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WORK TITLE: Hum If You Don’t Know the Words
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.biancamarais.com/
CITY: Toronto
STATE: ON
COUNTRY: Canada
NATIONALITY: South African
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2137467/bianca-marais * http://therightsfactory.com/authors/bianca-marais/ * https://medium.com/the-ribbon/author-interview-bianca-marais-ce9e82e31263
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2017001414
Descriptive conventions:
rda
LC classification: PR9199.4.M3414
Personal name heading:
Marais, Bianca, 1976-
Associated place: South Africa
Located: Toronto (Ont.)
Birth date: 1976
Profession or occupation:
Novelist
Found in: Hum if you don't know the words, 2017: ECIP t.p. (Bianca
Marais)
Email from publisher (G.P. Putnam's Sons), Jan. 10, 2017:
(Bianca lives in Toronto; debut novel)
Amazon.com website, viewed Jan. 10, 2017: (Bianca Marais
holds a Certificate in Creative Writing from the
University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies,
and her work has been published in World Enough and
Crime. Before turning to writing, she started a
corporate training company, and volunteered with
Cotlands where she assisted care workers in Soweto with
providing aid for HIV/AIDS orphans. Originally from
South Africa, she now resides in Toronto with her
husband)
================================================================================
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Library of Congress
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Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
PERSONAL
Born 1976, in South Africa; married.
EDUCATION:Studied at University of Toronto.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Bianca Marais is a South African writer. After relocating to Toronto in 2012, she undertook a creative writing certificate program at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. Marais has published stories in journals and anthologies.
Marais published Hum if You Don’t Know the Words in 2017. Set during the tumultuous 1970s in Johannesburg, the story revolves around nine-year-old Robin and her caretaker, Beauty Mbali. Robin’s parents were killed during the 1976 Soweto Uprising, the same time that Beauty’s own daughter disappeared. Throughout their time together, Beauty continues to search for her daughter while treating Robin like her own, despite Robin’s selfish behavior.
In an interview in Library Journal, Marais talked with Stephanie Sendaula about the setting of the novel in Johannesburg in the 1970s. Marais admitted that in the earlier stages of writing the novel, she paid more attention “on getting the time period right than fleshing out the setting. Johannesburg felt so familiar to me, but the time period wasn’t since I was just a baby then. I wanted to anchor the story firmly in that time, so I took care to get the clothing, hairstyles, music, and social and cultural contexts right. Once I was working on edits, I realized that the setting could become a character in its own right.”
In an interview in an eponymously named blog, Leslie Lindsay talked with Marais about a number of issues related to her debut novel. Concerning the personal connection in the portrayal of the main characters, Marais denied having explicitly writing herself into the story. “Robin isn’t me, exactly, and Beauty isn’t my childhood caretaker, Eunice, but both characters were inspired by the relationship I was lucky enough to have with her as I was growing up.” This led to a question on the role of motherhood and how others can take on this important role. Marais recalled having volunteered for several years at a Johannesburg children’s sanctuary where she witnessed a range of approaches to motherhood and caring for others. She claimed that this experience “made me realize that a child can be mothered by many different people in a multitude of ways, and that the people who often do the mothering aren’t mothers in the traditional sense, making the African idiom true: it does take a village to raise a child.”
In the same interview, Marais also discussed the process of writing this novel. She admitted that “Hum if You Don’t Know the Words was a story I’d always wanted to write but I was reluctant to tackle it because I honestly didn’t think I could do it. Most of the writing I’d done up until then was comedic, and dealing with heavy themes like racism, loss and grief seemed beyond the scope of what I was able to do.” Marais continued: “I finally began writing the book in 2013 just after we’d moved from Johannesburg to Toronto and I’d started the Creative Writing Certificate at the U of T School of Continuing Studies. At first, I tried not to write from Beauty’s perspective because I absolutely didn’t want to appropriate a voice that wasn’t mine. The more I suppressed her, though, the more she wanted to be heard and so I made a pact with myself that I’d only write her if I did her complete justice.” Marais confessed: “To that end, I knew I’d have to do a lot of research about apartheid, as well as consult cultural experts and sensitivity readers which is exactly what I did.”
Booklist contributor Poornima Apte called the novel “an engaging portrayal of two ordinary citizens swept up by the tidal wave of history.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews commented that “apart from her occasional philosophizing, Robin’s character is a refreshingly accurate.” The same reviewer concluded by calling the novel “an entertaining page-turner that, while somewhat pat in its treatment of racial politics, provides a satisfying emotional journey.” Taking note of the novel’s initial “heartfelt chapters” and its “fast-paced and heart-wrenching ending,” a Publishers Weekly contributor reasoned that “Marais has created a stunning historical drama that shouldn’t be missed.” In a review in USA Today, Charisse Jones opined that “Marais’ writing potently displays the everyday cruelty of the pro-apartheid regime.” Jones remarked that “ultimately the portraits of Beauty and Robin are richly drawn. Both are brave and ambivalent, sorrowful and spirited, lost but ever-searching. Their journeys demonstrate that nothing is simply black or white.”
A contributor reviewing the novel in the Toronto Globe and Mail admitted that “comparisons to The Help and The Secret Life of Bees are apt, and fans of” both of these stories “should immediately add this one to their ‘to read’ lists.” Reviewing the novel in the Chronic Bibliophilia blog, Joslyn Allen claimed that “Hum if You Don’t Know the Words is an incredibly insightful and finely-crafted debut. Bianca Marais has written an honest, thoughtful novel that explores our troubled past and the deep seeds of our future. Through it, she inspires us to see ourselves and each other.” Writing in the Toronto Star, Rayyan Al-Shawaf observed that because of not wanting to be separated from Beauty, Robin “makes a selfish, shocking, and fateful decision. A sure-footed Marais then tracks Robin’s attempts to rectify the mess she’s made. And in the process, the author turns Hum if You Don’t Know the Words into a brave girl’s rousing quest for redemption.” Writing in Bookreporter.com, Norah Piehl insisted that “readers who barely remember or don’t know much about apartheid-era South Africa will certainly have their eyes opened by this novel.” Piehl stated: “All told, Hum if You Don’t Know the Words is an effective evocation of a difficult time in history, and its compelling storyline will both enthrall and, yes, entertain readers.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, June 1, 2017. Poornima Apte, review of Hum If You Don’t Know the Words, p. 53.
Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), September 1, 2017, review of Hum if You Don’t Know the Words.
Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2017, review of Hum If You Don’t Know the Words.
Library Journal, June 15, 2017, “Q&A Bianca Marais,” p. 79.
Publishers Weekly, December 21, 2015, Rachel Deahl, “Marais’s ‘Hum’ gets Louder at Putnam,” p. 6; May 1, 2017, review of Hum If You Don’t Know the Words, p. 33.
Toronto Star, July 21, 2017, Rayyan Al-Shawaf, review of Hum If You Don’t Know the Words.
USA Today, August 7, 2017, review of Hum If You Don’t Know the Words; August 9, 2017, Charisse Jones, “In ‘Hum,’ Two Voices Reveal Nothing Is Black and White,” p. 3D.
ONLINE
American Booksellers Association Website, http://www.bookweb.org/ (July 10, 2017), Jessica Stauffer, author interview.
Bianca Marais Website, http://www.biancamarais.com (February 7, 2018).
Bookish, https://www.bookish.com/ (August 9, 2017), author interview.
Bookreporter.com, https://www.bookreporter.com/ (July 14, 2017), Norah Piehl, review of Hum If You Don’t Know the Words.
Chronic Bibliophilia, https://chronicbibliophilia.wordpress.com/ (August 31, 2017), Joslyn Allen, review of Hum If You Don’t Know the Words.
Leslie Lindsay, https://leslielindsay.com/ (July 26, 2017), Leslie Lindsay, “Wednesdays with Writers.”
Medium, https://medium.com/ (February 7, 2018), author interview.
Rights Factory, http://therightsfactory.com/ (February 7, 2018), author profile.
Wednesdays with Writers: A Smashing Debut from Bianca Marais explores the Apartheid, racism, the Soweto Uprising, motherhood, and so much more in HUM IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS
Posted on July 26, 2017 by leslie1218
Standard
By Leslie Lindsay
A dazzling debut about a white girl and a black woman from different worlds, drawn together by tragedy set in South America.
hum-med
I’ll be honest: I’ve never read anything like it; but HUM IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS (July 11, 2017 Putnam Books) absolutely amazed and entranced me. I didn’t know much about Apartheid South Africa and Bianca Marais’s richly told story brought it to light.
Through the alternating voices of the two main characters, (9/10 year old) Robin and her black maid, Beauty, we fall into a deeply moving story of love, loss, sacrifice, racism, mothers and daughters, and so much more. It’s so deep and so multifaceted, it’s really hard to summarize HUM IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS; I might go so far as to say it’s required reading given the political, social, and economic state of our world.
Life under Apartheid created a stable and secure world for Robin Conrad who lived at home with her mother and father (a manager at a local gold mine) in the Hector_pieterson.jpglate 1970s. But in the same country, worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her own children after her husband’s death (he worked in those mines Robin’s dad managed). And then the unimaginable happens: the Soweto Uprising, a protest against black students ignites racial and political unrest. Life changes.
Robin’s parents are dead. Her beloved maid, Mabel leaves. Robin is shuttled to her aunt (her mother’s sister) for her care. But Edith is a jet-setting air hostess for an airline and having a child underfoot is a bit of a nuisance. Though Edith’s character is delightful and fun and things turn out for the best …Edith does have to hire help to care for young Robin.
Meanwhile, Beauty’s story merges with Robin’s in a wondrous and amazing tale of love, sacrifice, growth…and perhaps heroism.
Please join me in welcoming Bianca Marais to the blog.
Leslie Lindsay: Oh wow…I don’t even know where to start! Thank you for joining us—and for writing such an important story. You grew up in South Africa and were raised by a black maid. I couldn’t help but think you were Robin and your maid was Beauty. Am I close? How much of HUM IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS was inspired by your own experiences?
Bianca Marais: Hi Leslie. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about the book and for those incredibly kind words about it; I really appreciate them!
To answer your question: you’re fairly close. Robin isn’t me, exactly, and Beauty isn’t my childhood caretaker, Eunice, but both characters were inspired by the relationship I was lucky enough to have with her as I was growing up.
Eunice worked for my family from before I was born and has been a huge part of my life. It was my love for her that made me want to write this book and explore what her life may have been like during apartheid. As a child, I took her presence in my life for granted and it was only as I grew older that I realized how many sacrifices she had to make in order to leave her children behind in the Transkei so she could earn a living working as a maid in Johannesburg.
All of the ways in which I experienced the world shaped the way in which I wrote about Robin and her own experience of the racist society she was growing up in. In the same way it took my loving a black woman for me to have empathy for her 052experience, it took Robin’s loving Beauty for her to understand the cruelty and horror of apartheid.
L.L.: While HUM IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS isn’t exactly a story about mothers and daughters, it plays a prominent role. There are different types of mothering in this story. The love and care of a child by a maid, and also an aunt. The storyline with Victor and his friends…the social worker. Beauty is separated from her children (two sons and an activist daughter). Can you talk a bit about how mothering isn’t exactly between a mother and a child, but how mothering can take on multiple forms?
Bianca Marais: I’m not a mother myself and yet I’ve always been fascinated by motherhood. It’s something that women are just expected to take on, and yet it’s so much more complex that just a biological imperative.
I’m sure we all know women who would make the most amazing mothers and yet aren’t able to have children, and on the other end of the spectrum are women who are completely lacking in maternal instinct and never should have been mothers at all judging by the harm they’ve done to their children.
