Tell Freedom: Memories of Africa
by Peter Abrahams
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A Black South African recalls his childhood and adolescence in the slums of Johannesburg and his ultimate escape to England.Tags
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This is a gripping account of growing up in the South Africa of the 1920s to 1940s. Abrahams recounts life in the Coloured location of Vrededorp in Johannesburg during his childhood and youth in the late 1920s and early 30s. He describes how he managed by luck to acquire a primary education in Vrededorp, and a secondary/post-secondary education at teachers' college. His descriptions of life as an activist and teacher in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban are gripping. So is the tale of his departure from his homeland, the police having decided that they could do with one fewer activist in the country. There are moments of true horror in the book, and moments of astounding decency.
A first person account of colored life in Africa pre apartheid. The author tells of everyday life from 1910 until he leaves the country in 1939. A gripping story.
HB-8
Nov 18, 2020Catalan
K-1
Sep 11, 2020Catalan
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Peter Henry Abrahams Deras was born in Vrededorp, South Africa on March 3, 1919. Before entering school at the age of 11, he sold firewood and worked for a local tinsmith. He completed a three-year course at a colored school in Vrededorp in one year and won a scholarship to the Diocesan Training College in Grace Dieu. He later studied at St. show more Peter's, an elite school for blacks in Rosettenville. While working as an editor at a socialist magazine in Durban in 1939, he found work as a stoker aboard a freighter and made his way to London. Once there, he was hired as a dispatch clerk at a socialist bookstore and did editing for The Daily Worker, the newspaper of the British Communist Party. He eventually moved to Jamaica and broadcast political commentaries on Radio Jamaica for four decades. His novels and journalism explored the injustices of apartheid and the complexities of racial politics. His novels included Song of the City, Mine Boy, The Path of Thunder, A Night of Their Own, The View from Coyaba, A Wreath for Udomo, and This Island, Now. His other works included Dark Testament, Return to Goli, Jamaica: An Island Mosaic, Tell Freedom: Memories of Africa, and The Black Experience in the 20th Century: An Autobiography and Meditation. He died on January 18, 2017 at the age of 97. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- 6 — Catalan, English, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish
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