Book 45 Cry, the Beloved Country

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton fulfilled the category “An Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner” for the PopSugar 2022 Reading Challenge. The award is given to books that have had a “significant contribution to our understanding of racism and human diversity.” This title is an oldie, but still significant in its subject.

I tried a couple for the prompt. I’d already read There There and Hidden Figures. For some reason, I couldn’t get Infidel as an audiobook. I also tried to read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. As you know, I like an audio. The narrator kept dropping the N-word. It’s fine because that’s his race and culture, but it was extremely hard for me to hear the word said out loud. I ended up switching to this book.

The story tells the tale of a pastor, Stephen Kumalo, from a town near Johannesburg, South Africa in 1948 when apartheid was the system of government. At that time, Johannesburg was starting to build up. Things were changing in the country. Kumalo’s sister, brother, and son have gone to the city and have disappeared. None of them had any contact with Kumalo for a long time. Finally, Kumalo decides to journey to Johannesburg to find out what happened. A lot of terrible things happen. Some good things happen too. Mostly, the book talked about the changes in the culture, the treatment of the native people, and the industrialization of Johannesburg.

In college, I read several Nadine Gordimer books, and my sociology professor was from South Africa. I wish I had pursued more information about the country and its history. I lived through the fall of apartheid, and Nelson Mandela’s becoming the president of that country. I feel like I miss the boat. There’s so much here. There’s so much more to learn. Reading this title, read by a lovely narrator, I cried six times. I was spurred on by the idea there’s an entire history of these various places I know nothing about. The history of South Africa is fascinating to me and its current culture. I love that the movie District 9 was set in South Africa. It reminds us stupid Americans that things are happening in other places besides here.

Though the book is seventy years old, I would still highly recommend it to anybody who wanted to learn about oppression, greed, and mistreatment by the government. This is still happening everywhere, not just in South Africa, not just in America. We tend to treat people like currency. People aren’t currency.

I give Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton Five Big Warm Hugs, and a Desire to Understand More.