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When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided by Race
During the worst years of official racism in South Africa, the story of one young girl gripped the nation and came to symbolize the injustice, corruption, and arbitrary nature of apartheid. Born in 1955 to a pro-apartheid Afrikaner couple, Sandra Laing was officially registered and raised as a white child. But when she was sent to a boarding school for whites, she was mercilessly persecuted because of her dark skin and frizzy hair. Her parents attributed Sandra’s appearance to an interracial union far back in history; they swore Sandra was their child. Their neighbors, however, thought Mrs. Laing had committed adultery with a black man. The family was shunned. And when Sandra was ten, she was removed from school by the police and reclassified as "coloured."
As a teenager, Sandra eloped with a black man, and her parents disowned her. The young woman, who had only known the privileged world of the whites, chose to begin again in a poor, rural, all-black township, where life was a desperate, day-to-day struggle against poverty, illness, and a legal system designed to enslave.
As a teenager, Sandra eloped with a black man, and her parents disowned her. The young woman, who had only known the privileged world of the whites, chose to begin again in a poor, rural, all-black township, where life was a desperate, day-to-day struggle against poverty, illness, and a legal system designed to enslave.
In this remarkable narrative, veteran journalist and author Judith Stone takes us on her own eye-opening journey as she and Sandra explore the mysteries of Sandra’s past and piece together the fractured life of one of apartheid’s many victims. As the devastating circumstances of Sandra’s life are revealed, Stone comes to understand and admire her for the flawed -- yet enduring -- survivor she is.
324 pages, Hardcover
First published April 4, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews
January 14, 2012
Sandra's story is very important and needs to be told. The only reason I gave this 2 stars instead of 1 is because it helped put her story out there.
I don't like reading stories that say, "this is how I'm going to tell the story. This is what I looked at." Tell the story. Footnote the resources. Don't distract from the story but forcing stuff all about yourself/the author and how hard you worked on the book. You are stealing the story from Sandra.
The author's unhidden judgments and poorly hidden white privilege were extraordinarily distracting. Everything from Sandra's conflicting memories (uh, PTSD anyone?) to the appearance of Nik Naks.
The structure of the story timeline was flip-flopping unnecessarily.
I don't like reading stories that say, "this is how I'm going to tell the story. This is what I looked at." Tell the story. Footnote the resources. Don't distract from the story but forcing stuff all about yourself/the author and how hard you worked on the book. You are stealing the story from Sandra.
The author's unhidden judgments and poorly hidden white privilege were extraordinarily distracting. Everything from Sandra's conflicting memories (uh, PTSD anyone?) to the appearance of Nik Naks.
The structure of the story timeline was flip-flopping unnecessarily.
June 22, 2007
This biography examines the history of South Africa's systematic racism while telling the story of Sandra Lang, a national symbol of the cruelties of apartheid. Although I loved the story of Sandra and felt the horror of what she endured, I was not impressed with the author, Judith Stone. She was too present in the story, too much a character in the way of the real events going on behind her. She over-analyzes Sandra's every decision and feeling. She meanders through the events and repeats herself. She digs into irrelevant details that bog down the story. In her defense, I did read an unedited copy (which I didn't realize until I had finished the book and looked at the back cover, and all along I was thinking "WHO edited this?"), so perhaps the finished product is really good. Would be a fine introduction for someone who knows little about Apartheid. I have read about and watched films on the subject before, but it never ceases to amaze and sadden me.
January 17, 2008
This story made me angry (if I could underline that I would) and yet the story of Sandra Laing should be read. I think it's important to understand how humans can use science, pride, and lies to completely take away basic human rights. This story happened less than 50 years ago. The mentality that allowed this story to happen still persists. Read this book. Read the footnotes also. Thanks for sending it to me Micah.
January 19, 2008
It's amazing people will focus so much negative energy on something that is so trivial as someone's looks and the color of their skin. I almost didn't finish reading this book, especially the beginning when Sandra Laing's parents were fighting to keep her classified as a white person. But I am glad I hung in there because it got better. You really get an understanding of how racism affects a person mentally and physically and the many ways they defend themselves against racism. Till this day, Laing has memory lapses and still feels like she's at fault for everything bad that happened to her. This is also a good book on South Africa and apartheid in the 1960s to the present.
January 19, 2022
When She Was White by Judith Stone is a great book. This book had me captivated from the
beginning to the end.
This book is about a South African girl with brown skin and dark curly hair born to white Afrikaner parents. All the paths that she and her parents had to go through.
Now I want to watch the movie.
beginning to the end.
This book is about a South African girl with brown skin and dark curly hair born to white Afrikaner parents. All the paths that she and her parents had to go through.
Now I want to watch the movie.
June 6, 2024
A VASTLY INFORMATIVE ACCOUNT OF SANDRA LAING
(In addition to reading this marvelous book, you should also watch the movie, “Skin,” which tells the story.)
