Synopses & Reviews
We are the young people,
We will not be broken!
We demand freedom
And say
"Away with slavery
In our land of Africa!"
For almost fifty years apartheid forced the young people of South Africa to live apart as Blacks, Whites, Indians, and "Coloreds." This unique and dramatic collection of stories -- by native South African and Carnegie Medalist Beverley Naidoo -- is about young people's choices in a beautiful country made ugly by injustice.
Each story is set in a different decade during the last half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, and features fictional characters caught up in very real events. Included is a Timeline Across Apartheid, which recounts some of the restrictive laws passed during this era, the events leading up to South Africa's first free democratic elections, and the establishment of a new "rainbow government" that leads the country today.
A Junior Library Guild Selection
About the Author
Beverly Naidoo grew up in South Africa under the apartheid system. An active resister to apartheid, she lived in her home country until departing to study at the University of York in England. There she began writing in exile and in 1985 published her first children's book, the award-winning
Journey to Jo'burg, which was dedicated to her nanny's two daughters who died from diptheria because only white people were inoculated at the time.
Journey To Jo'burg was banned in South Africa until 1991.
Beverly Naidoo has taught primary and secondary school in London and worked as an Advisor for English and Cultural Diversity in Dorset. She has a Ph.D. in exploring issues of racism with young people through literature and works tirelessly to promote children's entitlement to grow up free from racism and injustice. Her newest novel is The Other Side Of Truth, for which she won an Arts Council of England Writer's Award in 1999 for work-in-progress as well as the Smarties Silver Medal in 2000 and the Library Association's prestigious Carnegie Medal.