It Wasn't Roaring, It Was Weeping
Interpreting the Language of Our Fathers Without Repeating Their Stories
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An honest and lyrical coming-of-age memoir of growing up in South Africa at the height of apartheid, and an invitation to recognize and refuse to repeat the sins of our fathers—from the bestselling author of Never Unfriended
“Heartfelt, emotionally charged reflections . . . [a] bracing memoir.”—Kirkus Review
“Important. Riveting. Unforgettable . . . a profoundly captivating story that can profoundly change your own story.”—Ann Voskamp, New York Times bestselling author of WayMaker
Born White in the heart of Zululand during the racial apartheid, Lisa-Jo Baker longed to write a new future for her children—a longing that set her on a journey to understand where she fit into a story of violence and faith, history and race. Before marriage and motherhood, she came to the United States to study to become a human rights advocate. When she naïvely walked right into America’s own turbulent racial landscape, Baker experienced the kind of painful awakening that is both individual and universal, personal and social. Yet years would go by before she traced this American trauma back to her own South African past.
Baker was a teenager when her mother died of cancer, leaving her with her father. Though they shared a language of faith and justice, she often feared him, unaware that his fierce temper had deep roots in a family’s and a nation’s pain. Decades later, old wounds reopened when she found herself spiraling into a terrifying version of her father, screaming herself hoarse at her son. Only then did Baker realize that to go forward—to refuse to repeat the sins of our fathers—we must first go back.
With a story that stretches from South Africa’s outback to Washington, D.C., It Wasn’t Roaring, It Was Weeping is a courageous look at inherited hurts and prejudices, and a hope-filled example for all who feel lost in life or worried that they’re too off course to make the necessary corrections. Baker’s story shows that it’s never too late to be free.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
