From the Bookshelf of ECIS Libraries Week 2021…
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“When the ground is hard, the women dance” – African Proverb
Malla Nunn creates a time capsule of female friendship and empowerment in this historical fiction novel that takes place at the Keziah Christian Academy, a mixed-race boarding school in colonial Swaziland. Adele Joubert is sixteen and in her final years at the school, the daughter of an African mother and a white father who has two families, one white and one black. Her father is wealthy and relatively connected to his second family, ab ...more
Malla Nunn creates a time capsule of female friendship and empowerment in this historical fiction novel that takes place at the Keziah Christian Academy, a mixed-race boarding school in colonial Swaziland. Adele Joubert is sixteen and in her final years at the school, the daughter of an African mother and a white father who has two families, one white and one black. Her father is wealthy and relatively connected to his second family, ab ...more
I really enjoyed this story of a girl in Swaziland navigating the social structures around her and discovering the beauty of a true friendship, her first. It's a boarding school story, but also so much more. Like most boarding school stories, we see the school as a microcosm of the outside world, but since this outside world is Swaziland we learn about different tensions that exist between groups of people (white, poor white, mixed, black, those with coins, those with paper money...). And we see
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A compelling coming-of-age story set in Swaziland. So many issues of class and race are explored as Adele navigates the changing social structure of her boarding school for biracial students. The setting is very prominently portrayed as well with brush fires, crocodiles and dangerous mountain roads. This book is a worthy and insightful read especially as the author reveals that it is based on her mother's life.
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Heart breaking, thought-provoking, worth a read and a good discussion with kids of how we treat people
May 24, 2021
Erin
marked it as to-read
Jun 15, 2022
Nadine
marked it as to-read
