Those who live in cages

by Terry-Ann Adams

Those Who Live in Cages captures an astonishingly intimate view of life in Eldorado Park, a coloured township south of Johannesburg, through five women - Bertha, Kaylynn, Laverne, Janice and Raquel.

These unforgettable characters' lives intersect as they attempt to do the most important thing: survive another day in "The Park"

Genres: Novels

190 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2020

Reviews

[Lorraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Representation matters. An exceptionally written and profoundly narrated debut offering from @terryfrombarietstreet

Those Who Live in Cages is not a voyeuristic observation of a people for interest's sake. This fictionalised narrative depicts true to life experiences of a coloured community written out of history, discarded by the new democratic dispensation and left to exist on the fringes of a larger SAfrican society.

Told from a third-person by five women, Bertha, physically and emotionally exhausted, narrates her story through conversations with her Mammie and friends, Laverne who bears her baby, Kyle, like a cross on her back, Janice who fights to be free, Kaylynn who struggles with the mould her patriarchal mother insists on shoving her in and Raquel who marries her way out of Eldos.

This four part, 13 chapters (including the Epilogue) tells the story of these women against the backdrop of the impact and effects of forced removals, colourism, body including hair politics. The mothers longing for their daughters to have "gladde nie kroes hare". The shape of their children's noses and the size and location of their homes determined their children's futures. With a closed and judgemental community like this, things refuse to be contained. Misogyny, homophobia, religion, classism, racism permeates and colours the lives of a community whose odds are so highly stacked against them that there's no breathing room.

Those Who Live In Cages is told in a multilingual manner because Eldos is a melting pot of cultures and languages AND NOT ALL COLOURED PEOPLE SPEAK AFRIKAANS. There are hundreds of dialects of Afrikaans spoken by a people because of traumatic and brutal origins, still grapple with identity.

Those Who Live In Cages is an intense story about friendships, family and the burden of womanhood. This is a story of a mother praying her children to safety, a teenage girl whose agency is taken away from her, a young woman who wears her "sin" like an albatross, a girl who stands up for herself and a young married woman who defers her dreams and needs because "A good wife stands by her man".

Highly recommended

[Lorraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Representation matters. An exceptionally written and profoundly narrated debut offering from @terryfrombarietstreet

Those Who Live in Cages is not a voyeuristic observation of a people for interest's sake. This fictionalised narrative depicts true to life experiences of a coloured community written out of history, discarded by the new democratic dispensation and left to exist on the fringes of a larger SAfrican society.

Told from a third-person by five women, Bertha, physically and emotionally exhausted, narrates her story through conversations with her Mammie and friends, Laverne who bears her baby, Kyle, like a cross on her back, Janice who fights to be free, Kaylynn who struggles with the mould her patriarchal mother insists on shoving her in and Raquel who marries her way out of Eldos.

This four part, 13 chapters (including the Epilogue) tells the story of these women against the backdrop of the impact and effects of forced removals, colourism, body including hair politics. The mothers longing for their daughters to have "gladde nie kroes hare". The shape of their children's noses and the size and location of their homes determined their children's futures. With a closed and judgemental community like this, things refuse to be contained. Misogyny, homophobia, religion, classism, racism permeates and colours the lives of a community whose odds are so highly stacked against them that there's no breathing room.

Those Who Live In Cages is told in a multilingual manner because Eldos is a melting pot of cultures and languages AND NOT ALL COLOURED PEOPLE SPEAK AFRIKAANS. There are hundreds of dialects of Afrikaans spoken by a people because of traumatic and brutal origins, still grapple with identity.

Those Who Live In Cages is an intense story about friendships, family and the burden of womanhood. This is a story of a mother praying her children to safety, a teenage girl whose agency is taken away from her, a young woman who wears her "sin" like an albatross, a girl who stands up for herself and a young married woman who defers her dreams and needs because "A good wife stands by her man".