Author Judith Stone wrote in this 2007 book, “in 2000, Sandra [Laing] had come to the attention of Anthony Fabian, A British filmmaker, who… thought her experiences would make a wonderful feature film… he spoke to publishers and discovered there was indeed interest in a book about the Sandra Laing case. The editors… felt that Sandra’s story could best be reported by an observer from outside South African culture. That’s how I came to be sitting in the parlor of a house.. asking Sandra Laing to reconstruct her life, the first in a series of conversations that would continue for five years… I soon saw that my task would involve not just gathering Sandra’s testimony, but also tracking down information to fill gaps in her story---things she’d forgotten, and things she’d never known… To fill in those blanks, we used official documents, government records, library archives, and interviews with Sandra’s friends, family, neighbors, former classmates, and the parents of children who attended Piet Retief Primary in the 1960s… I also consulted various experts… We were helped greatly by the small support community that had coalesced around Sandra by the time that I met her…” (Pg. 18-19)
Stone recounts that “she’d been forced to leave Piet Retief Primary because only white children were legally allowed to attend the school, and the government of South Africa had officially declared her to be no longer white… Since both of Sandra’ parents were white, she’d been propelled at birth through the portals of white privilege… But because of her frizzy hair and light brown skin… the director of the Census had officially changed Sandra’s classification to ‘coloured.’ Now she couldn’t legally enter a restaurant or movie theater with her parents or brothers; share a bus set, a park bench, or a church pew; swim at the same beach, visit the same clinic, or be buried in the same cemetery According to the letter of the law, she could no longer live with her white family, except as a servant.” (Pg. 6-7)
She notes, “People hearing Sandra’s story for the first time usually ask why she doesn’t just have a DNA test. Such an assay didn’t exist until 1975, and by that time Sandra and her parents were estranged; Sannie and Abraham [her parents] have since died… The question of Sandra’s paternity could almost certainly be settled today by a sibling DNA test, which would show whether Sandra’s brothers are half or full siblings, and thus whether Abraham is Sandra’s father as well as theirs. But Sandra hasn’t had contact with Adriaan [her younger brother] since she was fifteen and he was five, and he’s adamant about keeping it that way. She’s recently begun reforging a relationship with her older brother Leon, over the telephone. The process is tentative and fraught, and Sandra feels that asking Leon to take a DNA test would be fatal to their fragile connection. She could submit to a DNA test herself… But the test wouldn’t tell whether or not Abraham Laing was her father.” (Pg. 59-60)
She adds, “Certainly some white women had clandestine relationships with nonwhite men. But Sandra doesn’t think her mother was one of them. For one thing, Sandra believes her mother wouldn’t cheat on her father with anybody… The more I learned about the culture that shaped Sannie, and its obsession with racial purity, the more I agreed with Sandra. Sannie was pleasant to her black customers and isolated from her white neighbors. But it’s hard to imagine her resisting the indoctrination that began at birth and was reinforced constantly with unsubtle messages from family, church, school, and state, all reminder her that it was God’s intention that black and white not mix except as master and servant, and that for a woman, sex with a member of another race was unforgivable sin.” (Pg. 61)
She continues, “Sandra offers more concrete evidence: photographs of herself with her baby brother Adriaan, taken when Sandra was eleven of so… The children look startlingly alike… Adriaan’s baby hair is the same froth of tight curls, and his skin is darker than his parents’ and elder brother’s---but just enough lighter than Sandra’s that he escaped her fate and was accepted at Piet Retief Primary six years after her expulsion.” (Pg. 61)
She explains, “The most likely explanation for Sandra’s skin color and hair texture is the one that the Laings consistently offered… the couple attributed Sandra’s looks to a trick of genetics… about 8 percent of the genes of any modern Afrikaner are non-white…More recent DNA studies of the Afrikaner community put the number slightly higher, at 11 percent… ‘The races have been mixing for so long in South Africa that a case like Sandra’s, though uncommon, is not impossible,” says Trefor Jenkins, MD, until 1998 the head of the Department of Human Genetics of the South African Institute for Medical Research.” (Pg. 62)
After Sandra was removed from her school, it was difficult to find her another school, due to her father’s intransigence. Willy Meyer [“at the time a successful, politically active cattle and cotton farmer in Swaziland”; pg. 70] tried to arrange for Sandra to a private school: “‘Eventually… it was decided that Sandra could go to a mixed school in Pretoria where all these foreigners are---ambassadors’ children, you know… her boarding and lodging would be paid… [But] Laing was a difficult guy… he says to me… ‘I want nothing to do with this, this is politics.’ … When he threw me out of the store, I was fed up… I was trying to help that family … The mother was cooperative.’… What caused Abraham to balk? A later letter … suggest that the Pretoria school arrangement depended on Abraham Laing’s accepting a coloured classification for Sandra. That would certainly be a deal killer. But Meyer insisted… that Sandra needn’t have been classified coloured in order to attend the mixed-race school he’d found for her.” (Pg. 73-74)
Later, “And then Sandra was white again. On July 25, 1967, the Minister of Home Affairs sent the Laings a letter announcing that their daughter’s reclassification had been reversed… While publicity about Sandra’s case may have contributed to the passage of the amendment that made her white---her name came up in parliamentary debate---the legislators were probably motivated by more pressing political considerations. In 1966… a law went into effect making it compulsory for all South Africans over the age of sixteen, regardless of color, to carry identity cards indicating their race… Since 1951, many people on the racial borderline, most of them coloured… had dodged classification altogether, preferring to risk flying under the official radar. The passage of the new I.D. card forced them to submit to classification, and as a result, the number of appeals against classification decisions had suddenly increased dramatically. This meant that Sandra happened to make news at a time when the Ministry of the Interior and its regional Race Classification Appeals Boards were flooded with cases.” (Pg. 108-109)
At age 16, Sandra ultimately ran away with a black man named Petrus [“A civil marriage would have been illegal, in any case; in the eyes of the government, Sandra was white and Petrus was black, and the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 prevented their union”; pg. 149]. Stone notes, “To Sandra, the most important thing about this community was that they welcomed her, and they didn’t think anything was wrong with her.” (Pg. 151) Sandra told Stone, “the black people liked me; they didn’t say nasty things at me. When I was white, maybe I didn’t feel I’m white… I think that black people treated me better than white people… I felt stronger inside when I was with black people.” (Pg. 154)
When newspapers began to pick up on Sandra’s story, the family moved away (without giving her a forwarding address), and never replied to Sandra’s letters. After her father’s death in 1988, her mother accepted one phone call from Sandra; when her mother had Alzheimer’s and was in a nursing home, Sandra visited her---but her brothers still rejected her. (Pg. 166, 201, 265-266)
Stone concludes, “Sandra … wants to know that her brother forgives her. She wants to know that her children are going to be happier than she was… She wants to know how her parents really felt about her. She wants to know everything she’s forgotten. It’s hard, knowing what you know.” (Pg. 288)
This is an immensely informative and dramatically gripping book, that will be “must reading” for anyone concerned about the effects and aftermath of Apartheid.
