AustLit

'Sisonke Msimang’s father fled South Africa and the violent repression of the African National Congress (ANC) in the early 1960s. She was born in Lusaka, Zambia and raised in a family at the centre of a revolutionary community in exile. They were forever moving to yet “another country” – Kenya and Canada were to follow. “…the dream of freedom was a sort of home for us,” she writes. They return to post-Apartheid South Africa in the early 1990s. It’s thrilling at first. But soon, Msimang realises that her absence from the country during the toughest years of struggle alienates her from the experience of other black South Africans. She discovers that it is one thing to be “of” and another to be “from” a country.' (Introduction)