work as a writer, she is also committed to women's rights, civil rights and educates about the social grievances in South Africa and deals with the propensity to violence in the South African region
"in August 1993" (p. V, l. 3f) the American student Amy Biehl gets "killed by a mob of black youth in Guguletu, South Africa" (S. V, l. 2f). In her work Magona describes the tragedy from two perspectives: From the victim’s and with special focus on the perspective of the murderer’s mother
by embedding cultural goods in the continuous text, the author leads us into a world in which apartheid could grow and develop out of unimaginable poverty and social injustice
Sindiwe Magona manages to introduce the reader to the merciless reality in the South African slums by incorporating elements of the South African click language Xhosa, numerous traditional songs and flashbacks of the mother Mandisa, who remembers her own childhood in the township around Cape Town
The work has met with a thoroughly positive response. Heather Hewett of the Washington Post Book World describes the book as "gripping... Points to a redemptive hope for those who can come together for healing, even when they have been bound together by sorrow."
