A review by zachswain
Hum If You Don't Know the Words by Bianca Marais

2.0

BLUF: A rather vapid book that takes place in appartheid South Africa. Potential was wasted by focusing on a bratty, white South African girl's story over the much more interesting black South African woman's. In spite of claiming to be sensitive, the book ends with two tropes that could have been avoided.

I was excited to read this book. I've never studied apartheid in South Africa and don't know much about it beyond a white, colonial power ruled over the indigenous population and discriminated (to put it mildly) against them in government, public spaces, and the legal system. Sadly, after reading this book I don't have any clearer a picture of apartheid...the above is pretty much what you take away from the book.

The book is written from two perspectives; a black, South African woman named Beauty, and a white, 9 year old South African girl named Robin. The two perspectives are not given equal time nor treatment...Robin's is written from the present looking back on her story, Beauty's is in the present tense as the story takes place. I didn't count, but Robin appears to get more chapters or, at least, I felt the story focused on her perspective more. Robin is also treated as a device, there to be used...when she needs to be brilliant, she is. When she needs to be a dumb kid, she is. When she needs to have a realization to express a view for the author, she does. She
Spoilerloses her parents early on, something of a plot device reminscent of a Disney movie, which makes the audience empathize with her and gives the book a reason for being written, but her parents are written as horribly racist South African whites so the reader can be justified feeling like they deserved it.


Beauty's story, by contrast, is full of wasted potential. She's searching for her daughter, a student that was involved in the Soweto uprisings, whom Beauty receives word is in grave danger so she goes looking for her. Beauty's story is one of a mother searching for her daughter, discovering the type of people she's become involved with, and doing whatever it takes to remain in a position where she continue her search in a country that doesn't permit someone like her (black) to even be out after curfew, let alone with anywhere without a passbook.

Had the author focused on Beauty, her search, her daughter, the path her daughter went down, and the results, the book could have been phenomenal. It would have had the potential to focus on the apartheid regime, why people hated it, why it would eventually end, how people dealt with it, and how good people are driven to do bad things in the name of justice. Instead, we mostly got Robin's story as she discovered the world isn't what she saw a child in her parent's house. A brat who makes poor decisions (as children often do), Robin isn't an interesting character.

A better story might have used the two perspectives of Beauty, a woman perservering, contrasted with her daughter, a woman fighting, and the ebbs and flows of that relationship as her daughter grows from the innocence of youth into an adult that has to contend with an unjust ruling class of colonizers.

And now we have to talk about the end...

SpoilerHow horrible. Robin embodies the white savior, doing something completely unrealistic, most likely unsafe and lethal, finding Beauty's daughter, bringing her to Beauty, and coming to terms with her foster mother/aunt.

In contrast, by the end of book I saw Beauty not as a woman perservering, but as the embodiment of the Magic Negro trope. She played too much the backup character to Robin's spotlight, allowing Robin to reach the right conclusions through unending love and patience. Beauty also reminded me of Sidney Poitier's character in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", a character who is so flawless that it is clear their race is the only motivation for being discriminated against or disliked. More depth, or a contrast between her and her daughter, would have made for a better book.


The author's end note reads like a social justice disclaimer...sensitivity trainers were consulted, her privileged past is acknowledged, guilt is proclaimed. I imagine she sees a lot of herself in Robin, and maybe writing Robin as a bratty kid who does dumb things is a form of penance, but a better service to Beauty and Eunice (the author's live in maid) might have been to focus on Beauty's story over Robin's.