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Family, Tradition, and Obligation
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Mother to Mother, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Through songs, letters, chants, legends, and prayers, as well as uses of African languages like Xhosa, the characters in Mother to Mother are able to express more than they could through straight prose or monologues. In each of these instances, language serves a deeper purpose as it brings people together and reminds them of their shared experiences. For instance, Mandisa’s grandfather, Tatomkhulu, tells her the story of a prophetess named Nongqawuse, who told her people that if they killed their cattle and burned their fields, a purificatory storm would come and sweep away all of the white settlers who were stealing their land. The people promptly destroyed their fields and cattle, but the storm never came. Through this story, Mandisa’s grandfather roots their current struggles in a larger, centuries-long one, and also reminds Mandisa that she is part of a wider community that extends back for generations. The novel ultimately presents language—in all its different forms—as a means for connecting people and evoking a common past.
The “letters” from Mandisa to the Mother of the murdered Girl, which are denoted by italics, reveal how language can connect people around a shared experience, even across cultural or social barriers. In fact, the whole novel is an address from one mother to another, a format that allows Mandisa, the first mother, an opportunity to reveal her own guilt and remorse around her son Mxolisi’s crime, and allows the reader an opportunity to imagine the thoughts and feelings of the Mother of the murdered Girl, otherwise unrepresented in the novel. By framing her monologue as a conversation or an address, Mandisa is able to consider the tragedy from both sides, ultimately realizing that both women are likely dealing with similar feelings of grief, pain, and loss. Mandisa writes to the other mother, “you whose heart is torn, know this: I have not slept since. Food turns to sawdust in my mouth. All joy has fled my house and my heart bleeds, it sorrows for you, for the pain into which you have been plunged. It is heavy and knows no rest.” Through written language, the letter to the Mother, Mandisa is able to express the idea that both women—despite their different nationalities, races, and lives—are bound by the shared experience of grief and sorrow.
The novel is also filled with songs and chants, which are often politically charged and passed down from generation to generation. By using them, the novel’s characters are able to draw upon the experiences of their ancestors and assert their common history as targets of oppression. Mxolisi and other young adults have taken many chants from their parent’s generation and turned them into their own. One of those chants is “AmaBhulu, azizinja!” which means “boers, they are dogs!” or “whites are dogs!” Mandisa explains that children learned this battle cry from their parents: “our children grew up in our homes, where we called white people dogs as a matter of idiom […] heart-felt idiom, I can tell you. Based on bitter experience.” What was once an opportunity to vent about private frustrations became a cry for a greater frustration of black South Africans. Another chant, “One settler, one bullet!” similarly refers to the violent rejection of white South Africans, who originally came to South Africa as settlers. This is the chant the crowd yells as Mxolisi murders the white woman, an act that is brought about not just by coincidence—this woman ending up in Guguletu during a turbulent political time—but by decades of black resentment.
Mandisa’s grandfather tells her stories of black South African history, which end up teaching her lessons and showing her patterns in her life and the lives of other black South Africans. The story of Nongqawuse especially allows Mandisa to contextualize the events of her and Mxolisi’s lifetimes. Tatomkhulu corrects stories she’s been taught in school, giving her the true history of Nongqawuse, a Xhosa prophetess. Nongqawuse told her community that if they burned their fields and killed their cattle, the white settlers would leave. Tatomkhulu explains that “[d]eep run the roots of hatred here / So deep, a cattle-worshipping nation killed all its precious herds […] burned fertile fields, fully sowed, bearing rich promise too,” justifying that “[n]o sacrifice too great, to wash away the curse.” He ties it to the present, explaining “that deep, deep, deep, ran the hatred then. In the nearly two centuries since, the hatred has but multiplied,” into the intense racial tensions of apartheid South Africa. As an adult, Mandisa compares Mxolisi’s murder of the white woman to the Xhosa slaughter of its cattle. Like his ancestors, Mxolisi was acting out “the unconscious collective wish of the nation: rid ourselves of the scourge.” The woman’s death, therefore, using Mandisa’s words, was “the eruption of a slow, simmering, seething rage. Bitterness burst and spilled her tender blood on the green autumn grass of a far-away land. Irredeemable blood. Irretrievable loss.” Mandisa recognizes that, like the slaughter of cattle over a century before, Mxolisi’s murder will be similarly ineffective in stopping violence, and will only create more pain.