I volunteered for many years at a children’s sanctuary in Johannesburg and also assisted home-based care workers in the Soweto community, and I saw first-hand how children who had either been abandoned or orphaned were cared for by 220px-Soweto_township.jpgvolunteers, care workers, members of their family or members of the community.
It made me realize that a child can be mothered by many different people in a multitude of ways, and that the people who often do the mothering aren’t mothers in the traditional sense, making the African idiom true: it does take a village to raise a child.
L.L.: And Edith, Robin’s aunt and caregiver after her mother’s death…how I loved her! She was this thin, fashionable, jet-setting air hostess suddenly strapped with a 9-year old child. She made me laugh and cry. Can you talk about her character a bit—and maybe your inspiration for her?
Bianca Marais: I’m so glad you loved Edith! I loved her too but there’s been a mixed reaction to her with many readers disliking her because they see her as selfish and self-absorbed.
I had an aunt who I absolutely adored and she led an unconventional life (not as unconventional as Edith’s) but I always admired the bravery it took for her not to conform to societal expectations. She was fiercely independent, smoked like a chimney, had an amazing sense of humor and was quite eccentric in some regards. I tried to capture her spirit in Edith though I exaggerated it quite a bit. I also think there’s some of myself in Edith which is telling.
My aunt is one of the people that the book is dedicated to and I so wish she’d been able to read this book because I know she would have loved it. She didn’t have an African Grey parrot but she had rats that she kept as pets. Edith would have made her laugh too.
L.L.: Before we get into much detail, can you give us a brief overview of the Apartheid?
Bianca Marais: Apartheid was a system of institutionalized and systemic racism that was in effect in South Africa from 1948 until 1991.
During that time, many laws were put in place to classify and segregate people according to their race, and then to discriminate against them accordingly. Non-white people were removed from their homes and either forced into segregated neighborhoods, or they had their citizenship taken away from them and had to move far away to live in one of the Bantu homelands.
The laws of apartheid were brutal and draconian. They controlled how black people lived, curtailed their freedom of movement, deprived them of a proper education, determined what jobs they could do and who they could associate with. The system was designed so that that white people could benefits from the oppression of non-white people.
L.L.: How have things changed since 1976-1977 when HUM IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS was set?
Bianca Marais: Apartheid ended in 1991 and South Africa is now a democracy with one of the most advanced constitutions in the world.
There was a decade after Nelson Mandela (Madiba as he was affectionately called) became president when the country had so much promise. He declared it ‘The Nelson_Mandela-2008_(edit).jpgRainbow Nation’, set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address the atrocities of the past, sanctions were lifted and foreign investment flooded in. I think Madiba was perhaps too optimistic in believing that because he was able to forgive and move on that everyone else could too. The scars from the apartheid years run deep, and just like the US after the Civil Rights Movement, it will take a long time for South Africa to fully heal and recover.
Unfortunately, after the Mandela era, things took a turn and the current leadership of the country doesn’t have the humanitarian focus that Mandela had. The president has been accused of state capture and only wanting to enrich himself and his cohorts. People remain living in terrible poverty and as long as that continues to happen, crime will continue to be a major concern.
The people of South Africa are some of the strongest, most resilient, hospitable and warm people you will ever meet. It breaks my heart that they are being railroaded in this way because they deserve so much better.
Perfect for readers of The Secret Life of Bees and The Help, a perceptive and searing look at Apartheid-era South Africa, told through one unique family brought together by tragedy.
L.L.: I’m curious about the logistics of writing HUM IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS. When did you begin this story and how long did it take to write, obtain an agent, get published. I ask because it’s such a dense and important read, but so well done.
Bianca Marais: HUM IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS was a story I’d always wanted to write but I was reluctant to tackle it because I honestly didn’t think I could do it. Most of the writing I’d done up until then was comedic, and dealing with heavy themes like racism, loss and grief seemed beyond the scope of what I was able to do.
I finally began writing the book in 2013 just after we’d moved from Johannesburg to Toronto and I’d started the Creative Writing Certificate at the U of T School of Continuing Studies. At first, I tried not to write from Beauty’s perspective because I absolutely didn’t want to appropriate a voice that wasn’t mine. The more I suppressed her, though, the more she wanted to be heard and so I made a pact with myself that I’d only write her if I did her complete justice.
To that end, I knew I’d have to do a lot of research about apartheid, as well as consult cultural experts and sensitivity readers which is exactly what I did.
The first draft of the book was finished within a year and I managed to get my amazing agent, Cassandra Rogers of The Rights Factory, a few weeks later. She picked the book up out of the slush pile and offered me representation within a week of reading it. There’s a lot of luck in getting the right book in front of the right agent at the right time and I was incredibly lucky.
I worked on rewrites with Cass for a few months and then we submitted to publishers. The feedback was very encouraging, but everyone said the book was too ambitious because it originally spanned four decades.download (34)
I then cut two thirds of the book out and began rewriting it so that it only spanned a year and a bit. The total writing time over all these incarnations was about two and a half years. The book then went out again, and there were many more rejections before it found a perfect home with the amazing Kerri Kolen and the rest of the brilliant Putnam team.
In total, the book was rejected more than a hundred times and I threatened to give up writing it on many, many occasions. I’m incredibly thankful to my fabulous agent, my wonderful husband and my amazing friends who encouraged me to keep going.
L.L.: Here’s a fun little observation: your first name, Bianca, translates to ‘white’ in Italian. And yet here is this book about black and white and race. Can you talk about that a bit?
Bianca Marais: Wow! I’ve never even thought about that. I know my name means ‘white’ in Italian because when we were in Italy, a waiter told me that his last name meant ‘Chistmas’ in Italian and that if I married him, my name would be “White Christmas’.
My parents named me Bianca because of Bianca Jagger; I don’t think they knew what the name translated to.Bianca_Jagger_2014.jpg
Perhaps it’s true what they say, your name is your destiny because ever since I became aware of the horrors of racial discrimination, it’s always been a huge issue for me.
