This book doesn't contain one, but seven short stories of people living during and after the apartheid. The seven stories are in chronological order from 1948-2000, one story in each decade. They are seperate stories from one another but each are told in a young persons point of view on a traumatising moment in ther life during or after the apartheid. The main social justice issue in all of the stories is the racism and segregation towards the black people in Africa, for example how the boy's family in the second story 'The Noose' were forced to move far away from Johanesburg to Coronationville because the Boers wanted the city to be 'all whites'. The issues oppressed the black people to live seperate lives from the whites and the coloureds just because of skin colour and race. There was a timeline at the back of the book which summarises the apartheid and which I enjoyed very much because I don't really know much about the apartheid. The stories made me feel quite sad but the characters made me feel more determined to seek social justice and peace. The authors purpose in writing the stories is to inform young readers about the lives of people in Africa and what they suffered. I enjoyed this book very much because I learned a lot about the apartheid, South Africa and because it made me think about young people who are less fortunate than me. I would give this book an eight out of ten and would recommend it to an age level but especially teenagers.
I'm so glad you read this and liked it. I have taught the stories "The Noose" and "One Day, Lily, One Day" to my Year 10 classes for the last couple of years as part of the Social Justice unit but probably won't have time to do them this year. They seemed to enjoy them too. Hard to imagine living in such conditions, isn't it? As you say, we are indeed very fortunate!
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