Mother to Mother Essay Questions

How does Mandisa work to humanize Mxolisi throughout the novel? Does she succeed in changing the reader's perception of him?

Mandisa loves her son very much, and her love for him despite what he has done is the most humanizing part of the novel. She tells Mxolisi's story, which is one of violence and abandonment from a very young age. She also describes how Mxolisi was a leader in his community, and that he was very engaged in political activism. Finally, Mandisa also rarely calls her 20-year-old son a man, preferring to call him a boy instead. Culturally, he is very much still a boy, uncircumcised, childless, living at home and uneducated.

Describe the process in which Mxolisi is named. What do his different names mean, and what can they tell us about the expectations caregivers held for the man he would become?

Mandisa calls Mxolisi Hluemlo, which means sprig. This name is intended to show how he has grown out of impossible situations. Mandisa hopes this name will indicate that he will be able to prosper despite the situation he is born into. Mandisa's mother insists on calling the baby Michael. This Western and biblical name indicates that the woman wants a life for the baby that is beyond Guguletu. China's family decides on the name Mxolisi once the baby is already six months old. Mxolsii means he who brings peace, and the name demonstrates the hope that Mxolisi would stop the fighting between his parents' clans.

Mandisa's neighbors take a large role in Manidsa's life. How do they affect her life and that of her family? At what point are her neighbors a bad presence? At what point good?

Mandisa is taught to fear what her neighbors think from an early age, and her reputation in her community is very important to her mother. When she does become pregnant at an early age, Mandisa is made to hide in her bedroom during the day so that her neighbors won't see her. When Mxolisi kills Amy, Mandisa gets her earliest information about the crime from her neighbors. After the police raid, two different neighbors come to ask what it was all about, but they are sent away by an irate Dwadwa. Finally, neighbors find redemption at the end of the novel, when they come to grieve with Mandisa the loss of her son.

In Chapter 5, Mandisa describes how children come to be associated with the war against the apartheid government. How does this happen? Are the claims that these children are warriors and their war is effective against the government completely accurate?

A lack of quality schooling left thousands of children with nothing to do, and generations' worth of resentment turned them against their government. They are militarized easily by the adults in the community, but they wreak the most havoc on their own community. They target those seen as complicit with the government and murder them in huge pubic displays. Intra-racial violence, therefore, becomes rampant.

In Chapter 8, Mandisa moves out of China's home into a home of her own. While doing so, she makes an allusion to Virginia Woolf's essay "A Room of One's Own." What does this allusion accomplish?

In "A Room of One's Own," Virginal Woolfe discusses the importance of both literal and figurative space for women in literature. When Mandisa moves out of China's house into her own home, she is making a huge step in her own life. She is ridding herself of dependency on anyone, including her parents and the father of her child. This is when Mandisa is able to finally start her own life, on her own terms.