Word: daughterly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...BURGER'S DAUGHTER is a call to arms. Forget the news stories, the polemics, the neatly rhymed slogans about apartheid. Nadine Gordimer's story of a white revolutiohary's daughter struggling with her heritage and her conscience i not only a stunning literary coup, but a relentless portrait of how apartheid poisons whites and blacks in South Africa...
...book is no political tract, no sterile self-righteous condemnation of oppression. Rather, Burger's Daughter is an intensely personal vision of political commitment--and its costs. Through the character of Rosa Burger we sense the emotional toll of living in a country with epic conflicts, a frontier where every action must be extreme: either gutless capitulation or heedless defiance. There is no middle ground in a country where there are still heroes...
Rosa's father is one of those heroes and Burger's Daughter centers on Rosa's struggle with the demands of her father's legacy. Lionel Burger was a Communist revered for his devotion to the revolutionary cause and his humanity to all races. After he dies in prison, Rosa is expected by both her father's compatriot and by the South Africa police--who have kept her under surveillance since childhood--to carry on his work. Yet Rosa stays aloof from the underground, flinching at his friends' silent demands, stupefying the police and shaming herself...
...Burger's Daughter tells how one woman carves out a personal moral vision and finds the conviction and the courage to act on it. It does not preach; it inspires. Rosa decides to return home and make her father's cause her own. She concludes...
Inspiring as Rosa's choice is, Burger's Daughter is not primarily a call to follow her path. Gordimer is far too subtle for that--for her, Rosa's commitment is a "holy mystery," one she penetrates with her imagination, but cannot share. Rosa chooses action, but she accepts suffering and self-denial. Burger's Daughter provokes outrage and fear, and then leaves us hanging, torn between activism and knowledge of its costs