(In addition to reading this marvelous book, you should also watch the movie, “Skin,” which tells the story.)
Author Judith Stone wrote in this 2007 book, “in 2000, Sandra [Laing] had come to the attention of Anthony Fabian, A British filmmaker, who… thought her experiences would make a wonderful feature film… he spoke to publishers and discovered there was indeed interest in a book about the Sandra Laing case. The editors… felt that Sandra’s story could best be reported by an observer from outside South African culture. That’s how I came to be sitting in the parlor of a house.. asking Sandra Laing to reconstruct her life, the first in a series of conversations that would continue for five years… I soon saw that my task would involve not just gathering Sandra’s testimony, but also tracking down information to fill gaps in her story---things she’d forgotten, and things she’d never known… To fill in those blanks, we used official documents, government records, library archives, and interviews with Sandra’s friends, family, neighbors, former classmates, and the parents of children who attended Piet Retief Primary in the 1960s… I also consulted various experts… We were helped greatly by the small support community that had coalesced around Sandra by the time that I met her…” (Pg. 18-19)
Stone recounts that “she’d been forced to leave Piet Retief Primary because only white children were legally allowed to attend the school, and the government of South Africa had officially declared her to be no longer white… Since both of Sandra’ parents were white, she’d been propelled at birth through the portals of white privilege… But because of her frizzy hair and light brown skin… the director of the Census had officially changed Sandra’s classification to ‘coloured.’ Now she couldn’t legally enter a restaurant or movie theater with her parents or brothers; share a bus set, a park bench, or a church pew; swim at the same beach, visit the same clinic, or be buried in the same cemetery According to the letter of the law, she could no longer live with her white family, except as a servant.” (Pg. 6-7)
She notes, “People hearing Sandra’s story for the first time usually ask why she doesn’t just have a DNA test. Such an assay didn’t exist until 1975, and by that time Sandra and her parents were estranged; Sannie and Abraham [her parents] have since died… The question of Sandra’s paternity could almost certainly be settled today by a sibling DNA test, which would show whether Sandra’s brothers are half or full siblings, and thus whether Abraham is Sandra’s father as well as theirs. But Sandra hasn’t had contact with Adriaan [her younger brother] since she was fifteen and he was five, and he’s adamant about keeping it that way. She’s recently begun reforging a relationship with her older brother Leon, over the telephone. The process is tentative and fraught, and Sandra feels that asking Leon to take a DNA test would be fatal to their fragile connection. She could submit to a DNA test herself… But the test wouldn’t tell whether or not Abraham Laing was her father.” (Pg. 59-60)
She adds, “Certainly some white women had clandestine relationships with nonwhite men. But Sandra doesn’t think her mother was one of them. For one thing, Sandra believes her mother wouldn’t cheat on her father with anybody… The more I learned about the culture that shaped Sannie, and its obsession with racial purity, the more I agreed with Sandra. Sannie was pleasant to her black customers and isolated from her white neighbors. But it’s hard to imagine her resisting the indoctrination that began at birth and was reinforced constantly with unsubtle messages from family, church, school, and state, all reminder her that it was God’s intention that black and white not mix except as master and servant, and that for a woman, sex with a member of another race was unforgivable sin.” (Pg. 61)
She continues, “Sandra offers more concrete evidence: photographs of herself with her baby brother Adriaan, taken when Sandra was eleven of so… The children look startlingly alike… Adriaan’s baby hair is the same froth of tight curls, and his skin is darker than his parents’ and elder brother’s---but just enough lighter than Sandra’s that he escaped her fate and was accepted at Piet Retief Primary six years after her expulsion.” (Pg. 61)
She explains, “The most likely explanation for Sandra’s skin color and hair texture is the one that the Laings consistently offered… the couple attributed Sandra’s looks to a trick of genetics… about 8 percent of the genes of any modern Afrikaner are non-white…More recent DNA studies of the Afrikaner community put the number slightly higher, at 11 percent… ‘The races have been mixing for so long in South Africa that a case like Sandra’s, though uncommon, is not impossible,” says Trefor Jenkins, MD, until 1998 the head of the Department of Human Genetics of the South African Institute for Medical Research.” (Pg. 62)
After Sandra was removed from her school, it was difficult to find her another school, due to her father’s intransigence. Willy Meyer [“at the time a successful, politically active cattle and cotton farmer in Swaziland”; pg. 70] tried to arrange for Sandra to a private school: “‘Eventually… it was decided that Sandra could go to a mixed school in Pretoria where all these foreigners are---ambassadors’ children, you know… her boarding and lodging would be paid… [But] Laing was a difficult guy… he says to me… ‘I want nothing to do with this, this is politics.’ … When he threw me out of the store, I was fed up… I was trying to help that family … The mother was cooperative.’… What caused Abraham to balk? A later letter … suggest that the Pretoria school arrangement depended on Abraham Laing’s accepting a coloured classification for Sandra. That would certainly be a deal killer. But Meyer insisted… that Sandra needn’t have been classified coloured in order to attend the mixed-race school he’d found for her.” (Pg. 73-74)
Later, “And then Sandra was white again. On July 25, 1967, the Minister of Home Affairs sent the Laings a letter announcing that their daughter’s reclassification had been reversed… While publicity about Sandra’s case may have contributed to the passage of the amendment that made her white---her name came up in parliamentary debate---the legislators were probably motivated by more pressing political considerations. In 1966… a law went into effect making it compulsory for all South Africans over the age of sixteen, regardless of color, to carry identity cards indicating their race… Since 1951, many people on the racial borderline, most of them coloured… had dodged classification altogether, preferring to risk flying under the official radar. The passage of the new I.D. card forced them to submit to classification, and as a result, the number of appeals against classification decisions had suddenly increased dramatically. This meant that Sandra happened to make news at a time when the Ministry of the Interior and its regional Race Classification Appeals Boards were flooded with cases.” (Pg. 108-109)
