Description
This is a memoir about the life of an extraordinary South African poet, educator, and activist that tells a lesser-known social history of people, families, communities and places.
Poli Poli is intentional in grounding Masekela’s experiences in a social history of the country over generations. Masekela uses her life story to illustrate the features and characteristics that typified life in particular places, like Kwa-Guqa in the 1940s, Johannesburg, Alexander Township, and Inanda Seminary School (for Coloured girls) in Mpumalanga.
The memoir follows her business-owning grandmother who lived through the immediate aftermath of the South African War; her parents’ work as professionals at a time when the state worked to shut such doors for black people; her parents’ efforts to secure opportunities and safety for their children; their work at The New Age newspaper; Barbara’s university years in Lesotho, and her going into exile to Ghana.
Filled with intimate details about the growing pains of childhood inhibited by strict beliefs and systems, an early education on life through first-hand witness of struggle, violence, and sacrifice and the deep scars they etch, to the life-giving love of siblings like her older brother “Minkie”, Poli Poli is a remarkable history that speaks to issues of then and now – belonging, African identity, women’s rights, and femininity, is written in the lyricism and transporting detail of one of the country’s greatest wordsmiths.
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