The Way I See It – The Musings Of A Black Woman In The Rainbow Nation
R160.00
Lerato Tshabalala first came to our attention in 2011 with her ‘Urban Miss’ column in the Sunday Times, and since then she has by turns entertained, exasperated, amused and confounded her fans and critics alike.
Now, with her first book, she looks set to become the national institution she deserves to be. With her customary wit and keen insight into social, political and cultural affairs, Lerato shines a bright – and controversial – light on South African society and the quirky ways of the country. She is brutally honest about her experiences as a black South African in post-apartheid Mzansi, and no subject is too sacred for her to explore: annoying car guards, white-dominated corporate South Africa, cultural stereotypes, economic and racial inequality, and gender politics, among many other topics, come under her careful – and often laugh-out-loud – scrutiny.
The Way I See It is written for people who are hungry for a book that is thought-provoking, funny, irreverent and truly South African all at the same time. It is light but full of depth: like a supermodel with an MBA!
Author(s): Lerato Tshabalala
Related Products
Throughout my life I have achieved many remarkable things. In Screw It, Let’s Do It, I will share with you my ideas and the secrets of my success, but not simply because I hope they’ll help you achieve your individual goals. Today we are increasingly aware of the effects of our actions on the environment, and I strongly believe that we each have a responsibility, as individuals and organisations, to do no harm. I will draw on Gaia Capitalism to explain why we need to take stock of how we may be damaging the environment, and why it is up to big companies like Virgin to lead the way in a more holistic approach to business. In Screw It, Let’s Do It I’ll be looking forwards to the future. A lot has changed since I founded Virgin in 1968, and I’ll explain how I intend to take my business and my ideas to the next level and the new and exciting areas – such as launching Virgin Fuels – into which Virgin is currently moving. But I have also brought together all the important lessons, good advice and inspirational adages that have helped me along the road to success. Ironically, I have never been one to do things by the book, but I have been inspired and influenced by many remarkable people. I hope that you too might find a little inspiration between these pages.
Author(s): Richard Branson
Maverick. Leadership genius. Self-made millionaire. Dragon. The rock star of public speaking. Vusi Thembekwayo has been called many things.
Join him in his inspiring journey from the township to the top echelons of South African business, to becoming one of the youngest directors of a listed company and CEO of a boutique investment firm. As a Dragons’ Den judge and a sought- after public speaker across the globe, Vusi doesn’t just talk business – he lives it.
Now you can learn the secret of his success and how to shape your own destiny.
Author(s): Vusi Thembekwayo
In this book, Vuyisani outlines some money mistakes he went through and how he redeemed himself from the consequences of those mistakes. The book contains practical financial success principles, and therefore can be read by anyone who desires to build wealth from scratch.
Author: Vuyisani Sholo
Dear Bullet by Sixolile Mbalo is the story of a brave and resourceful young person who has confronted the scourge of sexual violence, and who literally carries its effects with her to this day. Set in one of the most beautiful parts of rural South Africa: soft flowing hills along which footpaths curl, cattle peacefully graze and children’s playful voices are heard. It is also the area where Nelson Mandela grew up and which he described in his autobiography with much fondness: the exhilarating freedom of childhood and the youthful friendships. Circumstances were less kind to Sixolile Mbalo, but she thought that with the love of her grandmother, she would be able to change her life into a vehicle for her dreams. Then a young man arrived in the village and decided to make the spirited thirteen year old girl the focus point of his most debasing desires. Seldom does such an articulate voice from the unchartered spaces of everyday South African rural life, manage not only to survive, but to cross over into print. With an afterword by Antjie Krog.
Author(s): Sixolile Mbalo
Out of stock
Exit! is the story of Grizelda Grootboom life of prostitution and her ultimate escape from it all.
Grizelda’s life was dramatically changed when she was gang raped at the age of nine by teenagers in her township. Her story starts there. It is a story about the cycle of poverty, family abandonment, dislocation and survival in the streets of Cape Town. She reveals the seedy and often demonised life of a prostitute; she describes the clubs and beds of the prostitution and drug industry over a twelve-year period.
She moves to Johannesburg at the age of 18 in an attempt to start a new life, but instead she is trafficked on arrival in Yeoville, tied in a room for two weeks and forced to work as a sex slave. What follows is a life of living hand-to-mouth, from one street corner to another, being pimped, being taught how to strip, and acquiring and using a variety of drugs – from buttons, ecstasy and cannabis to cocaine – to sustain herself. She speaks of how her prostitution gains momentum in city strip clubs and the sometimes tragic pregnancies that would follow.
Grizelda’s harrowing tale ends with reconciliation with her family, while raising her six-year-old son. In writing this story she hopes to open a window on the hidden and often misunderstood world of prostitution, thereby raising better awareness and understanding about its harms and the horrors of trafficking and prostitution of women and children, and drug abuse. She hopes to heal and to set an example for others to follow.