At age 16, Sandra ultimately ran away with a black man named Petrus [“A civil marriage would have been illegal, in any case; in the eyes of the government, Sandra was white and Petrus was black, and the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 prevented their union”; pg. 149]. Stone notes, “To Sandra, the most important thing about this community was that they welcomed her, and they didn’t think anything was wrong with her.” (Pg. 151) Sandra told Stone, “the black people liked me; they didn’t say nasty things at me. When I was white, maybe I didn’t feel I’m white… I think that black people treated me better than white people… I felt stronger inside when I was with black people.” (Pg. 154)
When newspapers began to pick up on Sandra’s story, the family moved away (without giving her a forwarding address), and never replied to Sandra’s letters. After her father’s death in 1988, her mother accepted one phone call from Sandra; when her mother had Alzheimer’s and was in a nursing home, Sandra visited her---but her brothers still rejected her. (Pg. 166, 201, 265-266)
Stone concludes, “Sandra … wants to know that her brother forgives her. She wants to know that her children are going to be happier than she was… She wants to know how her parents really felt about her. She wants to know everything she’s forgotten. It’s hard, knowing what you know.” (Pg. 288)
This is an immensely informative and dramatically gripping book, that will be “must reading” for anyone concerned about the effects and aftermath of Apartheid.
March 3, 2008
The life of Sandra Laing can be described as tragic, impossible and unqiuely South African. I first heard of Sandra Laing and this biography by Judith Stone while reading an issue of Essence magazine over the holidays. The story of a South African woman born to white parents who was born white, later classified by the government as "coloured" and thrown out of school at age ten. Only to be reclassifed as white 18 months or so later and then as a runaway teen with older black boyfriend wanting and eventually becoming "coloured" again for the sake of not having her "coloured" children being taken away from her if she remained classifed as a white person. I found this all very fascinating when I read a review of this book in Essence because seeing the photo on the book cover and knowing nothing else of this particular story, it was very clear to me that I was looking at a woman of color. Ms. Laing's life search for a community, a family and for self, is heartwrenching and at times diffcult to read. This book not only enlightens the reader to the personal life experience of Sandra Laing and her family but also to the life of all South Africans during the apartheid.
I remember learning about apartheid South Africa and Nelson Mandela while in elementary school and seeing movies like Sarafina as a teenager and seeing the connection of the South African experience to the experience of Native-Americans, Black slaves, and the jim crow south in this country. Race and race relations will always be controversial and will continue to divide people even the most enlightened and liberal minded people as we look to categorize and define ourselves and others. The grouping of people in terms of their physical characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, facial features ( ie. size of lips or nose, eye shape)is becoming and will continue to become increasingly difficult in the future. But I doubt it will become less important especially since humans and most mammals have the inherent need to belong to a community (to a family)and be loved and accepted unconditionally. Many people find this community, this family through their affliations with others who share the same race, religion, ethnicity, nationality and socieconomic status etc. as they do. Whether it's right or wrong the way we look will always be a major contributing factor to how we are perceived and treated by others and how we define ourselves. I don't consider myself to be "color blind" and I don't think that's how I'd ever like to see the world. I can appreciate the fact that we are all a part of the human race and we are all "ONE" people. But I love the fact that we are all different, we don't all look the same; speak the same language or believe in the same religion or want the same things in life. Differences make this world interesting and it gives me something to learn about day after day. I'm blabbering at this point, so I'll shut up. But I'd like to end with a powerful quote that Judith Stone took from American psychologist Linda James Myers book," Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together?" regarding taxonomy and race (As quoted from pg. 23 of When She Was White) -- " Given what paleontologists and geneticists tell us about human origins-that our earliest ancestor emgerged in Southern Africa around 120,000 years ago- the world's people can be sensibly divided into only two groups: those who acknowledge their African descent and those who don't."
As someone who has always been intrigue with the study of biological anthropolgy and evolution I was moved by this unforgivenly honest, thought provoking bold statement. Mull it over....
I remember learning about apartheid South Africa and Nelson Mandela while in elementary school and seeing movies like Sarafina as a teenager and seeing the connection of the South African experience to the experience of Native-Americans, Black slaves, and the jim crow south in this country. Race and race relations will always be controversial and will continue to divide people even the most enlightened and liberal minded people as we look to categorize and define ourselves and others. The grouping of people in terms of their physical characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, facial features ( ie. size of lips or nose, eye shape)is becoming and will continue to become increasingly difficult in the future. But I doubt it will become less important especially since humans and most mammals have the inherent need to belong to a community (to a family)and be loved and accepted unconditionally. Many people find this community, this family through their affliations with others who share the same race, religion, ethnicity, nationality and socieconomic status etc. as they do. Whether it's right or wrong the way we look will always be a major contributing factor to how we are perceived and treated by others and how we define ourselves. I don't consider myself to be "color blind" and I don't think that's how I'd ever like to see the world. I can appreciate the fact that we are all a part of the human race and we are all "ONE" people. But I love the fact that we are all different, we don't all look the same; speak the same language or believe in the same religion or want the same things in life. Differences make this world interesting and it gives me something to learn about day after day. I'm blabbering at this point, so I'll shut up. But I'd like to end with a powerful quote that Judith Stone took from American psychologist Linda James Myers book," Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together?" regarding taxonomy and race (As quoted from pg. 23 of When She Was White) -- " Given what paleontologists and geneticists tell us about human origins-that our earliest ancestor emgerged in Southern Africa around 120,000 years ago- the world's people can be sensibly divided into only two groups: those who acknowledge their African descent and those who don't."
