We ran out of the house and up the road. It was the dead of night, cold outside. I was wearing nothing but a T-shirt and sweatpants. We walked to the Eden Park police station, over a kilometer away. My mom marched us in, and there were two cops on duty at the front desk. “I’m here to lay a charge,” she said. “What are you here to lay a charge about?” “I’m here to lay a charge against the man who hit me.” To this day I’ll never forget the patronizing, condescending way they spoke to her. “Calm down, lady. Calm down. Who hit you?” “My husband.”

I only vaguely remember my mom being gone for a few days, and when she got back there was now this thing in the house

I can only assume that my mother broke more than a few hearts in her day, but from the time I was born, there were only two men in her life, my father and my stepfather.

they’ve been taught how to fish, but no one will give them a fishing rod.

You never wanted to go there. That’s where the serious gangsters were. You only went there if you needed to buy an AK-47

The walls of apartheid were coming down just as American hip-hop was blowing up, and hip-hop made it cool to be from the hood

very country thinks their history is the most important

We took the shitty Mazda and drove to Babiki’s house. I was an hour late picking her up. She was completely pissed off

In my mind nothing was cooler than the leather coats everybody wore in The Matrix. The Matrix came out while I was in high school and it was my favorite movie at the time.

Tom was a chatterbox, hyperactive and go-go-go. He was a real hustler, too, always trying to cut a deal, work an angle. He could get people to do anything

I was twelve years old, and I’d never done Valentine’s Day before

That’s where the government came up with things like the pencil test. If you were applying to be white, the pencil went into your hair

you had to do was denounce your people, denounce your history, and leave your darker-skinned friends and family behind.

I’ve never met my Swiss grandparents. I don’t know their names or anything about them.

For dinner there might be one chicken to feed fourteen children. My mom would have to fight with the bigger kids to get a handful of meat or a sip of the gravy or even a bone from which to suck out some marrow

She lived in a hut with fourteen cousins—fourteen children from fourteen different mothers and fathers

My gran had no idea how to raise her. Whatever love they had was lost in the constant fighting that went on between them

I think God made humans shit in the way we do because it brings us back down to earth and gives us humility. I don’t care who you are, we all shit the same. Beyoncé shits. The pope shits. The Queen of England shits.

I grew up in a world run by women. My father was loving and devoted, but I could only see him when and where apartheid allowed.

The only semi-regular male figure in my life was my grandfather

During apartheid, one of the worst crimes you could commit was having sexual relations with a person of another race. Needless to say, my parents committed that crime.

She would hold my hand or carry me, but if the police showed up she would have to drop me and pretend I wasn’t hers, like I was a bag of weed.

The ultimate goal of apartheid was to make South Africa a white country, with every black person stripped of his or her citizenship and relocated to live in the homelands

There were whole police squads whose only job was to go around peeking through windows—clearly an assignment for only the finest law enforcement officers.

I saw one of those charred bodies on the side of the road one day on my way to school. In the evenings my mom and I would turn on our little black-and-white TV and watch the news.

To this day I hate secondhand cars. Almost everything that’s ever gone wrong in my life I can trace back to a secondhand car