Mapping My Way Home: Activism, Nostalgia, and the Downfall of Apartheid South Africa

by Stephanie Urdang

Stephanie Urdang was born in Cape Town, South Africa, into a white, Jewish family staunchly opposed to the apartheid regime. In 1967, at the age of twenty-three, no longer able to tolerate the grotesque iniquities and oppression of apartheid, she chose exile and emigrated to the United States. There she embraced feminism, met anti-apartheid and solidarity movement activists, and encountered a particularly American brand of racial injustice. Urdang also met African revolutionaries such as Amilcar Cabral, who would influence her return to Africa and her subsequent journalism. In 1974, she trekked through the liberation zones of Guinea-Bissau during its war of independence; in the 1980’s, she returned repeatedly to Mozambique and saw how South Africa was fomenting a civil war aimed to destroy the newly independent country. From the vantage point of her activism in the United States, and from her travels in Africa, Urdang tracked and wrote about the slow, inexorable demise of apartheid that led to South Africa’s first democratic elections, when she could finally return home.

Urdang’s memoir maps out her quest for the meaning of home and for the lived reality of revolution with empathy, courage, and a keen eye for historical and geographic detail. This is a personal narrative, beautifully told, of a journey traveled by an indefatigable exile who, while yearning for home, continued to question where, as a citizen of both South Africa and the United States, she belongs. “My South Africa!” she writes, on her return in 1991, after the release of Nelson Mandela, “How could I have imagined for one instant that I could return to its beauty, and not its pain?”

Genres: Africa

304 pages, Hardcover

Published November 22, 2017

Reviews

[Janet Hooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel somewhat overwhelmed by the insight and eloquence of the other reviewers, and feel I would only ditto their comments. I too, from the US end only, was involved with the anti-apartheid and anti-colonial struggles in the 1960s and onward. Stephanie pulls me back into that heady time when we worked so hard to analyze and understand the movement toward African liberation.. and how early on we so strongly hoped for massive change. We wanted that change not only for our African comrades but here in the belly as well. Her focus on women in the liberation struggle, their power and honesty, is a refreshing reminder of strength Despite the imperfect outcome, her descriptions of the intensity of comradeship, her honesty about her own deep and at times conflicting feelings, and her commitment to search for her own truth -- all lend to a personal and political triumph. Yes "A luta continua" , but Stephanie has given us insight not to be missed.

[Sam Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an anti-apartheid activist in the US who made a reverse migration to Southern Africa in the 80's, this book portrays the link between the two continents and those who were committed supporting the struggles for peace and justice in South Africa and the Portuguese colonies. It is both political and personal in describing the complexity of liberation struggles, post-indpendence governance and how to maintain principles in driving the "revolutions" . Well written and easy to read.

[Gail Hovey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who was an activist in the sixties and seventies on will find this memoir deeply compelling. Urdang places herself, as an activist/journalist, with the movements fighting Portuguese colonialism and apartheid. Embracing feminism, she sees through this lens as she tells her personal story in the context of the larger political stories unfolding. Mapping My Way Home made me laugh and made me cry. I'm deeply grateful that the times and events Urdang writes about have been portrayed with such honesty and integrity.

[Jeffrey Schur]

Wonderful chronicle of a difficult time. The author is the last of the SA generation that was involved from the start to the end of the "Struggle" against a genocidal government.

And the conflicting emotions of having left and settled in the US. (or elsewhere).

[Ellen Friedland · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Mapping My Way Home" takes the reader simultaneously into the heart of the author, Stephanie Urdang, and the last few political decades of South Africa and Mozambique, winding those dual perspectives around each other throughout the book as they continue to spin in complexity and Urdang's depth of understanding. Over the past four decades I have read a good amount of South African history, but I found this book to present a unique multi-tiered perspective grounded in the author's ability to question her identity, the meaning of "home," related responsibilities, and circumstantial realities -- including those that shatter dreams. Even in the midst of outlining dangerous experiences in far-away places where I have not visited and can imagine only through the descriptions offered, Urdang inserts elements of strength side by side with frailty, confidence side by side with vulnerability, courage side by side with fear, determination side by side with doubt. These very human, genuine feelings are so relatable that they pry open the context of the social and political narrative. Despite not sharing Urdang's South African upbringing, when I finally finished reading the last page, I felt that something important had been reawakened inside me. I welcome that spark!

[Dan O'Meara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The past two decades have produced a veritable flood of biographies, autobiographies and memoirs that deal with the apartheid years and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. For my money, Stephanie Urdang’s Mapping My Way Home: Activism, Nostalgia and the Downfall of Apartheid South Africa stands head and shoulders above them all. This is a moving and engaging account of Urdang’s own struggle to come to terms with the country and continent of her birth and her place in (and outside) of each of them. The writing is incredibly evocative of historical times and places that embodied the brightest of human hopes, yet Urdang brings a searing honesty to the sordid reality that most turned into. While many of these South African political biographies require a degree of knowledge of the country and its brutal apartheid past, this is a book for both specialist and the general reader. You won’t be disappointed.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrific and moving memoir that brings the reader into the struggle for liberation in several African countries, including her native South Africa.