As someone who has always been intrigue with the study of biological anthropolgy and evolution I was moved by this unforgivenly honest, thought provoking bold statement. Mull it over....
January 27, 2012
After I saw the provocative movie "Skin", I had a lot of questions, which is why I read this book. I was also interested in learning a little more history of South Africa than the movie provided. Ultimately, the book was disappointing, not because of the writing or research, but because Sandra Laing's story is an imperfect vehicle to discuss racism and what happens when a technologically advanced culture conquers a less advanced culture.
Not unsurprisingly, the story is much more complex than the film makers' version. For one thing, Sandra was only 14 when she started her relationship with Petrus, who was married at the time. Does that make a difference? I'm not sure, but it certainly makes the story more complex than simply one of a dark skinned girl with racist parents. Sandra's subsequent life was one of poverty and abuse from her string of "husbands". The Tuck store that puts a happy end to the movie was frequently broke, and then closed down by the authorities a few years later. The pretty house that Sandra ends up in was bought by selling her story to moviemakers (and a source of friction in her family).
Ultimately, I think, the book fails because it is written from the point of view of the same white, European culture that conquered Africa. The writer frequently slips into what I'd call "psychobabble" to try to explain why Sandra gave up the white community and endured the poverty and abuse, ascribing it to not getting love from her father, or not belonging to either the white or black communities, or various traumas of her childhood, none of which Sandra herself would admit to in her ever-changing story.
Perhaps the book fails only because of the reader's expectations for a inspiring or redemptive story. Unfortunately, this is non-fiction, not the movies.
Not unsurprisingly, the story is much more complex than the film makers' version. For one thing, Sandra was only 14 when she started her relationship with Petrus, who was married at the time. Does that make a difference? I'm not sure, but it certainly makes the story more complex than simply one of a dark skinned girl with racist parents. Sandra's subsequent life was one of poverty and abuse from her string of "husbands". The Tuck store that puts a happy end to the movie was frequently broke, and then closed down by the authorities a few years later. The pretty house that Sandra ends up in was bought by selling her story to moviemakers (and a source of friction in her family).
Ultimately, I think, the book fails because it is written from the point of view of the same white, European culture that conquered Africa. The writer frequently slips into what I'd call "psychobabble" to try to explain why Sandra gave up the white community and endured the poverty and abuse, ascribing it to not getting love from her father, or not belonging to either the white or black communities, or various traumas of her childhood, none of which Sandra herself would admit to in her ever-changing story.
Perhaps the book fails only because of the reader's expectations for a inspiring or redemptive story. Unfortunately, this is non-fiction, not the movies.
January 9, 2008
An interesting story, and one that’s worth a better book than this - the writing is so poor that it’s almost impossible to pay attention – surely a decent editor should have caught things like the fact that 1994 – 2000 is a span of six years and not four, or that quotes don’t need to be attributed both before *and* after the quotation (“Kobus says…. .say Kobus”). Not to mention all the silly little errors like - there’s a comic strip mentioned on the last page of the book and apparently the author thinking that the grandmother-character is a husband-character – it made me wonder what more important things she’d gotten wrong.
Also, the author only speaks English and frequently quotes people as giving different opinions on events when it seems as if they may well just be translating the same things differently for her.
Also, the author only speaks English and frequently quotes people as giving different opinions on events when it seems as if they may well just be translating the same things differently for her.
July 19, 2016
4.5 stars. This was an amazing true story. Sandra Laing lived a very traumatizing childhood. I thoroughly enjoyed this one because she lived to tell her story and she survived apartheid. I can't imagine going through life never knowing who you are because of your skin color.
The only negative was that the author ties in facts about apartheid throughout the book. After reading a while you will understand you need those facts to understand why sandra laing's life was so complex. Also, Sandra had forgotten some parts of her childhood because of the mental shock she experienced growing up. So some parts were a little vague. It was clear that what happens to you as a child effects the rest of your life
The movie is called Skin and I recommend reading the book first to fill in the gaps that the movie left out.
The only negative was that the author ties in facts about apartheid throughout the book. After reading a while you will understand you need those facts to understand why sandra laing's life was so complex. Also, Sandra had forgotten some parts of her childhood because of the mental shock she experienced growing up. So some parts were a little vague. It was clear that what happens to you as a child effects the rest of your life
The movie is called Skin and I recommend reading the book first to fill in the gaps that the movie left out.
July 26, 2007
Even though I know how interracial and interrelated we all are, I love reading books that are clear examples of that. 'When She Was White' is the true story about a black girl, born in South Africa to white parents during the height of apartheid. White parents who believed in and supported the segregated system. White parents who didn't acknowledge their daughter's curly hair or darker skin, and who had no desire to change the apartheid laws to protect her. White parents who wanted the government to recognize her as white so that she could enjoy all the privileges they enjoyed.
Well, it didn't exactly work out that way, but you'll have to read the book to find out what happens. :)
Well, it didn't exactly work out that way, but you'll have to read the book to find out what happens. :)
July 26, 2007
I really didn't care for this book. Supposedly this is the story of how the absurd practice of racial classification in South Africa caused the subject's many troubles.
