Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth's Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa
Author: Mark Mathaban
The Classic Story of Life in Apartheid South Africa
Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa's most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage. Like every other child born in the hopelessness of apartheid, he learned to measure his life in days, not years. Yet Mark Mathabane, armed only with the courage of his family and a hard-won education, raised himself up from the squalor and humiliation to win a scholarship to an American university.
This extraordinary memoir of life under apartheid is a triumph of the human spirit over hatred and unspeakable degradation. For Mark Mathabane did what no physically and psychologically battered "Kaffir" from the rat-infested alleys of Alexandra was supposed to do -- he escaped to tell about it.
Publishers Weekly
Kaffir Boy (1984), one of the best books ever written about apartheid, became a bestseller everywhere but in South Africa, where it is banned. This absorbing sequel, about Mathabane's life in the U.S. since he arrived here at age 18 in 1978 on a tennis scholarship, describes his painful experiences at three colleges in one year and in American society generally. He recalls his editorship of a college paper, disenchantment with the Columbia School of Journalism, encounters with racism, threats to his life, living on a shoestring budget, speaking out against racism, his decisions to become a writer, live in North Carolina and marry a white woman, his success (with Oprah Winfrey's help) in bringing members of his family on a visit to America and in arranging for some of his siblings to remain here to study. Mathabane is a remarkable human being: responsible, committed, reasonable, level-headed, humane, understanding and empathetic. He tells a wonderful, inspiring story and he tells it well. (June)
Library Journal
This is a sequel to Kaffir Boy ( LJ 4/15/86), a best-selling account of Mathabane's youth in a black township in South Africa. It deals with his life in America as a student, writer, and outspoken opponent of apartheid. Like many sequels, this one lacks the power of the original. Kaffir Boy vividly details the horrors of growing up black in a society premised on radical racial discrimination; its wrenching story virtually grabs the reader by the throat. The sequel, in which the author describes both his trials and successes in coping with and ultimately taking advantage of American mobility, pales in comparison. Still, this work does nicely describe the author's ambivalence toward the United States--both America's lure and its continuing racial problems. Generally well written, it is appropriate for most academic and public libraries.-- Anthony O. Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, Ind.
Books about:
Mao: The Unknown Story
Author: Jung Chang
Based on a decade of research and on interviews with many of Mao's close circle in China who have never talked before--and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him--this is the most authoritative life of Mao ever written. It is full of startling revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and showing a completely unknown Mao: he was not driven by idealism or ideology; his intimate and intricate relationship with Stalin went back to the 1920s, ultimately bringing him to power; he welcomed Japanese occupation of much of China; and he schemed, poisoned and blackmailed to get his way. After Mao conquered China in 1949, his secret goal was to dominate the world. In chasing this dream he caused the deaths of 38 million people in the greatest famine in history. In all, well over 70 million Chinese perished under Mao's rule--in peacetime.
Combining meticulous research with the story-telling style of Wild Swans, this biography offers a harrowing portrait of Mao's ruthless accumulation of power through the exercise of terror: his first victims were the peasants, then the intellectuals and, finally, the inner circle of his own advisors. The reader enters the shadowy chambers of Mao's court and eavesdrops on the drama in its hidden recesses. Mao's character and the enormity of his behavior toward his wives, mistresses and children are unveiled for the first time.
This is an entirely fresh look at Mao in both content and approach. It will astonish historians and the general reader alike.
The New York Times Sunday Book Review - Nicholas D. Kristof
… this is a magisterial work. True, much of Mao's brutality has already emerged over the years, but this biography supplies substantial new information and presents it all in a stylish way that will put it on bedside tables around the world. No wonder the Chinese government has banned not only this book but issues of magazines with reviews of it, for Mao emerges from these pages as another Hitler or Stalin.
The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
Not only does their book demolish many of the myths Mao perpetrated about himself - myths that were believed by a host of Westerners, ranging from Simone de Beauvoir to Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon - but it also serves up a far more scathing portrait of the Chinese leader than those laid out by recent biographers like Philip Short and Jonathan Spence.
The Washington Post - John Pomfret
In short, if you're hoping for staid, balanced scholarship, don't read this book. It's not history; it's a screed, albeit a screed on the side of the angels…Even screeds have their place, however, and this is an extremely entertaining one. Indeed, sometimes an emotionally charged account—one written with obvious biases—can reveal the truth better than ostentatious, morally numbed objectivity that cloaks a lot of Western scholarship on China. Chang and Halliday's point is very simple: Like a small group of scholars in China, they believe that Mao wasn't a revolutionary but a monster. He wasn't a communist but a bandit king. The result is a page-turner with a point.
