Why read White Tribe Dreaming?

Book cover of White Tribe Dreaming: Apartheid's Bitter Roots Witnessed By Eight Generations Of An Afrikaner Family

Book description

This is a history of the Afrikaner as seen through the history of one family, the de Villiers, who first moved to South Africa in the 1600s. The book traces the history of the family and the Afrikaner, showing how the Afrikaner acted at the turning points in their history…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked White Tribe Dreaming as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Trilby Kent

Author

Untangling the roots of Apartheid is a thorny challenge, but Marq de Villiers’ approach—of telling the story of the Afrikaners, or South Africa’s “white tribe,” through one family’s complex and troubled history—does an excellent job of explaining the mentality that creates hateful systems of oppression.

I highly recommend this powerful book.

From Trilby's list on The best books about South African identities.

Lewis DeSoto

Author

I was born in South Africa almost 300 years to the day after the first white Europeans arrived to establish a permanent home at the tip of the continent.

This book begins with that arrival and follows the history of the author’s family through eight generations.

It is a history of individuals, related by bloodlines, but diverse in ambitions and actions, and seeks to trace and explicate how some of those first settlers and their descendants became the Afrikaners of the 20th century.

While my own antecedents are less well documented, I like to believe that they are not…

From Lewis' list on The best books that taught me about life, about literature, and about South Africa.