Instead we have a long tale of the author's interaction with Sandra. Certainly we can take Sandra's many troubles, financially, with men, with "the system" and link them to early and ongoing confusion about her identity in a country where identity is so entirely linked to racial classification. However the author made no effort. It's a dragging tale of Sandra's ups and downs and flaws.
Instead we have a long tale of the author's interaction with Sandra. Certainly we can take Sandra's many troubles, financially, with men, with "the system" and link them to early and ongoing confusion about her identity in a country where identity is so entirely linked to racial classification. However the author made no effort. It's a dragging tale of Sandra's ups and downs and flaws.
December 27, 2021
A fascinating story but somewhat awkwardly told. The relationship between the author and her subject could use some unpacking. And I don't love she attempts to put psychiatric labels on things that are more complex. Finally, I wish there was much more historical context.
September 26, 2017
Interesting enough to read Sandra's story. I wasn't engrossed in the story ever--I could always put the book down and honestly, I skipped a lot of the last chapters. A story that needs to be told.
August 20, 2020
[Spoiler alert.] She never was white. This book is a strange case of a book written about a celebrity case of racial categorization from the days of apartheid in South Africa that somehow remains famous enough for people to want to keep writing about it and to help the overweight and sadly traumatized coloured woman who as a child was part of a sensational battle between her family and South African authorities about her racial status. While her parents and most of her siblings were tolerably white, or at least light-skinned enough to pass, the subject of this book, Sandra Liang, faced a great deal of struggle in her life because her strict and somewhat abusive father Abraham was insistent that his daughter be considered white when it was (and remains) obvious enough to anyone who sees her that she is clearly not white. To be sure, there are various possibilities as to how it is that two apparently white Afrikaaners could have an obvious part-black daughter, and the author herself does not foreclose either of the obvious possibilities (either that her mother was unfaithful with a black man, at least twice apparently, or that there was a black person or people in the family's not particularly distant past whose skin pigmentation genes came up craps for Sandra). The reader is left to sort with the unreliability of the narration of this story, as it should be.
This book is a bit more than 300 pages long and it is a biography of a somewhat unconventional kind. The author seems to relish in expressing the blank spots in the memory or documentation as well as the essentially post-modern and unreliable nature of a biography of a woman who was internationally famous as a girl because of the fight between her family and the South African state over her racial status. Abraham Liang's insistence that his daughter be viewed as white and go to a white-only school led to a great deal of bullying from racist classmates who could see, plainly, that the girl was not white. While the author tries to pooh pooh the issue of race, the gap between his presentation of his daughter and what anyone could see forms the basis of a tale about how it is that a girl who could not fit in white society felt herself driven to elope with an older and married black man and find herself struggling in the underclass around blacks unable to enjoy the status to which she was born, and unable to complete her education and find a better future for herself despite the interest her story has brought periodically from European (especially German) journalism sources.
Ultimately this book is a tale that is by turns tragic and inspirational. We see a woman whose legal struggles over identity brought her a great deal of suffering. The author is pretty melodramatic in describing that suffering, which includes struggles with mental illness, self-destructive habits when it comes to budgeting and parenting, a lot of relationship drama that included liasons with a series of black men and even some legal trouble because of her ambiguous identity. At times the subject of the author's attentive care seems to present herself as being oblivious to the most obvious questions, and unable to recognize the larger world in which she lives and its drama as she attempts to make a decent life for herself with the proceeds of her story as they have come to her. The author leaves the reader with the idea that Sandra may, as a middle aged woman, be improving to the point where she might be able to live a decent life even with the trauma of her past and the death and estrangement of most of her family. If the reader is less sanguine, there is likely always going to be another "Where is she now?" story to keep us updated on how she is doing every few years, I suppose.
This book is a bit more than 300 pages long and it is a biography of a somewhat unconventional kind. The author seems to relish in expressing the blank spots in the memory or documentation as well as the essentially post-modern and unreliable nature of a biography of a woman who was internationally famous as a girl because of the fight between her family and the South African state over her racial status. Abraham Liang's insistence that his daughter be viewed as white and go to a white-only school led to a great deal of bullying from racist classmates who could see, plainly, that the girl was not white. While the author tries to pooh pooh the issue of race, the gap between his presentation of his daughter and what anyone could see forms the basis of a tale about how it is that a girl who could not fit in white society felt herself driven to elope with an older and married black man and find herself struggling in the underclass around blacks unable to enjoy the status to which she was born, and unable to complete her education and find a better future for herself despite the interest her story has brought periodically from European (especially German) journalism sources.
Ultimately this book is a tale that is by turns tragic and inspirational. We see a woman whose legal struggles over identity brought her a great deal of suffering. The author is pretty melodramatic in describing that suffering, which includes struggles with mental illness, self-destructive habits when it comes to budgeting and parenting, a lot of relationship drama that included liasons with a series of black men and even some legal trouble because of her ambiguous identity. At times the subject of the author's attentive care seems to present herself as being oblivious to the most obvious questions, and unable to recognize the larger world in which she lives and its drama as she attempts to make a decent life for herself with the proceeds of her story as they have come to her. The author leaves the reader with the idea that Sandra may, as a middle aged woman, be improving to the point where she might be able to live a decent life even with the trauma of her past and the death and estrangement of most of her family. If the reader is less sanguine, there is likely always going to be another "Where is she now?" story to keep us updated on how she is doing every few years, I suppose.
August 28, 2021
In 1955, Sannie Laing, gave birth to a brown-skinned, frizzy haired daughter named Sandra. The problem was that this was apartheid South Africa; Sannie and her husband, Abraham, were white and staunchly supported apartheid rule. In a land where color mattered, nobody was sure what all-important label to place on this innocent little girl.