L.L.: I feel like I could ask so many more questions. But I think I am going to end with this lovely quote from the book, which I feel summarizes it well, “Almost everyone who mattered most to me was in the same room: “Beauty (smiling broadly), Morrie (hair more poofy than usual), Mr. and Mrs. Goldman (bearing gifts), Victor (wearing an aquamarine bowtie because I told him once aquamarine was my favorite color), Johan (minus stitches), Wilhelmina (no longer a baddie!), and Maggie (no longer my only guardian angel). Black, white, homosexual, heterosexual, Christian, Jew, Englishman, Afrikaner, adult, child, man, woman: we were all in this together…” I love this. Do you have any other thoughts to add?
Bianca Marais: Thank you, Leslie! That paragraph summarizes so much of what the book is about and how I feel about the world today. No child is born racist, bigoted or prejudiced. Most children don’t even notice race, sexuality or ethnicity. They notice who treats them well and who they like in return and want to be friends with. A friend of mine once asked her six-year-old son what his friend looked like because she was supposed to pick him up, and her son gave a whole bunch of descriptors, none of which were ‘black’.
So why do we teach children to hate? Why do we raise children in societies that are racist and prejudiced and brainwash all of the innocence and love out of them?
I wish so much that my book wasn’t still so relevant. A story that takes place forty years ago across the world shouldn’t be as pertinent in the US today as it is. I just hope that people can learn from their mistakes so that history isn’t doomed to repeat itself. Violence breeds more violence and hate begets more hate. The cycle can be broken if we choose to break it.
L.L.: Bianca, it was a joy chatting and reading HUM IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS; thank you!
Bianca Marais: Thank you so much for this amazing interview! I appreciate your wonderful response to HUM and I loved chatting about it with you.
If you have any readers who’d like to include me in their book clubs, there’s a wonderful Book Club Kit on my website, and I’ll love to do Skype sessions with any clubs that would have me. I love interacting with readers and it’s great for them to have authors answer their questions.
I’ve spent the past year working on a sequel to HUM called If You Want to Make God Laugh that I’ve set aside for now as I know the demand for that will depend on how well the first book does. Besides that, I have another book in the works, so if you enjoyed HUM, please keep a lookout for more books from me in the not too distant future!
For more information, to connect with Bianca Marais, or to purchase a copy of HUM IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS, please visit:
Website
Facebook
Twitter: @BiancaM_author
Instagram
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
IndieBound
iBooks
biancamarais1ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bianca Marais holds a Certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto’s SCS, and her work has been published in World Enough and Crime.
Before turning to writing, she started a corporate training company and volunteered with Cotlands, where she assisted care workers in Soweto with providing aid for HIV/AIDS orphans and their caregivers.
Originally from South Africa, she now resides in Toronto with her husband.
I'm a South African who moved from Johannesburg to Toronto in 2012.
I started work on Hum If You Don’t Know the Words while doing my Creative Writing Certificate through the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies.
I live with my long-suffering husband as well as a golden retriever, two cats and an overactive imagination.
Bianca Marais packed up her whole life in Johannesburg, South Africa and arrived in Toronto in the July of 2012 with one jetlagged husband, two suitcases and four pets. After having previously written numerous atrocious novels that were widely rejected by everyone, she decided to study writing through the University of Toronto’s SCS Creative Writing program. She started work on her novel while studying, and an excerpt from the book was a finalist in the Penguin Random House Student Award for Fiction in 2013. A short story she wrote, The Savages Among Us, was published in a crime anthology, World Enough and Crime, in 2014. Her debut novel, Hum If You Don’t Know the Words will be published by Putnam. Also, she was once bitten by a giraffe. True story.
Bianca is represented by: Cassandra Rodgers
Author Interview: Bianca Marais
The author of Hum If You Don’t Know The Words on crafting authentic characters, accepting grief, and writing about what one knows
Photo Copyright Jory Nash
Bianca Marais’ Hum If You Don’t Know The Words is an emotionally charged brick of dynamite. From its intertwining of two — what one might easily call, opposing — narratives, to its adaptation of vivid motifs — the kind which only a novel set in late 1970s South Africa can appropriately utilize — this debut will take you into unfamiliar territory and won’t let you go until it’s finished with you.
At the center of the book is the story of Robin and Beauty. Though Robin is a white child attempting to grieve the loss of her recently murdered parents and Beauty is a black woman from rural lands searching for her lost daughter in a big city, what begins as two separate stories inevitably morphs into one. By merging their stories together, Marais explores the difficulties of race, grief, family-making, and musicality with a near perfect balance struck between that of presence and potency. The harmony of subjects and voices sing out from the page — it’s quite hard not to finish this book within a single day.
Bianca will be reading at Literati Bookstore on July 7th at 7 PM. In the week leading up to her reading, I was fortunate enough to send her a few questions.
The relationship shared between Cat and Robin was one of my favorite threads to follow throughout the entirety of the novel. As one might easily guess, chapter thirty-three — the chapter in which Cat evaporates from the remainder of the narrative — was a difficult, yet somehow still beautiful chapter to read. How did you come to the decision to remove this imaginary character from the novel?
That was an incredibly difficult scene to write and I recall crying as I was writing it because Cat is just an extension of Robin. In the beginning of the book, before Robin’s parents are murdered, Cat is in Robin’s life as a coping mechanism. Robin projects onto Cat the feelings, insecurities and fears that she knows aren’t acceptable to her parents, and that’s how she learns to exist in a world in which she wants very much to be herself but also to be liked and loved.
