Shadow Sisters

Shelley Davidow

UQP $29.95

Written into apartheid – "correct South African pronunciation," says Shelley Davidow, "apart-hate" – was a law with the nondescript name "Group Areas Act", which stipulated that blacks could only live with whites as employees. When Davidow's family took in a toddler, Rosie (the shadow sister), they were breaking the law. Davidow's memoir is not only a vivid, stark and resonant reminder of those days, but a rites-of-passage tale about growing up in the midst of violence and killing – as well as experiencing the pangs of first love. Central to the tale are the twin narratives of the author and Rosie, whom we follow through into adulthood. But the dramatic backdrop, the gradual collapse of apartheid and the freeing of Nelson Mandela, is just as significant, with the political and personal informing each other the whole way through.