Sandra started life as officially "white," based on the apparent lily-white complexions of her parents. However, questions arose when she reached school age, and her all-white school did not accept her "white" label. Fellow students shunned Sandra, teachers mistreated her, parents complained, and, ultimately, the administration filed a formal complaint with the government to have Sandra reclassified as "coloured." She was summarily dismissed from school.
What followed was Sandra's life-long odyssey of straddling color lines and cultures, and finding a place where she belonged.
Sandra's case became well known throughout South Africa, and helped awaken public understanding of the brutality of the apartheid system. This book painstakingly traces Sandra's life, the many hurts and disappointments, the estrangement from one family and acceptance by another.
There is no denying the serious damage done to Sandra's psyche during her unsettled childhood, but she survived. This is a well researched, well-written account of her survival. This story is often heartbreaking, but always riveting.
Sandra started life as officially "white," based on the apparent lily-white complexions of her parents. However, questions arose when she reached school age, and her all-white school did not accept her "white" label. Fellow students shunned Sandra, teachers mistreated her, parents complained, and, ultimately, the administration filed a formal complaint with the government to have Sandra reclassified as "coloured." She was summarily dismissed from school.
What followed was Sandra's life-long odyssey of straddling color lines and cultures, and finding a place where she belonged.
Sandra's case became well known throughout South Africa, and helped awaken public understanding of the brutality of the apartheid system. This book painstakingly traces Sandra's life, the many hurts and disappointments, the estrangement from one family and acceptance by another.
There is no denying the serious damage done to Sandra's psyche during her unsettled childhood, but she survived. This is a well researched, well-written account of her survival. This story is often heartbreaking, but always riveting.
September 9, 2024
It's probably impossible to quantify exactly how harmful apartheid was on both a personal and macro level, but this book comes close. While the book fills in enough details about South Africa to explain the overall arc of the society at the time, rather taking a generic historical focus, it traces one person from childhood to adulthood, Sandra Laing. Born with distinctly African features to a couple who traced their ancestry on both sides for at least three generations as "white", Sandra presented a conundrum.
The book is a hard read at times, but I think a particularly timely one in the lessons you absorb about the dangers and harm in classifying others as "other." It can also be sometime frustrating that Sandra does not always make the best decisions. However when you are traumatized for that long on so many levels, how do you know what *best* is?
As of a 2020 Essence article, Sandra appears to be in a good place in life. She is living as Black, financially stable and happy in her role as wife, mother and grandmother to a family of her creation. Yet she still mourns that her brothers, who present as and look White, continue to shun her decades after apartheid and their parents have died.
The book is a hard read at times, but I think a particularly timely one in the lessons you absorb about the dangers and harm in classifying others as "other." It can also be sometime frustrating that Sandra does not always make the best decisions. However when you are traumatized for that long on so many levels, how do you know what *best* is?
As of a 2020 Essence article, Sandra appears to be in a good place in life. She is living as Black, financially stable and happy in her role as wife, mother and grandmother to a family of her creation. Yet she still mourns that her brothers, who present as and look White, continue to shun her decades after apartheid and their parents have died.
December 31, 2017
Perhaps the best way to understand just how ridiculous the concept of "race" really is, is to read this true story of Sandra Laing, a child who was classified "white" in South Africa, where she was born to a pro-Afrikaner, supposedly white couple. Sandra was registered as white, although her skin color and features appeared to be "black" or "coloured" - since her parents were white, she too must be white. She was sent to a white school where the other students - and especially their parents - were outraged at her presence there and complained to the authorities. Eventually she was reclassified as "coloured" despite her parents' objections. Later she would elope with a black man and petition to be reclassified "black" as living with him as a "coloured" woman would violate South Africa's rules on racial separation!
Perhaps the most amazing thing of all is that this account is true.
Perhaps the most amazing thing of all is that this account is true.
April 6, 2019
Autobiographies are not my favorite genre, probably that's why I found it difficult going through this book. However, the story of Sandra Laing is so heartbreaking. Sandra grows up when apartheid was at a boiling point, the author goes on to even say that she is a symbol of the devastating effects of apartheid. This narrative helped me to walk in this woman's shoes and get just a glimps of how terrible being "different" can be. Stone's writing style was very empathetic, I could feel every bit of the writing, from the painful part to the even lighter moments. Such a successful achievement by Stone that I recommend for everyone so that they know where we have come from and where we need to go if any of this trauma is ever going to end.
February 17, 2021
A fascinating and moving account of the life of Sandra Laing who was classified as white under her native South Africa's apartheid system, but physically resembled someone of mixed race (Coloured).
It's an engrossing and insightful read. I thoroughly recommend it.
It's an engrossing and insightful read. I thoroughly recommend it.
February 13, 2018
Very fascinating book, but very sad also.
Read
April 21, 2020DNF
May 17, 2020
A fascinating, unique and tragic true story. Very much worth the read.
Read
November 13, 2020Good book
Read
December 27, 2020I remember this happening in the 1960s. There is a movie based on this titled "Skin" which is very good as well. What a tragic family story.
April 8, 2017
During the worst years of official racism in South Africa, the story of one young girl gripped the nation and came to symbolize the injustice, corruption, and arbitrary nature of apartheid. Born in 1955 to a white Afrikaner couple, Sandra Laing was officially registered and raised as a white child. Her parents attributed Sandra's appearance to an interracial union far back in history; they swore Sandra was their child. Their neighbors, however, thought Mrs. Laing had committed adultery with a black man. The family was shunned. And when Sandra was ten, she was removed from school by the police and reclassified as "coloured." As a teenager, Sandra eloped with a black man and "chose" to begin again in a poor, rural, all-black township.
Following up on the hype around this case, Judith Stone explores Sandra's past, replaces information (and sometimes lack of) into context, and presents Sandra's fractured life, adopting a factual tone throughout the book.
