Lost and Found in Johannesburg: A Memoir
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.13 (779 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0374535027 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 352 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-07-22 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Rhyder S. said Compelling and stimulating from start to finish. First a disclaimer: I am a born and bred Jo'burger and of the same generation as the author so much of the material was very accessible to me. I'm not sure if it would be as compelling for a general reader with no connection to the source material but I can verify that the material feels 100% authentic.The metaphor that Gevisser uses for describing Johannesburg is a map and the various borders of the map are the lines drawn by class, economics . Errol Levine said A loving and accurate portrait of the strange city of Johannesburg. This is an extraordinary book and memoir! It is beautifully written and a joy to read. It will have a particular appeal to readers with past or current connections to South Africa in general and to Johannesburg in particular.Mark Gevisser has told multiple stories within the confines of his book. One story well told is that of the Jewish community of Johannesburg as it existed in the twentieth century. This community largely originated as desce. Sonpoppie said A biography of a city, a man, and a country. I loved this clever and exceptionally well written memoir. The author uses his childhood obsession with cartography to map his way back to his personal past, as well as to guide the reader down the streets of the history of Johannesburg. Maps define and divide, frame and exclude, and so do the boundaries of city ; we are are defined by society. Sometimes we don't fit in and we have to struggle to find who we are beyond these limitations.
Gevisser, who eventually marries a black man, tells stories of others who have learned to define themselves "within, and across, and against," the city's boundaries. As a child growing up in apartheid South Africa, Gevisser becomes obsessed with a street guide called Holmden's Register of Johannesburg, which literally erases entire black townships. He begins by tracing his family's journey from the Orthodox world of a Lithuanian shtetl to the white suburban neighborhoods where separate servants' quarters were legally required at every house. It is this park that the three men who held Gevisser at gunpoint crossed the night of their crime. Gevisser uses maps, family photographs, shards of memory, newspaper clippings,
He is the writer of the award-winning documentary film The Man Who Drove with Mandela. Gevisser was a Writing Fellow at the University of Pretoria from 2009 to 2012 and an Open Society Fellow from 2012 to 2013. . He is the coeditor of Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa. His journalism has appeared in The
Then, in the mid-1990s, visiting Johannesburg (after years at Yale and then in Paris with his gay Hindi partner), Gevisser is held hostage at gunpoint, bound and gagged with two women friends when three brutal robbers break into their home. Just as intense is his quiet meeting as an adult with Honey, the daughter of his beloved childhood nanny, Betty: while Betty lived in the servant quarters and raised him, she had to leave Honey behind. --Hazel Rochman . From Booklist Two searing contemporary dramas—on