Highly recommended

[Lorraine Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

Terry brings Eldorado Park to life with her novel. This is a sad realistic depiction of life in Eldorado park. We all live in cages and continue to be caged

[Lester Walbrugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

It feels as if the author was on a mission to make voices heard that have been silent for too long. The novel seems deliberate in excluding the voices of the men of the community it is set in, and it also actively avoids to include any real-time interactions between the characters. The novel almost comes across as propaganda, an attempt to set things straight. This is the premise on which the novel is built, and it is only fair to review it in what it has achieved within these parameters than muse on what could have been.

Is it this what Maya Angelou meant when she said ‘to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart’? It must have something to do with the language in which ‘Those Who Live In Cages’ is written. My ear is so attuned to the cadence and the nuances of the speech of this community that reading becomes listening and listening becomes something you feel in your heart. The representation of the language is the novel’s crowning achievement.

Getting to know the characters is a slow process but it gets there. At first some of them can feel similar, but halfway through the story all of them become individuals and you start to care about them. They’re all there in their full toxic glory, unapologetic and unashamed. There are no redeeming characters in this book, apart from perhaps Kaylynn and Janice, who also happen to be millennials. They are the hopeful ones who seem to adjust best to their unfortunate circumstances. The other women are all framed as both victims and gatekeepers of patriarchy, and despite having first-hand experience of abuse, they go on perpetuating the status quo. This is particularly sad, and the real tragedy in the novel for me.

The author has created an authentic look at a community ravaged by the injustices of the past and adroitly explores the ways in which these women cope, or rather, dissects the ways in which they falter.

I enjoyed the ride.

[Jen Thorpe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful writing about interesting complex women.

Those Who Live in Cages is a story of five women, connected to one another through blood and circumstance – Bertha, Janice, Laverne, Kaylynn and Kela (Raquel) – all living in Eldorado Park. As the review in New Frame puts it, “they are women full of hope for their families and futures, bumping up against the obstacles of class limitation and a patriarchal, religious and judgement-driven environment.”

It is a story where place comes alive as character. Eldorado Park is a location that shapes the lives of each of these women, whether they are yearning to leave or destined to stay. This story engages with so many social issues and manages to invite you to reflect on how things might change.

[Mbali (flowahh_) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rarely read newsletters from publishers but one day I decided to read one and it happened to be about this book and I knew that I had to pre-order it. Why? Because it was set in Eldorado Park and I realised that I hadn’t read any fiction centering the township and it’s residents.

At its core, Those Who Live In Cages is a story about Coloured women, family, friendship, identity, and the many ways one can play the hand that life deals you.

There are so many things I want to say, don’t know if I have the range to speak of them coherently? But I’ll choose the three that I need to get off my chest 😅

First of all, I had the shock of my life when I realised that some parts of the book were in Afrikaans, I was so nervous but by the time I reached the halfway mark I was looking forward to Bertha’s parts. The excitement I experienced when I went from reading out loud to reading in my head 💀 >>>. But I also realised that while the language may be considered oppressive by many, it felt warm and pleasant in the hands of Bertha, a woman who I felt related to, I mean there were times when she felt like my mom 😂🥰.

Secondly, I love Kaylynn with all my heart and I still think about her to this day. I hope she’s doing well wherever she is in the book universe 🥺

And last but not least, this is the case of me just being happy that a book like this exists. Again, we have a writer who has considered the intricacies of being Coloured in South Africa - who both affirms and critiques her community while lovingly writing Eldorado Park into the tapestry of South African literature.

As one of my 2020 faves, I recommend this with my whole heart - please don’t feel too threatened by the Afrikaans 🧡

[Cindy van Wyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Eldorodo Park, a Coloured area of Johannesburg, ‘Those Who Live in Cages’ introduces us to five women - 40-something-year-old grandmother Bertha who just left her abusive husband; Grade 12 pupil Kaylynn who “lives in the shadows of innocence and on the brink of discovery”; young mother Laverne who has “nothing but hope and a Bible verse, unaware of the burden of discovery”; young wife and career woman Raquel who “cannot afford to lose what she worked so hard for”, and Janice, a Grade 12 pupil with a reputation that precedes her by miles.

Told in alternating view points between the women and written in the form one-sided conversations, diary entries, telephone conversations and prayers, the novel reads more a slice of “Eldos” life than it boasts a true plot.