Author(s): Grizelda Grootboom
Out of stock
The Cry of Winnie Mandela transgresses the borders between fact and fiction, fusing aspects of the novel, biography and essay. It is a beautiful book, the writing lucid and quietly passionate, a work of deep intelligence.~ Chris Dunton, Mail & Guardian
The life story of Winnie Mandela remains one of the great dramas of our times, an ongoing tale of triumphs and tragedies that is still unfolding. In The cry of Winnie Mandela, a highly acclaimed novel first released in 2003, Njabulo S Ndebele focuses on four women at a specific period in the history of Southern Africa who have spent time waiting for their men to return. Their ordinary, ‘private’ stories are anchored to the more powerful public stories of Penelope, of Ancient Greek mythology, who waited nineteen years while her husband Odysseus was away, and Winnie Mandela, who waited for twenty seven years. The women question themselves and each about how and why they waited and what this waiting did to them, leading to a series of extraordinary and haunting ‘conversations’ with one another as well as Penelope and Winnie.
Author: Njabulo S Ndebele
In this memoir, the first of two, Dikgang Moseneke pays homage to the many people and places that have helped to define and shape him. These influences include his ancestry; his parents; his immediate and extended family; and his education both in school and on Robben Island as a 15-year-old prisoner. These people and places played a significant role in forming his principled stance in life and his proud defiance of all forms of injustice.
Robben Island became a school not only in politics but an opportunity for dedicated studies towards a law degree that would provide the bedrock for a long and fruitful career. The book charts Moseneke’s rise as one of the country’s top legal minds, who not only helped to draft the Constitution, but for 15 years acted as a guardian of it for all South Africans.
Not only did Moseneke assist in shaping our new Constitution, he has helped to make it a living document for many South Africans over the past 15 years.
Author(s): Dikgang Moseneke
Out of stock
This powerful and widely acclaimed autobiography of Sindiwe Magona’s early years in South Africa, announced the arrival of a major new black writer. Here she gives an account of her eventful first 23 years and tells a candid, unself-pitying story of trium.
Author(s): Sindiwe Magona
Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of his relationship with his fearless, rebellious and fervently religious mother – his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. The eighteen personal essays collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic and deeply affecting. Whether being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping or simply trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his world with an incisive wit and an unflinching honesty.
Author(s): Trevor Noah
As a teenager, Fred Khumalo greeted his friends with a handshake and the words “touch my blood”. It implied friendship and trust. The saying became his name. More than that, it became the way he viewed the world. Everything touched Fred Khumalo.
As a teenager, Fred Khumalo greeted his friends with a handshake and the words “touch my blood”. It implied friendship and trust. The saying became his name. More than that, it became the way he viewed the world. Everything touched Fred Khumalo. Twice he was bewitched. Twice his father – the “country bumpkin” – took him to inyangas to have the “demons” banished. Twice his mother – the “city girl” – took him to a doctor to have the “fevers” cured. He smoked dagga with conmen and criminals, he pickpocketed “corpses” on the Friday night trains and worked as a gardener in the larney suburbs. He studied journalism and shacked up with whiteys in a commune, for a while the only darkie in a crazy swirl of booze, drugs and sex. And then the bloody fighting that tore apart KwaZulu/Natal in the 1980s touched his life and sucked him into a place of horror and violence that threatened to destroy him. When a friend died in his arms with the worlds “They really got me, Touch my blood. They really got me”, Khumalo realised that if he was to outlive the madness, he had to run. From the journalist and Sunday Times columnist comes a startlingly honest, humorous and poignant autobiography about growing up in a time of laughter and heartache.
uthor(s): Fred Khumalo
2 in stock (can be backordered)
It’s 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She’s in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they’re trying for a baby – and she doesn’t want any of it. A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to pursue her own journey in search of three things she has been missing: pleasure, devotion and balance. So, she travels to Rome, where she learns Italian from handsome, brown-eyed identical twins and gains twenty-five pounds, an ashram in India, where she finds that enlightenment entails getting up in the middle of the night to scrub the temple floor, and Bali where a toothless medicine man of indeterminate age offers her a new path to peace: simply sit still and smile. And slowly happiness begins to creep up on her.
Author(s): Elizabeth Gilbert
After his wife died, Rick Rigsby was ready to give up. The bare minimum was good enough. Rigsby was content to go through the motions, living out his life as a shell of himself. But then he remembered the lessons his father taught him years before – something insanely simple, yet incredibly profound. These lessons weren’t in advanced mathematics or the secrets of the stock market. They were quite straightforward, in fact, for Rigsby’s father never made it through third grade. But if this uneducated man’s instructions were powerful enough to produce a Ph.D. and a judge – imagine what they can do for you. Join Rigsby as he dusts off time-tested beliefs and finds brilliantly simple answers to modern society’s questions. In a magnificent testament to the “Greatest Generation” which gave so much and asked so little in return, Lessons from a Third Grade Dropout will challenge you while reigniting your passion to lead a truly fulfilling life. After all, it’s never too late to learn a little bit more about life – just ask the third-grade dropout.
Author(s): Ricky Rigsby
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.