Though the story of Nongqawuse doesn’t justify or excuse Mxolisi’s murder of the Girl, it does allow Mandisa to better understand how such a tragedy happened so close to home, tying together the past and the present. By drawing on the story her grandfather told her, Mandisa is able to see her present circumstances against the bloodstained backdrop of centuries-long persecution that her people have endured. Thus, legends such as this one, as well as chants, songs, and the invented “you” of the Mother of the Girl all work together to connect the novel’s characters to one another and to shared experiences or common histories.
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Language, Storytelling, and History ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Language, Storytelling, and History appears in each chapter of Mother to Mother. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Language, Storytelling, and History Quotes in Mother to Mother
Below you will find the important quotes in Mother to Mother related to the theme of Language, Storytelling, and History.
Chapter 3
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“Mandy!” Mrs. Nelson screams. That is what the white woman I work for calls me: Mandy. She says she can’t say my name. Says she can’t say any of our native names because of the clicks. My name is Mandisa. MA-NDI-SA. Do you see any click in that?
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Chapter 5
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AmaBhulu, azizinja! Today’s youth have been singing a different song. Whites are dogs! Not a new thought, by any means. We had said that all along. As far back as I can remember. Someone would come back from work fuming: amaBhulu azizinja, because of some unfairness they believed had been meted out to them that day. A slap. A kick. Deduction from wages. A deduction, neither discussed nor explained. Unless, a gruff – YOU ALWAYS LATE! or YOU BROKE MY PLATE! or YOU NOT VERY NICE TO MY MOTHER! qualifies as explanation. So yes, our children grew up in our homes, where we called white people dogs as a matter of idiom ... heart-felt idiom, I can tell you. Based on bitter experience.
AmaBhulu, azizinja! they sang. And went and burnt down their schools. That’s uncalled for, a few of us mumbled beneath our breath. Well beneath. Even so, we were quickly reprimanded. There was a war on. Besides, those ramshackle, barren things were no schools. No learning took place there.
But swiftly, our children graduated from stoning cars, white people’s cars. They graduated from that and from burning buildings. Unoccupied buildings. Public buildings. Now, they started stoning black people’s cars. And burning black people’s houses.
We reasoned that those black people to whom such a thing happened deserved what they got. The children were punishing them for one or another misdeed. Or, indeed, some misdeeds. They had collaborated with the repressive apartheid government. Iimpimpi, informers, we labeled the whole miserable lot. People on whom the students’ righteous and wrathful acts fell.
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Chapter 10
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There is knowledge with which I was born — or which I acquired at such an early age it is as though it was there the moment I came to know myself ... to know that I was. We sucked it from our mothers’ breasts, at the very least; inhaled it from the very air, for most.
Long before I went to school I knew when Tata had had a hard day at work. He would grumble, “Those dogs I work for!” and fuss about, and take long swigs from the bottle.
Mama’s own quarrel with bosses often came on the day when Tata got paid. For some reason, her dissatisfaction with Tata’s conditions of employment seemed to deepen on Fridays.
I remember when, one Friday, she exploded:
“Sesilamba nje, beb’ umhlaba wethu abelungu! We have come thus to hunger, for white people stole our land.” […] Later, I was to hear those words with growing frequency. “White people stole our land. They stole our herds. We have no cattle today, and the people who came here without any have worlds of farms, overflowing with fattest cattle”
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“Mzukulwana, listen to me. Listen and remember what you have heard, this day.” Then, in the voice of an imbongi of the people, he recited:
“Deep run the roots of hatred here
So deep, a cattle-worshipping nation killed all its precious herds.