After Robin’s parents die, Robin uses her sister even more as an emotional crutch to avoid dealing with her grief. As long as she can keep Cat happy and stop her from being sad, she’s able to cope with her loss. However, once Robin starts to care for Beauty and once she knows that Beauty loves her — all of her, even the parts that weren’t acceptable to her parents — she feels she’s able to navigate a world in which Cat doesn’t exist. That scene is very much Robin’s coming of age and it shows her resilience and vulnerability.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons (7/11/2017)
The title of the novel appears for us about a quarter of a way through the book. Robin is attending her parent’s funeral and at the start of the procession an unfamiliar song begins to play. Fearing possible embarrassment, Robin informs her aunt Edith of her ignorance, at which point, Edith responds: “When in doubt, just do what I do, Robs. Hum if you don’t know the words.” I should also note that this isn’t the only instance in the book where the motif of music and sound shows up. We hear numerous records, a singing / repetitious African Grey, and there always seems to be some rhythmic noise hovering beyond the periphery. What is it about the motif of musicality that you find so useful when writing a novel like Hum If You Don’t Know The Words?
When you write a story that takes place in a very particular moment in history, you need to anchor the story very firmly in that time so that the reader feels immersed in it. Music is a wonderful way of doing that. Also, music is so culturally important. The music that Beauty listens to and the songs she sings is very different to the music Robin and her aunt, Edith, listen to. I wanted to show how far apart their worlds are even though they end up living in the same home.
When I write a scene, I picture it in my mind from the point of view of the character, looking out of their eyes. And so I feel, see and hear everything they do which is why I focus on smells, sounds, tastes and textures; they make a story come alive in a way that it wouldn’t if you left out sensory descriptions.
Though this book has a great deal of sadness in it, there are many, many moments in which the audience will find themselves laughing out loud. I’m thinking of Morrie and King George when I mention this. Where did these two characters come from and were they always as funny as they are in the final version of the novel?
I’m so glad you enjoyed Morrie and King George because they are two of my favorites. I honestly can’t tell you where they come from; both of them just popped into my head fully formed as I was writing. As you say, the book deals with heavy themes, but South Africans are also people who love laughing and who can see the humor in any situation no matter how dire and these characters helped me convey that.
I didn’t know much about Judaism when Morrie announced himself, and so I had to do quite a bit of research to get him right. King George made me laugh out loud as I was writing him and I’m grateful to him for the comic relief even as he remained a very scarred and damaged character.
I struggled to fully accept the decisions Robin makes in pursuit of attempting to gain some semblance of a normal childhood. Yet whenever I found myself struggling to acknowledge what she was doing, I reminded myself of all that she had been through: two dead parents, a maid who left her, an aunt who may or may not want her, and one friend who wishes to be more than just a friend. This seemed to make her actions comprehensible — if only until something more life derailing occurred. How do you empathize with Robin?
I must be honest, I battled to like Robin at many moments throughout the story. She can be such a brat and is so oblivious to her privilege, but she’s also very much a product of her environment. I had to keep reminding myself of that in order to empathize with her. It’s not that she has a bad nature or is a horrible person — she just doesn’t know any better most of the time.
When I meet people in real life who are bigoted or prejudiced, or just oblivious to other people’s feelings or suffering, it always makes me wonder about their upbringing and how much of who they are is shaped by where they grew up and the people who raised them. It’s the whole nature versus nurture argument and I find it fascinating.
Sometimes good people make bad choices and that’s very much what happens with Robin, but she does eventually redeem herself which makes her much more sympathetic.
Grief and the process of grieving is essential to almost all of the different characters we meet through the book. Everyone, in some manner, is attempting to overcome some sort of strife, or pain, or unmentionable memory. By the end of the book, grief has yet to be conquered, but is instead managed via the familial ties which are constructed between those likeminded characters which care for one another. This begs the questions: can grief ever fully be escaped?
My experience of grief is that isn’t something you get over. It isn’t a process you go through to come out healed on the other side. It’s something that stays with you and transforms you, and the best you can hope for is to learn how to live with it so that the burden of it gets easier to carry with time.
Beauty says this of grief in the book and it sums up how I feel about it:
Grief is a city all of its own, built high on a hill and surrounded by stone walls. It is a fortress that you will inhabit for the rest of your life as you walk its dead-end roads forever. The trick is to stop trying to escape and, instead, make yourself at home.
Beauty Mbali is an exceptionally strong character. Her resilience and capacity for hope amazed me time and time again. I understand that some of her qualities are based off of a black woman who cared for you when you were a child. Eunice, who watched you as a child, is still a dear friend of yours and someone you are in contact with regularly. Though Eunice will turn ninety-four this year and her hearing is somewhat problematic, have you spoken at all with her about the book and the character of Beauty Mbali?
I have tried throughout my adult life to speak to Eunice about her experience of apartheid and how it affected her, but it’s something she’s never wanted to discuss and I’ve had to respect that. Eunice is as resilient and full of grace as Beauty is and those are the qualities of hers that I wanted to capture. Eunice is my absolute hero. I can’t imagine having lived the life she has and not being bitter about it. She is a bigger and better person than I will ever be.
Eunice knows about the book and I have asked her permission to speak about her and to post photographs of her on social media which she has very kindly granted. She says she’s very proud of me and is looking forward to becoming famous. She has a brilliant sense of humor.
I was lucky enough to volunteer in Soweto for almost ten years working with the caregivers of HIV positive children and have them share their experiences of apartheid with me. It was their willingness to talk about it and their generosity of spirit that allowed me to be able to understand some of what Beauty may have experienced during that time.
An Indies Introduce Q&A With Bianca Marais
By Jessica Stauffer on Monday, Jul 10, 2017
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Bianca Marais’ Hum If You Don’t Know the Words, a Summer/Fall 2017 Indies Introduce adult debut and a July Indie Next List pick, tells the connected stories of a young white girl and a black woman in 1970s South Africa.
“Hum If You Don’t Know the Words follows Robin, a young white girl whose parents are killed, and Beauty, a black woman who searches for her activist daughter in the aftermath of the Soweto uprising,” said Jamie Thomas, store and office manager at Women & Children First in Chicago and one of the panelists on the Indies Introduce bookseller panel that selected the novel. “Bianca Marais has written a crisp, clear-eyed story that doesn’t shy away from the racism and devastation of her home country’s apartheid history, while also showing the many forms that family and love can take.”
