S. Africa's Apartheid 1970s Told from a White 10 Year Old Heroine HUM IF YOU DON't KNOW the WORDS

The Soweto Uprising in S. Africa (1976) during its fractious & poisonous apartheid regime is the setting for the novel HUM if YOU DON'T KNOW the WORDS by Bianca Marais (b S Africa).   The unwary, childlike title is unwittingly deceptive.  The somber hateful matters of apartheid, racism, bigotry and persecution ring loudly.  It's a coming of age story of a 10 yr. old heroine, Robin, confronted with the horrors of her parents murders & S African tyranny.  Robin is white & cared for by a black housekeeper, Mabel during apartheid.  The night her parents have left for the evening she & Mabel are awoken to the brash pounding on the door by police ordering them to the station.  Robin is separated from Mabel who is taken & tortured.  An officer informs her of her parents murders by black men as she shivers in her pajamas and wets herself while confined to a bench & neglected for hours.  Her distraught & disheveled Aunt Edith arrives to rescue Robin and confirms the inconceivable truth of her parents' deaths.  Robin refuses to leave the station without Mabel.  Mabel has been badly beaten while in custody.  She disentangles herself from Robin's clinging arms. Mable has no intention of remaining in town.  With no other family Edith, a single flight attendant is given custody of her niece.  It's not long before Robin realizes she's a burden to her unstable, alcoholic aunt.  Robin's jejune narrative is divergent from that of the mature & worldly wise Beauty.  Beauty as a black woman knows first hand the oppressive system of white supremacy.  Their trajectories interject with the aid of a white couple subversively seeking to dismantle apartheid and provide safe havens.  Beauty has sons in her village. She has come to the city with the sole purpose of rescuing her daughter Nomsa.  Nomsa is actively fighting the iron-fisted subjugation & persecution of the black population.  Her position of leadership has put her in grave peril.  Beauty is placed as Robin's caregiver.  Robin possesses inner strength, imagination & resolve.  These attributes help her contend with grief & alienation.  Among Beauty's attributes are her dignity, tenacity, courage & compassion.  Through Robin's guileless eyes we discover the cruel & unjust legal system of apartheid and the hateful bigotry against Jews & homosexuals comes into focus. This sensitive and stirring novel is constructed as a young adult detective story.  Robin is an unbridled sleuth who magnifies the evidence of pervasive hatred and assembles a solid case for justice & empathy through traces of care & compassion.   Robin & Beauty's voices harmoniously combine to refute cruelty & violence and hums with words of love.  Beauty's sagacious observations mentor Robin's dawning ephiphanies.  "Evil needs something to hate, it's easier to treat people terribly if you tell yourself they're nothing like you." In caring for Robin, Beauty's grasp of love flourishes.  "I am learning how love wells up and causes great pain when it has nowhere to go.  Like breast milk, it has to have an outlet; it can only be nourishing if it is directed away from the source."  I recommend this bold & gracious novel for its significant historic accounting of S. African apartheid and for its relevance our cruel world.  The world is often a cruel place.  It's our job to record its ugliness and render peaceful change for justice.