The Calling of Katie Makanya A Memoir of South Africa [Hardcover]

The winner of South Africa's prestigious Sunday Times/Alan Paton prize, this moving, illuminating memoir chronicles the life of an extraordinary woman in South Africa who was born in 1873 in colonial South Africa and lived through the early years of apartheid to her death in 1955. The story of Katie Makanya opens a window to a side of South African life seldom recorded, examining South Africa's patriarchal culture, customs, community traditions, poverty and hardships. Spanning two centuries and set in South Africa's major cities and towns, this memoir encompasses epoch-making events from the Boer War to the World Wars to the transition from colonialism to apartheid.

Critical acclaim for The Calling of Katie Makanya

A very marvelous and precious document. . . . It is a magnificent story superbly told. The combination of Katie's extraordinary life and McCord's immense talent as a storyteller is overwhelming. I found it compulsive reading and deeply moving. --Athol Fugard

It will tear your heart to shreds, but it will also give you great pleasure, hope, and strength. It's that kind of book. Katie Makanya was that kind of woman. --Sunday Independent (Johannesburg)

I fell in love with the Delaney sisters, enjoying both the book and the play. It is good to know their sister in Africa also has her say, that Katie's life, too, can be shared. --Nikki Giovanni

The Calling of Katie Makanya

A Memoir of South Africa

Her mother's entry in the family Bible recorded a second daughter, Katie, born on July 28, 1873 at Fort Beaufort in the Cape of Good Hope. Because it was milking time, Katie's father would call her by her home name, Malubisi, or Mother of Milk.

Colonialism was at its height when Katie Makanya was born in South Africa. When she died at the age of 83, the British Empire had all but disappeared, and apartheid was firmly in place. During the intervening decades of epochal historical change, of turbulent social transitions ls¬