Publishers Weekly
Jung Chang, author of the award-winning Wild Swans, grew up during the Cultural Revolution; Halliday is a research fellow at King's College, University of London. They join forces in this sweeping but flawed biography, which aims to uncover Mao's further cruelties (beyond those commonly known) by debunking claims made by the Communist Party in his service. For example, the authors argue that, far from Mao's humble peasant background shaping his sympathies for the downtrodden, he actually ruthlessly exploited the peasants' resources when he was based in regions such as Yenan, and cared about peasants only when it suited his political agenda. And far from having founded the Chinese Communist Party, the authors argue, Mao was merely at the right place at the right time. Importantly, the book argues that in most instances Mao was able to hold on to power thanks to his adroitness in appealing to and manipulating powerful allies and foes, such as Stalin and later Nixon; furthermore, almost every aspect of his career was motivated by a preternatural thirst for personal power, rather than political vision. Some of the book's claims rely on interviews and on primary material (such as the anguished letters Mao's second wife wrote after he abandoned her), though the book's use of sources is sometimes incompletely documented and at times heavy-handed (for example, using a school essay the young Mao wrote to show his lifelong ruthlessness). Illus., maps. (Oct. 21) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
KLIATT
Jung Chang, acclaimed author of Wild Swans, and her husband, historian Jon Halliday, spent a decade conducting interviews and archival research to deconstruct the myth of Chairman Mao, a myth that is on the whole still perpetuated by China's current Communist regime. Chang and Halliday's method: to consult every available archive, to listen to every cable they could find between Peking and the Kremlin before and during the 27 years Mao ruled, and to interview every living soul somehow connected to Mao in and out of mainland China, including the exiled Dalai Lama, Henry Kissinger, Mao's daughter Li Na, George H.W. Bush, and such esoteric sources as Shi Da-zheng, son of the film director who was the first famous cultural figure to commit suicide after the Communist takeover. Their list goes on and on, and makes this biography the magisterial work that it is. The authors' most pressing contention, painstakingly substantiated, is that Mao, during his nefarious reign, starved and overworked 70 million of his people to death. Over half perished during the Great Famine of 1958—1961, a period Mao deemed the Great Leap Forward. These people died during peacetime because Peking mandated exporting vast amounts of food to countries capable of providing Mao's military with nuclear weapons. It was this Superpower Program more than anything else that fueled his ambitions, that made him instill terror and hate campaigns that created a nation of hundreds of millions of petrified, brainwashed, starving people. Meanwhile, the Chairman himself lived a life of extreme comfort and extravagance in grandiose villas built specifically for him all across China. The authors tread harshly on themythology of Mao, revealing a man with little if any ideological passion. Instead, he had a love for bloodthirsty thuggery. Mao's China was "run by terror and guarded like a prison." Chang and Halliday's book is both the fascinating revelation of Mao's improbable rise to power and the fierce, long-awaited condemnation of his deadly practices once he got there. At times they seem a little too quick to denounce every single one of his actions and sometimes present him as so much of a solipsistic psychopath that we wonder how he was possibly able to conquer the biggest country in the world. Nevertheless, their research indelibly destroys any claim to Mao's legitimacy. The narrative gives minute-by-minute details of famous events and is truly chilling in what it uncovers.
