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A review by leavingsealevel
A Dry White Season by André Brink
3.0
Lately I've read several anti-apartheid novels by white South African authors, and they all seem to pull in a lot of the same themes--themes around which A Dry White Season is built. The privileged white protagonist beginning to take a stand not because of some internal moral spark, but because something happens to someone he or she cares about. The understanding that whiteness means the choice to opt out of the struggle and be forgiven by the dominant powers, even when you're in very deep. The realization, which Brink's protagonist experiences, that privilege means he benefits from apartheid no matter what he does, that nothing he can do will be "enough," and that he has to do everything he can anyway.
An excellent book, but it disturbs me that I read so many of these white anti-apartheid authors, and so few South African authors of color. I don't know a ton about South Africa, and I generally read what I happen to pull off the shelf at lefty bookstores or in the university library, or what I see reviewed in the mainstream liberal press. In other words, the books I run into are those that the average left-leaning white US reader would run into, I think. Anything else would require seeking out. The fact that privileged authors get more attention and more breaks, even when they're telling the stories of marginalized characters/communities, is not news (and I think this goes beyond race, to gender and sexual orientation and class and other things). But I feel compelled to point it out as I tell you how much I liked A Dry White Season.
An excellent book, but it disturbs me that I read so many of these white anti-apartheid authors, and so few South African authors of color. I don't know a ton about South Africa, and I generally read what I happen to pull off the shelf at lefty bookstores or in the university library, or what I see reviewed in the mainstream liberal press. In other words, the books I run into are those that the average left-leaning white US reader would run into, I think. Anything else would require seeking out. The fact that privileged authors get more attention and more breaks, even when they're telling the stories of marginalized characters/communities, is not news (and I think this goes beyond race, to gender and sexual orientation and class and other things). But I feel compelled to point it out as I tell you how much I liked A Dry White Season.