Marais is a South African writer currently residing in Toronto, where she earned a creative writing certificate from the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. Hum If You Don’t Know the Words was chosen as a top summer read by Bookish and Good Housekeeping and a selected read by the New York Post.
Thomas and Marais met last month during ABA’s “Booksellers Present Indies Introduce Authors” event at BookExpo. Here, they discuss the ways Marais took care in creating the characters of Robin and Beauty, and how the author’s own experiences influenced the book.
Jamie Thomas: Like Robin, you are a white South African woman who was raised in part by a black caregiver. How much of the book is based on your own life, and how much research did you do about this period of your country’s history?
Bianca MaraisBianca Marais: I was born in Johannesburg in 1976, and on the day of the Soweto Uprising — when over a hundred schoolchildren were killed by the South African police for peacefully protesting against the government — my care, as a five-month-old baby, had been entrusted to one of the very people the apartheid government had declared to be less than human: our black maid, Eunice.
She played a significant role in my upbringing and is still an integral part of my life, and it was my relationship with her as a child that inspired much of the interaction that happens between Robin and Beauty.
I had to do a lot of research to get the facts right about the Soweto Uprising and the draconian apartheid laws. When you grow up with that kind of systemic racism, it gets normalized and so you don’t question it as a child. It’s only when you’re older that you realize how brutal and dysfunctional the whole system was. Much of what I learned during the research phase shocked me.
JT: Your characters could have easily become archetypes — the precocious child and the burdened yet wise black woman — but you managed to make both Robin and Beauty into well-rounded people. How did you find their voices? Was it important to you to create realistic characters instead of tropes?
BM: Thank you so much for that; I really appreciate your saying so, because it was vitally important for me to not make them stereotypes, but to have them be their own people with their own personalities and issues that shape who they are.
Robin was tough to get right because she’s been raised in a racist environment, and after she loses her parents, she’s experiencing the kind of grief that’s way too big and overwhelming for her to process. Added to that, she desperately needs stability and wants to make herself useful to her aunt so that she isn’t taken away, but she’s also an inquisitive and funny child who is being forced to give up her childhood prematurely. I prefer likeable characters in novels — unpleasant ones are often difficult to connect with or relate to — but it was tough to make Robin likeable because even though she’s only a child, much of her worldview has been shaped by a racist and intolerant society. The reader has to put in some work to like Robin and to forgive her for her brattiness.
Beauty is a woman who has lost so much and tried so hard to create a world in which her children are safe and loved. She was educated and had a world opened to her that very few black women had access to in those days, and then she had it all taken away from her by apartheid. I hate it when I see black women on social media and in mainstream culture being told to ‘rise above’ abuse, racism, and sexism, because they should be allowed to rage and retaliate as much as anyone else does when they’re hurt or attacked. I wanted Beauty to be a flawed and damaged human being, not some saintly archetype. She has grace and dignity, but she is also someone who has to make conscious choices every day to stop herself from becoming bitter and allowing the system to scar her too deeply.
I spent close to 10 years volunteering in Soweto and other Johannesburg informal settlements, and I worked very closely with women who came from the same kind of background as Beauty. I learned so much through my interactions with them, which is why I think Beauty’s voice was so clear in my mind.
Having said all of that, when I did veer into stereotypical scenarios or portrayals, I was incredibly lucky to have members of my writing group, who critiqued the book throughout, call me on it and force me to do better.
Hum If You Don't Know the Words coverJT: Race and racism play a large part in the story, and you don’t shy away from some of the more offensive beliefs that would have been held by a nine-year-old white child and her peers in apartheid South Africa. In writing the book, what choices did you have to make when it came to presenting the intolerant positions of many of the white characters?
BM: I put off writing this book for the longest time because I knew that in order to do this story justice, I would have to take a very long and hard look at myself and the society I grew up in and portray that authentically, warts and all. I didn’t know that I could do it without changing the way I saw myself.
When I finally decided it was time to write it, I made a promise to myself that I would be unflinchingly honest about the racism that I was a part of. I wanted to show how normalized it was, but at the same time, how terrible and unforgivable day-to-day interactions were. If I wrote a scene and was in any way tempted to shy away from something, I forced myself to zone in on it even more and dig deeper.
And I was right: writing this book did change the way I saw myself, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I think that anyone who has any kind of racist or prejudiced beliefs needs to go through this exercise. The world would be a much better place if we acknowledged our privilege and allowed ourselves to feel shame, rather than trying to justify ourselves or living in denial.
JT: You wrote Beauty’s sections in the present tense and Robin’s in the past tense. What led you to that stylistic choice, and what do you think was gained by this decision?
BM: Robin’s voice immediately came to me in the first person past tense, and I felt comfortable writing her that way. Although the perspective that’s relayed is that of a child, Robin is actually telling her story from a point in the future when she’s an adult looking back on her life, and so the past tense gave her the ability to reflect back on her childhood with some wisdom and hindsight while still allowing her to relay her childish beliefs in a naïve way.
Beauty’s sections proved to be more challenging. I was so wary of writing Beauty at first, as I didn’t feel I was remotely qualified to write from a black woman’s perspective, and so I tiptoed around her narrative. Her chapters started off in the epistolary form, with everything she had to say being relayed in letters. For some reason, this made me feel like I’d removed myself from her and wasn’t being too presumptuous in writing her. I soon realized how ridiculous this was and that if I was going to give her a credible voice, I’d have to do it by approaching writing her with respect and humility, which would require researching her perspective as much as possible. Once I felt comfortable with that, I switched to the third person past tense, but that still didn’t feel right. Finally, I stuck with the first person present tense, which gave her narrative an immediacy I didn’t feel Robin’s chapters needed. I think the fact that the voices are in different tenses also helps the reader immediately know which character’s voice they’re reading so there’s never any confusion.