Library Journal
In Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Chang detailed the experiences of her parents, early revolutionaries and high officials in Communist China, and her own adventures as a rabid Red Guard in Mao's Cultural Revolution of the 1960s (when Halliday was likewise a Mao enthusiast). Their disillusionment with Mao paralleled the party's conversion in the 1980s to Deng Xiaoping's "market socialism." Chang and Halliday make devastating use of insider gossip, published scholarship, and archives to build a detailed story of a mad, lusting Mao with neither ideals nor scruples. Scholars may see this as a prosecutor's indictment that does not explain Mao's successes, however perverse, and blames him as an individual for all woes. Some charges seem exaggerated or tendentious-for instance, the dramatic opening statement that Mao was "responsible for well over 70 million deaths," more than any other 20th-century leader. Yet the thrust of the argument is necessary and rings true. The book, while officially banned in the People's Republic, will undoubtedly be widely read there. A controversial, highly significant, and compellingly readable biography that should be in every library.-Charles W. Hayford, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
In the spirit of The Black Book of Communism (1999), this grand narrative aims to show that Mao Tse-tung was among the greatest mass murderers in history-if not the greatest of them all. "Mao Tse-tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world's population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth-century leader," write China-born memoirist Chang (Wild Swans, 1991) and British historian Halliday in their provocative opening. Mao's rise was improbable, argue the authors, because he was a rotter and an opportunist, and everyone knew it. As a young man, Mao read diligently, and the conclusions he took away from world history were that he was above the law and that "giant wars" were the normal order of things. Just so, late in life, having whipped up the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, Mao warned a palace guard, "Don't cultivate connections. . . . Don't have photographs taken with people." He lived by such rules. Self-serving and secretive, Mao was ostracized by the Soviet-led leadership in the early days of the Communist Party; far from leading the Long March, by this account, Mao was borne into the mountains on a litter, half because of illness, half because it suited his imperial character, though he almost didn't get to go at all. Still, amazingly, he managed to play off rivals and scheme his way to absolute rule, and woe to anyone who crossed him. Chang and Halliday document at length just how willing Mao was to kill innocents for presumed crimes or mere expediency, how quick he was to concoct schemes against even such essential comrades as Lin Baio and Chou En-Lai-and how willing the leaders of theworld, among them Richard Nixon, were to bow to Mao's wishes. A startling document, one that will surely occasion revision of the historical record. First printing of 75,000
What People Are Saying
"Ever since the spectacular success of Chang's Wild Swans we have waited impatiently for her to complete with her husband this monumental study of China's most notorious modern leader. The expectation has been that she would rewrite modern Chinese history. The wait has been worthwhile and the expectation justified. This is a bombshell of a book."
--Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong, in The Times (London)
"Chang and Halliday cast new and revealing light on nearly every episode in Mao's tumultuous life...a stupendous work and one hopes that it will be brought before the Chinese people, who still claim to venerate the man and who have yet to come to terms with their own history..."
-Michael Yahuda, The Guardian
"Jung Chang and Jon Halliday have not, in the whole of their narrative, a good word to say about Mao. In a normal biography, such an unequivocal denunciation would be both suspect and tedious. But the clear scholarship, and careful notes, of The Unknown Story provoke another reaction. Mao Tse-Tung's evil, undoubted and well-documented, is unequalled throughout modern history."
-Roy Hattersley, The Observer
"A triumph. It is a mesmerising portrait of tyranny, degeneracy, mass murder and promiscuity, a barrage of revisionist bombshells, and a superb piece of research."
-Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Sunday Times
"Jung Chang and Jon Halliday enter a savage indictment drawing on a host of sources, including important Soviet ones, to blow away the miasma of deceit and ignorance which still shrouds Mao's life from many Western eyes...Jung Chang delivers a cry of anguish on behalf of all of those in her native land who, to this day, are still not free to speak of these things."
-Max Hastings, The Sunday Telegraph
"Demonstrating the same pitilessness that they judge to be Mao's most formidable weapon, they unstitch the myths that sustained him in power for forty years and that continue to underpin China's regime--I suspect that when China comes to terms with its past this book will have played a role."
-Nicolas Shakespeare, Telegraph
"The detail and documentation are awesome. The story that they tell, mesmerising in its horror, is the most powerful, compelling, and revealing political biography of modern times. Few books are destined to change history, but this one will."
-George Walden, Daily Mail
"decisive biography--they have investigated every aspect of his personal life and career, peeling back the layers of lies, myths, and what we used to think of as facts--what Chang and Halliday have done is immense and surpasses, as a biography, everything that has gone before."