Reading about people who look and sound and think like me was refreshing, and as a Coloured woman, the representation in this novel is invaluable. I love that Adams stayed true to her roots and the area without feeling like she needed to “pretty it up” for the reader.

So much about Those Who Live In Cages is familiar, and I love that Coloured people - whether from the Flats or Eldos or Khomasdal - are the same in so many little ways. Distance is just a detail.

This novel highlighted that, and reminded me just how important it is for us to tell our own stories.

[Sonnymirrors · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Review of Those Who Live in Cages by Terry-Ann Adam

“ Everybody lives in a cage. Whether they know it or not is the question. I think knowing that you live in a cage is what ultimately sets you free.” -Janice in Those Who Live in Cages

Those Who Live In Cages is a debut novel by Terry-Ann Adams published in October 2020 by Jacana Media. This novel explores intimately the lives of five women – Bertha, Kaylynn, Laverne, Janice and Raquel – as they strive to survive and make life in Eldorado Park, a Coloured township in the south of Johannesburg.

This book was interesting for me because I don’t stay too far from Eldorado Park. It was even more interesting that I kept on calling the book “They who live in cages”. “They…” I did this so many times that I began to wonder why I related to the book in this way. Why “They”? Why not me? Why there? In Eldorado Park? And Why not here, where I live? Why the distance? Is there a distance? After all, I did mention that I don’t stay too far from Eldorado Park. It was the thrill of this fact, being somewhat familiar with a thing or place that you have seen or heard of yet don’t know much about, that piqued my interest in the book. And it was these questions, of Why…of my (dis)connection to Eldorado Park, that intrigued me more about the concept of cages and those who live in them.

Terry-Ann Adams opens the novel with a life-giving prologue titled Getting to Know Eldorado Park. Eldorado Park personified introduces Eldorado Park. This is a totally brilliant start to this novel. It sets out exactly what the novel intends to do – to honour and pay homage to Eldorado Park, the people and the culture. It is an important detail that Eldorado Park introduces itself. And it does not feel like an error that Adams writes Eldorado Park in this way. It feels like an honouring. Honouring of a voice. A truth. A story. And an honouring of a people and their lives. Meeting Eldorado Park like this, for me, felt like remembering. Remembering the many times I travelled on that Main Road on my way to primary school in Naturena. Remembering passing Eldomaine and the Fire Station on my way to visit relatives in Lenasia and Devland. It felt like childhood. It also felt like a discovery, learning of the things that were always there but not seen, that were seen but not known, that were known but not yet found. I have travelled through Eldorado Park many times, seen it more times and heard much about it. But reading the prologue, Getting to know Eldorado Park in its own voice, felt, at once, like a true “Welcome to Eldorado Park“.

Terry-Ann Adams honours the characters in the story so well. The five Coloured women in Those Who Live in Cages are written, like Eldorado Park, with a voice of their own. They speak for themselves. They live their lives. The decision by Adams to write this story in the multiple voices and perspectives of the women themselves is a glorious act of resistance. Reading the novel was like a command to listen to these women this time, if you have never, and see them, if you have ever, like never before. Glorious! In this novel the women speak and they share their separate but connected struggles: from school issues, relationship issues, marriage difficulties, drugs and addiction, and gender-based violence; right through classism, racism, homophobia and religious indoctrination; to parenthood, family, and friendships. This is a story about women negotiating their existence in Eldorado Park with all its complexities – making life under conditions that demand their death, speaking against the silence, and resisting immense structural oppression and incredible marginalisation.

Bertha is that women who refuses to die, even under deathly conditions. A favourite of mine. Bertha speaks in Afrikaans. This is the language she expresses herself in, in the novel. I am not a first nor second language Afrikaans speaker. So, it was thrilling for me to experience Bertha as a character in Afrikaans, her mother-tongue. It felt good to ‘feel’ her and ‘get’ her even across the language… difference. I love Bertha for this. Connecting to her felt like commitment. Like listening. Like feeling. It felt like “Look here, I speak Afrikaans and no apologies. This is who I am. Love is Love. Anger is anger. Nonsense is Nonsense. Truth is truth. Enough is enough. No matter your language!” Bertha’s character development is so inspiring. To see her refuse to be caged any longer and become a woman, a person, who realises her own strength and uses her own voice was a triumphant moment – impactful as it was powerful.

