Liongold: Sunlight and Shadows in the Era of Apartheid

By Bea Alden

Book Overview

LIONGOLD is the poignant memoir of a white girl growing up in South Africa during the height of the apartheid regime. Sometimes gently ironic, at other times funny, sad or shocking, this book describes life in a beautiful place, at an ugly time in its history.

Bea Alden grew up in Johannesburg, a tall city founded on a vast wealth of gold being mined day and night in deep underground shafts by an army of black laborers. Above and below ground, around the entire country, blacks did hard physical work on behalf of whites. Apartheid encouraged white families to employ black servants, and Bea's parents saw no bias in this practice. In that place and time, it seemed quite normal. Her father's mental illness was their secret shame, and the family lived in dread of it becoming known in their own white circle.

In language rich with mood and atmosphere, delicately unfolding the intricate relationships of gender, class, ethnicity and race, LIONGOLD tells the story of one family, their tragic problems, and an entire way of life doomed, necessarily, to give way to immense change.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0595439861
• ISBN13: 9780595439867
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Length: 212 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Wonderfully written memoir of life in a very different time and place

Ms. Alden is a talented writer who transports the reader to the South Africa of her youth with vivid, fascinating and absorbing descriptions and details. She had me "hooked" from the first pages and I could not put the book down until I'd read it all.

A heart warming and heart breaking view of Apartheid in South Africa

What a beautifully written account of this place and time. Bea makes this all the more poignant by showing the disturbing truth and subtle self deceptions of apartheid policy from the innocent view of a young child. It is telling that her child's heart knew that 'something was wrong' while the grown-ups were pretending that all was well. This is a wonderfully written view into the world of accepted social separation and the heartache it inevitably causes. Well done!

I'll be waiting for a sequel

This is so well written about a place and time I had never considered. It is so easy to ignore what is commonplace to each of us in our every day life and not even notice when there is discrimination or injustice. Now I would like to read 'the rest of the story' and find out what happens when there is more than just unrest in the country and how it affected the lives of Bea and her family.

A rare perspective on Apartheid

LIONGOLD "vividly chronicles the troubled life of a white family in the suburbs of Johannesburg...during South Africa's pivotal years of apartheid." Bea Alden's true story is told from her childhood perspective, from about age 4 to her twenties. People often wonder, "How could those white Christian Africans have treated blacks as they did?" Bea answers this question by ushering us into the perspective of white privilege, where "that's just the way things are." But uncomfortable questions inevitably arise as she approaches adulthood. In addition to being a compelling story, LIONGOLD is beautifully written. Alden has an artist's eye for detail and a gift for description. Letty, their "girl," is "all sharp elbows and spiky energy. ... Her bright brown eyes survey the world suspiciously, with a nuanced, guarded look of discontent." Though the tale centers on Alden's white family, she also weaves in a respectful look at what life was like for blacks. This is a gem of a book with a valuable and rare perspective on this tragic period in modern history.