The book seems well researched, although sometimes a bit biased but I do not know enough about SA history to judge whether the research and presentation of historical / political / cultural contexts are accurate. Another thing that impacts the credibility (and professional merits) of this book is the use of Afrikaans phrases which appear to be misspelled.
Having said that, this is a story that needed to be told, again, (see movie Skins by reporter Phillip Martin, with Sophie Okonedo, Sam Neill, Alice Krige, Tony Kgoroge and Ella Ramangwane). Even with its flaws, it's a book worth reading, studying, questioning.
Following up on the hype around this case, Judith Stone explores Sandra's past, replaces information (and sometimes lack of) into context, and presents Sandra's fractured life, adopting a factual tone throughout the book.
The book seems well researched, although sometimes a bit biased but I do not know enough about SA history to judge whether the research and presentation of historical / political / cultural contexts are accurate. Another thing that impacts the credibility (and professional merits) of this book is the use of Afrikaans phrases which appear to be misspelled.
Having said that, this is a story that needed to be told, again, (see movie Skins by reporter Phillip Martin, with Sophie Okonedo, Sam Neill, Alice Krige, Tony Kgoroge and Ella Ramangwane). Even with its flaws, it's a book worth reading, studying, questioning.
December 8, 2016
Sandra Laing was born to white parents and classified as a white child, although features and characteristics meant that she looked like a colored child. Her parents raised her as white. The trouble really began when she enrolled at an all-white boarding school and parents began complaining and other children began teasing. Despite her father’s efforts, she was reclassified as colored and expelled from the school. Just over two years later, laws changed which enabled her to be classified again as white. After she eloped with a black man, she fought to be classified as colored again for the sake of her children. This biography takes a look at her life and struggles as well as the struggles of a nation during the apartheid years.
I found this an interesting read but I'm struggling with what to say about it. The book makes the comment about what a strong woman she is to have made the decisions she made and to make a life for herself and her family in a society that was full of oppression. But I see a woman who was so traumatized and beaten down, no wonder her memories of childhood are repressed. I feel her parents didn't help the situation but telling her that the people that were teasing her didn't know what they were talking about. By seemingly denying her appearance, they did nothing (in my opinion) to encourage and build up a healthy self-esteem in Sandra. But I'm glad I read it as a glimpse into another culture.
I found this an interesting read but I'm struggling with what to say about it. The book makes the comment about what a strong woman she is to have made the decisions she made and to make a life for herself and her family in a society that was full of oppression. But I see a woman who was so traumatized and beaten down, no wonder her memories of childhood are repressed. I feel her parents didn't help the situation but telling her that the people that were teasing her didn't know what they were talking about. By seemingly denying her appearance, they did nothing (in my opinion) to encourage and build up a healthy self-esteem in Sandra. But I'm glad I read it as a glimpse into another culture.
November 9, 2014
Sandra Laing was born and raised in apartheid South Africa, the black daughter of Afrikaner (white) parents. Her story is chronicled in Judith Stone's book; When She was White. Sandra, was declared "white" by the South African govt, even though she clearly was not. Her story of being raised by white parents in a very racist South Africa is heartbreaking and touching. Sandra is caught between two worlds -- the white Afrikaner world of her parents, and the black culture that accepts her and loves her as she is. After experiencing great pain, racism and rejection, Sandra makes a break and leaves behind her family and runs off with her lover; a black man. Her parents disown her when she goes as far as changing her race on her legal papers and petitions to be reclassified as coloured. Her story is one of struggle, and Ms. Stone's personal interviews with Sandra provide a strong foundation to the biography. Not only is the book Sandra's story, it is also the story of apartheid, and the struggle of South Africans to reconcile their past and make steps to healing for the future.
November 15, 2007
This is a well written and I believe "fair" book - in that it makes clear that no one has the real story - from Sandra, to her parents, to her brothers, to the people who left her dangling between cultures.
Stone documents the irregularities in Sandra's memories and backs them up with published explanations and professional opinions - as to how this might be true (that Sandra cannot remember a fact, or grasp a evident concept) and not a fabrication or a deliberate misdirection.
This book illustrates how horrifying it can be when a family truly buys into a culture that victimizes classes of people - and then has to defend themselves against those same people. I believe it was a wretching ordeal for all involved and it is not cruel and heartless for the brothers to not be able to understand Sandra's position. They cannot reach out until they can find a way to heal themselves. I hope it happens someday.
Stone documents the irregularities in Sandra's memories and backs them up with published explanations and professional opinions - as to how this might be true (that Sandra cannot remember a fact, or grasp a evident concept) and not a fabrication or a deliberate misdirection.
This book illustrates how horrifying it can be when a family truly buys into a culture that victimizes classes of people - and then has to defend themselves against those same people. I believe it was a wretching ordeal for all involved and it is not cruel and heartless for the brothers to not be able to understand Sandra's position. They cannot reach out until they can find a way to heal themselves. I hope it happens someday.
January 10, 2008
When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided by Race is a powerful work about one child’s coming-of-age during the apartheid in South Africa, and the problems her physical appearance brings. Sandra Laing was born to white parents but looked like a black child. She was removed from her whites-only school, declared to be colored, then declared to be white again, and back and forth for most of her life. Judith Stone includes many details about the apartheid and history of South Africa as it relates to Laing’s story, but also to provide a context for what occurred to the Laing family.
This is a very interesting story, but a sad one. Stone’s research and countless hours of interviews show in the tone and information contained in the book. If you are interested in Africa, race relations, or apartheid, When She Was White is a good one to check out.
This is a very interesting story, but a sad one. Stone’s research and countless hours of interviews show in the tone and information contained in the book. If you are interested in Africa, race relations, or apartheid, When She Was White is a good one to check out.
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