Those Who Live in Cages is undoubtedly a liberating work. Powerful. Life-affirming. Necessary. Everybody should read Those Who Live in Cages.

Terry-Ann Adams writes with so much honour and integrity. Those Who Live in Cages is their first novel.

Rating: 4/5 ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

[Clare Grové · Rating 4 out of 5]

A for Adams
2022 alphabet-of-african-authors reading challenge

Voices given to the powerless, the marginalised - that's what I take from this novel. However, the giving of a voice is not the attribution of power. Power remains in the hands of the men. The lack of male narrative does not change the power of the patriarchy that is an ever present menace in this Eldorado Park.
However [yes, another 'however'], the brown and black communities of South Africa are borne on the backs of women of courage. The root of courage is coeur (Fr.) and cor (L.) meaning core / heart. Women of heart. Women are the core. Wathint' Abafazi, Wathint' Imbokodo. [You strike a woman, you strike a rock.]

The female characters' monologues show the power of families and communities - warts and all.
National Geographic gives this description of El Dorado: "In the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans believed that somewhere in the New World there was a place of immense wealth known as El Dorado. ... But this place of immeasurable riches hasn't been found."
Like its namesake, immeasurable riches are not to be found in Eldorado Park (what Terry-Ann pens as a "labour camp"). Yet, the sense of community and interconnectedness of people is rich. The people keep on keeping on as they live their struggles and struggle their lives.

A great debut novel from a talented person and a woman of courage.

[Lesley Thomson]

Those Who Live in Cages captures an astonishingly intimate view of life in Eldorado Park, a Coloured township south of Johannesburg, through five women of various ages and circumstances - Bertha, Kaylynn, Laverne, Janice and Raquel.

These women lives’ connect as they attempt to do the most important thing: survive another day in "The Park". Written like diary entries each woman tells her own story, depicting true to life experiences. At times they feel they exist on the fringe of society, feeling hopeful and hopeless, whilst sharing bonds and hardships amongst their families and community.

Exceptionally well written with some of the ladies ‘talking’ only in English, whilst others are only in Afrikaans, Terry-Ann Adams has perfected the nuances of the Coloured community’s language, creating characters that you can actually believe you know. Her ladies are so vividly portrayed one finds themselves trying to talk to them, weep with them and laugh with them. Almost a social history, this book entertains as well as creates a window into the lives of others.
ISBN 978 1 4314 3014 7 Published by Jacana

[Cailean Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The plot of the book is incredible, and everything is put together so perfectly. The author's ability to bring the story to life is fascinating. Coming from the community that’s setting of the book, when reading “Those who live in cages”, it feels nostalgic and every detail has been captured perfectly. Those who live in cages is nothing short of amazing. The conclusion of the book, where Terry-Ann reveals the plot's concept and demonstrates how the title so well captures it, was my favorite part. Great read!

[Blessing Rapotu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really well-written book. I was most interested by all the characters but lost interest after a while. I loved how authentic is was to the colored community and the homage to the Afrikaans language, it just needed too much of my concentration and remembering high school Afrikaans haha!

[Zoe]

Okay

This was an interesting book, an eye opening and intimate look into the lives of these five coloured women in Eldorado Park. It was in equal parts humorous and heartbreaking, sad stories told in this relaxed human way. I understand and appreciate its existence and I'm glad it was written. At the same time, as it is with most novels I read these days, I wished the writing wasn't so sparse, I wished for heavy dripping prose, you know? But that's just personal preference. An otherwise good and important story, all in all!

[Fatima Moosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s difficult to imagine that this is Terry-Ann’s debut novel. She just has such an impressive way with words. You feel like you are living each and every one of the experiences within the book. The book is beautiful, sad, moving and all of the things. I felt myself crying with the characters, getting angry at the characters and just living through them.

Here is my interview with Terry-Ann https://www.thedailyvox.co.za/terry-a...