Thursday, January 27, 2011

Weeding the Flowerbeds


#583
Title: Weeding the FlowerbedsAuthor: Sarah Mkhonza
Publisher: Xlibris
Year: 2009
Country: Swaziland
180 pages

I can't find a single review of this self-published memoir online, which seems strange given that the author is previously published and has been working at Cornell. Weeding the Flowerbeds provides a good look at the daily life of a schoolgirl at a religious boarding school in Swaziland while South Africa still practiced apartheid. These political events are sometimes referenced, but the focus of the book is on the details and recollections of the author. There isn't much contextual information, nor is there a plot or moral--she goes to school, has friends, likes some teachers and not others, and describes in sometimes minute detail the various facets of her mostly-cloistered days. The prose could use an editor's eye, as could the grammar, but one is reading for the account of living in Swaziland, not for literary style.

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