-Jonathan Mirsky, The Independent, Saturday
"written with the same deft hand that enlivened Ms. Chang's 1991 memoir, 'Wild Swans'"
--The Economist
Table of Contents:
List of Maps
Abbreviations and a Note About Spelling in the Text
PART ONE — Lukewarm Believer
1. On the Cusp from Ancient to Modern
(1893–1911; age 1–17)
2. Becoming a Communist
(1911–20; age 17–26) 3. Lukewarm Believer
(1920–25; age 26–31) 4. Rise and Demise in the Nationalist Party (
1925–27; age 31–33) PART TWO — Long March to Supremacy in the Party
5. Hijacking a Red Force and Taking Over Bandit Land
(1927–28; age 33–34)
6. Subjugating the Red Army Supremo
(1928–30; age 34–36)
7. Takeover Leads to Death of Second Wife
(1927–30; age 33–36)
8. Bloody Purge Paves the Way for “Chairman Mao”
(1929–31; age 35–37)
9. Mao and the First Red State
(1931–34; age 37–40)
10. Troublemaker to Figurehead
(1931–34; age 37–40)
11. How Mao Got onto the Long March
(1933–34; age 39–40)
12. Long March I: Chiang Lets the Reds Go
(1934; age 40)
13. Long March II: The Power Behind the Throne
(1934–35; age 40–41)
14. Long March III: Monopolising the Moscow Connection
(1935; age 41)
PART THREE — Building His Power Base
15. The Timely Death of Mao’s Host
(1935–36; age 41–42)
16. Chiang Kai-shek Kidnapped
(1935–36; age 41–42)
17. A National Player
(1936; age 42–43)
18. New Image, New Life and New Wife
(1937–38; age43–44)
19. Red Mole Triggers China–Japan War
(1937–38; age 43–44)
20. Fight Rivals and Chiang—Not Japan
(1937–40; age 43–46)
21. Most Desired Scenario: Stalin Carves Up China with Japan
(1939–40; age 45–46)
22. Death Trap for His Own Men
(1940–41; age 46–47) 23. Building a Power Base Through Terror
(1941–45; age 47–51) 24. Uncowed Opponent Poisoned
(1941–45; age 47–51) 25. Supreme Party Leader at Last
(1942–45; age 48–51)
PART FOUR — To Conquer China
26. “Revolutionary Opium War”
(1937–45; age 43–51)
27. The Russians Are Coming!
(1945–46; age 51–52) 28. Saved by Washington
(1944–47; age 50–53)
29. Moles, Betrayals and Poor Leadership Doom Chiang
(1945–49; age 51–55)
30. China Conquered
(1946–49; age 52–55)
31. Totalitarian State, Extravagant Lifestyle
(1949–53; age 55–59)
PART FIVE — Chasing a Superpower Dream
32. Rivalry with Stalin
(1947–49; age 53–55)
33. Two Tyrants Wrestle
(1949–50; age 55–56)
34. Why Mao and Stalin Started the Korean War
(1949–50; age 55–56)
35. Mao Milks the Korean War
(1950–53; age 56–59)
36. Launching the Secret Superpower Programme
(1953–54; age 59–60)
37. War on Peasants
(1953–56; age 59–62)
38. Undermining Khrushchev
(1956–59; age 62–65)
39. Killing the “Hundred Flowers”
(1957–58; age 63–64)
40. The Great Leap: “Half of China May Well Have to Die”
(1958–61; age 64–67)
41. Defence Minister Peng’s Lonely Battle
(1958–59; age 64–65)
42. The Tibetans Rebel
(1950–61; age 56–67)
43. Maoism Goes Global
(1959–64; age 65–70)
44. Ambushed by the President
(1961–62; age 67–68)
45. The Bomb
(1962–64; age 68–70) 46. A Time of Uncertainty and Setbacks
(1962–65; age 68–71)
PART SIX — Unsweet Revenge
47. A Horse-Trade Secures the Cultural Revolution
(1965–66; age 71–72)
48. The Great Purge
(1966–67; age 72–73)
49. Unsweet Revenge
(1966–74; age 72–80)
50. The Chairman’s New Outfit
(1967–70; age 73–76)
51. A War Scare (
1969–71; age 75–77)
52. Falling Out with Lin Biao
(1970–71; age 76–77)
53. Maoism Falls Flat on the World Stage
(1966–70; age 72–76)
54. Nixon: the Red-Baiter Baited
(1970–73; age 76–79)
55. The Boss Denies Chou Cancer Treatment
(1972–74; age 78–80)
56. Mme Mao in the Cultural Revolution
(1966–75; age 72–81)
57. Enfeebled Mao Hedges His Bets
(1973–76; age 79–82)
58. Last Days
(1974–76; age 80–82) Epilogue
Acknowledgements
List of Interviewees
Archives Consulted
Notes
Bibliography of Chinese-Language Sources
Bibliography of Non-Chinese-Language Sources
Index