Tillers, burned fertile fields, fully sowed, bearing rich promise too.
Readers of Nature’s Signs, allowed themselves fallacious belief.
In red noon’s eye rolling back to the east for sleep.
Anything. Anything, to rid themselves of these unwanted strangers.
No sacrifice too great, to wash away the curse.
That deep, deep, deep, ran the hatred then.
In the nearly two centuries since, the hatred has but multiplied.
The hatred has but multiplied.”
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Hayi, ilishwa!
Amabhulu, azizinja!
One settler, one bullet!
By the match stick, we shall free our nation!
“Oh, the road has been long, indeed. The songs came much, much later, I can tell you that. Before the songs, many others tried to rid our nation of the ones without colour, who had come from across the great sea.”
“Makana, the Left-Handed, prophesied outcomes similar to Nongqawuse’s. His magic would turn the bullets of the guns of abelungu to water.”
“At Isandlwana, with spear and shield, Cetywayo’s impis defeated the mighty British army and its guns.”
“Bulhoek, in Queenstown, is another example of resistance I can cite. Close to two hundred people murdered. Their sin? They wanted back their land and took possession of it, claiming it as their own. When they wouldn’t move, even by force, bullets were unleashed on them. But it was all to no avail. All to no avail. To this very day, abelungu are still here with us, Mzukulwana. The most renowned liar has not said they are about to disappear.”
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Chapter 12
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And my son? What had he to live for?
My son. His tomorrows were his yesterday. Nothing. Stretching long, lean, mean, and empty. A glaring void. Nothing would come of the morrow. For him. Nothing at all. Long before the ground split when he pee’d on it, that knowledge was firmly planted in his soul ... it was intimately his.
He had already seen his tomorrows; in the defeated stoop of his father’s shoulders. In the tired eyes of that father’s friends. In the huddled, ragged men who daily wait for chance at some job whose whereabouts they do not know ... wait at the corners of roads leading nowhere ... wait for a van to draw up, a shout, a beckoning hand that could mean a day’s job for an hour’s wage, if that. He had seen his tomorrows — in the hungry, gnarled hands outstretched toward the long-dead brazier, bodies shivering in the unsmiling, setting sun of a winter’s day. Long have the men been waiting: all day. But chance has not come that way today. Chance rarely came that way. Any day. Chance has been busy in that other world ... the white world. Where it dwelt, at home among those other beings, who might or might not come with offers of a day’s employ. Where it made its abode — in posh suburbs and beautiful homes and thriving businesses ... forever forsaking the men looking for a day’s work that might give them an hour’s wage. The men from the dry, dusty, wind-flattened, withering shacks they call home. Would always, always call home. No escape.
Such stark sign-posts to his tomorrow. Hope still-born in his heart. As in the hearts of all like him. The million-million lumpen, the lost generation. My son. My son!
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That unforgiving moment. My son. Blood pounding in his ears. King! If for a day. If for a paltry five minutes ... a miserable but searing second.
AMANDLA! NGAWETHU! POWER! IT 1S OURS!
AMANDLA! NGAWETHU! POWER! IT IS OURS!
[…] Transported, the crowd responded; not dwelling on the significance of the word, deaf and blind to the seeds from which it sprang, the pitiful powerlessness that had brewed this very moment
And the song in my son’s ears. A song he had heard since he could walk. Even before he could walk. Song of hate, of despair, of rage. Song of impotent loathing.
AMABHULU, AZIZINJA!
AMABHULU, AZIZINJA!
BOERS, THEY ARE DOGS!
BOERS, THEY ARE DOGS!
[…] The crowd cheers my son on. One settler! One bullet! We had been cheering him on since the day he was born. Before he was born. Long before.
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