JT: There are very few well-known South African writers, and even fewer of those who are well-known are women. Who are some authors you would like to see gain a larger international audience?
BM: South Africa has a lot of amazing writers, many of whom just happen to be women. My contemporary favorites are: Mohale Mashigo (The Yearning); Yewande Omotoso (Bom Boy and The Woman Next Door); Penny Busetto (The Story of Anna P, as Told by Herself); Panashe Chigumadzi (Sweet Medicine); C.A. Davids (The Blacks of Cape Town); Lauren Liebenberg (The West Rand Jive Cats Boxing Club and The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam); Nadia Davids (An Imperfect Blessing); Maire Fisher (Birdseye); Dominique Botha (False River); Carol Campbell (My Children Have Faces); Sally Andrew (Recipes for Love and Murder and The Satantic Mechanic); and Paige Nick and and J.T. Lawrence (both of whom have many wonderful titles out).
Hum If You Don’t Know the Words by Bianca Marais (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Hardcover, $26, 9780399575068) On Sale Date: July 11, 2017.
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About
Bianca Marais is the author of the novel 'Hum If You Don't Know the Words', an exploration of love and loss during apartheid in South Africa.
Putnam, 2017
Biography
Bianca Marais holds a Certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies, and her work has been published in World Enough and Crime. Before turning to writing, she started a corporate training company, and volunteered with Cotlands where she assisted care workers in Soweto with providing aid for HIV/AIDS orphans. Originally from South Africa, she now resides in Toronto with her husband.
Writer’s Bone Podcast: Interview with Bianca Marais
Authors
Fiction
BookTrib Aug 9, 2017
0
Bookish is dedicated to giving readers the best content around; that’s why we’re partnering with BookTrib to bring you this podcast interview:
In 2013, Sean Tuohy met Daniel Ford at a Halloween party and they immediately hit it off. The podcast wasn’t born on that exact night, but they were able to discuss some of their favorite things like writing, screenwriting, books, movies, comedy, and comic books. They put their heads together and came up with some of their favorite names, some of which included 2 Gentleman Writers and Hemingway’s Love Children, eventually settling on Writer’s Bone–and we are so glad that they did! Daniel and Sean feel that they are in the middle of something very big and wonderful, featuring new author interviews, fiction pieces, and Boneyard discussions along the way. BookTrib.com met Sean and Daniel recently and invited them to share Writer’s Bone with our readers.
In this week’s podcast, Bianca Marais, author of Hum if You Don’t Know the Words, talks to Daniel Ford about writing stories at a young age, how mystery and detective novels influence her work on a daily basis, and how her upbringing in Apartheid, South Africa inspired her debut novel. Marais moved from South Africa to Toronto in 2012 and started working on Hum if You Don’t Know the Words while doing her Creative Writing Certificate through the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies.
Q&A Bianca Marais
142.11 (June 15, 2017): p79.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
South African-born, Toronto-based first novelist Bianca Marais's Hum If You Don't Know the Words (starred review, U 5/1/17) tells the absorbing coming-of-age story of nine-year-old Robin Conrad. Living as a young white girl in Apartheid-era South Africa, Robin forms a new family after losing her own.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
What inspired the creation of Robin and Beauty as your main characters?
When I was a child growing up in South Africa, most of us didn't have kindergarten [classes] or preschools in our neighborhoods. Our care fell to black women who'd left the homelands to work for white families as maids. I was incredibly lucky to have an amazing Xhosa woman, Eunice, work for my family and help raise me. It was my love of Eunice that inspired me to write a novel about the relationship between a white child and a black woman. From there, Beauty and Robin were born.
It was only in writing the book that I realized the tragedy of apartheid wasn't the inhumanity.... that prevented Eunice and me from sharing each other's lives, as I'd always thought [it was]. The real tragedy was that I was in Eunice's life at all. In a fair world, Eunice would have been able to raise her own children instead of having to lavish her maternal affection on someone else's.
"Hum if you don't know the words" is such a memorable line. What came first--the title or the story?
The story had been at the back of my mind for many years, but I was reluctant to begin writing because I didn't think I could do it justice. When I finally sat down to work on it in February 2013, the title was It Ain't Over 'till the Fat Lady Sings. Within a few chapters, though, it changed.
I purposefully wrote that line into a scene because I love that moment when I'm reading a book and spot the word or phrase [behind the title]. Also, "Hum if you don't know the words" perfectly sums up so much of what Robin and Beauty experience. Even though they're both floundering, they keep going in the hopes that they'll find their way. It's a metaphor for so many themes explored in the novel.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
You evoke well the feeling of Johannesburg during the 1970s. How did you approach time and place?
In the earlier drafts, I focused more on getting the time period right than fleshing out the setting. Johannesburg felt so familiar to me, but the time period wasn't since I was just a baby then. I wanted to anchor the story firmly in that time, so I took care to get the clothing, hairstyles, music, and social and cultural contexts right.
Once I was working on edits, I realized that the setting could become a character in its own right. My editor Kerri Kolen made me see that even though I was familiar with the setting, my audience wouldn't be, and she allowed me the freedom to add over 10,000 words to flesh out South Africa so that it could come alive on the page.
Could you share your research process?
A great deal of research went into writing this book because besides wanting to get the historic backdrop right, I was very aware of how ill-equipped I was to write from a black woman's perspective. I was reluctant to do so at first and approached it with a great deal of respect. I resolved to research as I was going along and that continued throughout the drafting and rewriting process.
I read a lot of books about apartheid, watched documentaries, did online reading, [and] studied newspapers (both local and foreign because the South African press was greatly censored during apartheid). I used my parents as a resource because my father has such an amazing memory, consulted with cultural and language experts at universities, reached out to friends of all races in South Africa, and then hired sensitivity readers and consultants.
Were any scenes difficult to write?
