All memoirs great and small

Patricia McCracken reviews the return of legendary Yorkshire vet James Herriot, life in 1980s Fordsburg, Johnny Clegg’s autobiography, and the story of South Africa’s Spur restaurant franchise.

Razina Theba’s memoir, A HOME ON VORSTER STREET (Jonathan Ball, R260),

opens the door on vibrant family and community life in Fordsburg, Johannesburg, in the 1980s and beyond. Theba, an attorney, has written a lively and insightful book that contains humour, but also the shadow of adolescent awareness of being expected not to fight what little life might hand her.

Here are the five words Theba uses to describe her experience of writing.

1. GAP: It can seem hard to find a gap to write, and mine was just an hour a day, the time that I sat in the car, waiting to pick up one son and then another. I wrote down scraps of my life on my cell phone.

2. LISTENING: As I became a teen, I found it difficult to concentrate on my grandmother’s stories of her voyage from India to South Africa, told in her mother tongue (my third language). But I see the same in my sons; they live in a completely different world. This book will be here when they’re ready to listen.

3. HARDSHIP: We didn’t focus on it at first, but by the time we were becoming adults, it was impossible to ignore where we were living and how we were living. Our grandparents hadn’t wanted controversy, but several of my male cousins were detained during the apartheid years.

4. INTIMIDATED: Wits University was only 4km away from Fordsburg, but to me, as a student, it was an absolute shock. I wasn’t mentally prepared for how big the world really is.

5. SUPPORTIVE: Out of our community came professors, doctors, lawyers and engineers, from families like mine that took pride in giving their children more chances in life.

For many of us, this book has been a cathartic experience, recalling a place, a time and especially the little community that raised us all.