Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Mother to Mother, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Legacy of Colonialism and Apartheid
Family, Tradition, and Obligation
Language, Storytelling, and History
Summary
Analysis
Mandisa wonders what Mxolisi had to live for. Even before his crime, his future was “a glaring void.” He could see the men of his father’s generation, defeated, working for low wages with “no escape” in sight.
Mandisa’s choice to wait to recount the crime until the very end of the novel suggests that she has been building up the courage to piece together how her son became a murderer—something that weighs particularly heavily on her in a community that believes parents should be held responsible for their children’s actions. In this passage, she points to what is really responsible for the way her son turned out: institutionalized racism, which ensures that black South Africans remain impoverished, disenfranchised, and downtrodden, with no hope for a better life.
Themes
Mandisa imagines the afternoon of Wednesday, August 25, the moment Mxolisi killed the Girl: Mxolisi and his group of friends are walking through the neighborhood. He breaks off with a handful of other young people. Mxolisi is almost home, when someone spots the Girl in her car, idling at the same intersection. Immediately, upon seeing a white person in Guguletu, people begin chanting “ONE SETTLER! ONE BULLET!” A crowd begins to gather and pick up the chant. Mxolisi’s group, down the street, hears the commotion and runs towards it.
Even though Mxolisi’s murder of the girl is the central event in Mother to Mother, Mandisa doesn’t actually recount it until the very end of the novel. By holding off until this moment, Mandisa makes the murder seem all the more dramatic and tragic. The fact that she has been building up the suspense and tension until this moment also echoes the crime itself; after centuries of oppression under colonialism and decades of oppression under apartheid, the crime appears like a sudden bursting forth of anger and frustration. The chant “one settler, one bullet!” reminds the rioters of their shared history of pain and oppression, inciting them to action.
Themes
The Girl tries to drive away, but her car is stuck in a line of other cars. Bodies surround the car, and begin to rock it, at first gently, and then people begin to throw rocks, breaking through the windows and windshield. The Girl and her four passengers decide to leave the car and run for freedom. One of the Girl’s friends yells that “she’s just a university student,” but Mxolisi and the others “know nothing of universities.”
Like in the novel, the real-life Girl, Amy Biehl, was attacked while in the car and was stabbed repeatedly and fatally. The phrase “she’s just a university student” also points to Amy’s status as a Fulbright scholar who was in South Africa to help prepare for the first democratic election. Under a brutal government that sees the world as black and white (literally), Mxolisi and his gang do too, and immediately conflate this white woman with the white oppressor. Thus it doesn’t matter if she’s innocent or an ally to the community, because Mxolisi and his gang’s worldview doesn’t have room for this kind of nuance—they “know nothing of universities.” This line is also a reminder that black South Africans are afforded a second-rate education under apartheid.
Themes
Mxolisi is “King! If for a day.” People begin to chant “AMANDLA! NGAWETHU! POWER! IT IS OURS!” As well as “AMABHULU, AZIZINJA! BOERS, THEY ARE DOGS,” a song Mxolisi has heard his whole life. The crowd cheers Mxolisi on—in fact, society has “been cheering him on since the day he was born. Before he was born. Long before.”
This passage encompasses all three of the novel’s major themes. First, Mandisa suggests that the legacy of colonialism and apartheid is devastating and inescapable—even before birth, Mxolisi couldn’t escape it. Secondly, Mandisa points out how the entire community failed in their obligation to keep Mxolisi on a more productive path, instead instilling him with bloodthirstiness and passion. Lastly, Mandisa draws on the chant that has punctuated the novel most frequently—“AmaBhulu, azizinja!”—to remind readers that chants such as this one have been passed down from generation to generation, thus making people like Mxolisi feel that his fight against the government is also his ancestors’ fight.
Themes
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Mandisa knows Nongqawuse saw the “whirlwind” over a century ago, and “voiced the unconscious collective wish of the nation: rid ourselves of the scourge.” The Girl’s murder, then, is an “eruption” of “rage,” and “bitterness,” “the enactment of the deep, dark, private yearnings of a subjugated race.” Mandisa believes Mxolisi was “only an agent” of his race, a “blind but sharpened arrow,” aimed at the Girl, “the sacrifice” of her race.
In drawing on the backstory of her life and her son’s life, the current political climate and the past one, Mandisa seeks to clarify and explain her son’s crime rather than justify it. In her letters to the Mother and her rehashing of the Nongqawuse myth, Mandisa illustrates the ragged emotional and political landscape that her people—and her son—grew up in and implies that anyone with Mxolisi’s life experiences would have turned out just as angry, hardened, and politically radicalized, like a “sharpened arrow” itching to be launched at the oppressor.
Themes
