It Wasn't Roaring, It Was Weeping

May 27, 2024
Baker (Never Unfriended) sets her painful family history against the backdrop of apartheid in this powerful memoir. Anchoring the narrative in her father’s South African upbringing, she describes how he grew up on a sheep farm in Karoo, where he witnessed racist family members abusing Black farmhands. After he became a doctor, his faith led him to treat Black patients despite a lack of funding and government pressures. Yet he frequently lashed out at his children, and after Baker’s mother died of cancer, she was left at the mercy of his temper, his tempestuous second marriage, and her violent stepbrother. Baker eventually escaped to the U.S., where she attended college and law school, and settled in Washington, D.C.—where the city’s racial stratification opened her eyes to the “willful ignorance” that had insulated her from the struggles of Black South Africans: “ a daughter of White privilege and teenage pain who ran away before she ever clearly saw the world beyond her bedroom window.” Tracing the “apartheid roots” of her father’s family, she concludes by expressing hope for renewal that begins with acknowledging the difficult truths of the past and “the parts of history that put us on the wrong side of the equation.” Poignant and searching, this leaves a mark.