Many scenes were emotionally difficult because they required me to tackle my own privilege and put myself in the shoes of the very people my race had been oppressing for generations. Writing those scenes required me to hold a mirror up to myself, even though I didn't like what I was seeing. It's easy under those circumstances to gloss over things that you should actually be poking a stick at.
What's your next project?
I'm currently halfway through the sequel to Hum If You Don't Know the Words. In one of the earliest drafts, Hum spanned four decades and the final version only spans [15] months. [These characters'] story is far from over for me, and I'm extremely gratified to see [from] my readers' feedback that they want to spend more time with Robin, Beauty, and the rest of the supporting cast.--Stephanie Sendaula
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Q&A Bianca Marais." Library Journal, 15 June 2017, p. 79. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495668318/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4c5d4f13. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495668318
Hum If You Don't Know the Words
Poornima Apte
113.19-20 (June 2017): p53.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Hum If You Don't Know the Words. By Bianca Marais. July 2017.432p. Putnam, $26 (9780399575068).
The Soweto uprising of 1976, which left an indelible mark on South African society, frames Marais' soulful debut. The narrative alternates between two voices: nine-year-old Robin Conrad, who, until she loses her parents in the unrest, enjoys a happy childhood in the suburbs of Johannesburg; and Beauty Mbali, an educated black woman who leaves her village in the Bantu countryside and two children in the care of elders to find her daughter, Nomsa, in the bowels of Soweto. Nomsa has allegedly gone to Soweto to study, but as Beauty finds out, she is gradually swept up in the seismic political shifts that spread across the country. The characters' voices ring true to their personal histories, and the tentative bond that develops between Beauty and Robin is tenderly, sometimes too cloyingly, rendered, keeping in mind the complexities and the historical baggage of black-white interaction in apartheid South Africa. If Marais' novel feels a little bloated at times, it is nevertheless an engaging portrayal of two ordinary citizens swept up by the tidal wave of history.--Poornima Apte
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Apte, Poornima. "Hum If You Don't Know the Words." Booklist, June 2017, p. 53. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A498582691/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=acd9cb31. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A498582691
Marais, Bianca: HUM IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE WORDS
(May 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Marais, Bianca HUM IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE WORDS Putnam (Adult Fiction) $26.00 7, 11 ISBN: 978-0-399-57506-8
The paths of a young white girl and a black woman intersect when the violence of apartheid shatters both their lives.Set in Johannesburg, Marais' debut novel centers on Beauty Mbali and 9-year-old Robin Conrad, each of whom is impacted by the 1976 Soweto Uprising, in which white police officers opened fire on peacefully protesting black schoolchildren. Robin's parents are killed in the backlash, while Beauty's daughter, Nomsa, goes missing from her Soweto school after taking part in the uprising. Beauty's search for Nomsa leads her to Robin's aunt, who hires Beauty as a caretaker for Robin so she can remain in the city and continue her quest to find her daughter. Because Robin is a child who has suffered traumatic loss (rendered in poignant, vivid detail), it's hard to feel anything but sympathy for her even when her selfish decisions have grave consequences for her beloved Beauty. While the novel goes to admirable lengths to treat every member of its diverse supporting cast with complexity through copious dialogue and at least a hint of a back story for each, the characters can feel like types (the liberated single career woman, the liberal Jewish family, the kindly gay best friend, the helpful mixed-race janitor) meant to give proof of the novel's pro-equality intentions. Moreover, Robin's declarations about racism ("it's easier to treat people terribly if you tell yourself they're nothing like you") are at once too sophisticated for a child and too simplistic to be the novel's main message. To the novel's credit, the double point of view structure adds nuance and depth to the twice-told scenes, and the story never fails to create a sense of urgency at every narrative development. Apart from her occasional philosophizing, Robin's character is a refreshingly accurate and often downright hilarious portrayal of girlhood. An entertaining page-turner that, while somewhat pat in its treatment of racial politics, provides a satisfying emotional journey.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Marais, Bianca: HUM IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE WORDS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491002960/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=aaa64c10. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491002960
Hum If You Don't Know the Words
264.18 (May 1, 2017): p33.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* Hum If You Don't Know the Words
Bianca Marais. Putnam, $26 (432p) ISBN 978 0-399-57506-8
Nine-year-old Robin loves detective stories. So when the police arrive the night her parents are killed, she mistakenly believes she is now part of her favorite radio series. It's a harsh awakening for her to realize that South Africa in the 1970s is a place far more violent than those stories. With her parents gone, Robin's aunt puts her in the care of a Xhosa nanny, Beauty, a woman with her own tragic secrets: Beauty has vowed to stay in Johannesburg as long as it takes to find her daughter, Nomsa, who has disappeared after a student protest ends in bloodshed. However, as the days stretch into months, Beauty finds herself growing increasingly attached to the motherless white child she is being paid to raise. Likewise Robin grows to love Beauty, despite knowing her dead parents would disapprove of her close relationship with the black woman. In this standout debut Marais handles topics such as grief and racism with a delicate intensity that will make readers fall in love with her characters. From the first few heartfelt chapters to a fast-paced and heart-wrenching ending, Marais has created a stunning historical drama that shouldn't be missed. (July)
Caption: Bianca Marais's standout debut novel, Hum If You Don't Know the Words, follows a nine-year-old girl's experiences in 1970s South Africa (reviewed on this page).
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Hum If You Don't Know the Words." Publishers Weekly, 1 May 2017, p. 33. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491575257/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=676cca4e. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491575257
Marais's 'Hum' gets Louder at Putnam
Rachel Deahl
262.52 (Dec. 21, 2015): p6.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Kerri Kolen at G.P. Putnam's Sons took world rights to the debut novel by Bianca Marais, Hum If You Don't Know the Words. The novel, which the publisher is calling a "South African The Secret Life of Bees," is set in Johannesburg in 1976. During the Soweto uprising, in which a number of black South African students protested a national decree calling for Afrikaans to be heavily used in high schools, 10-year-old Robin Conrad loses both her parents. That same day, the daughter of Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman, goes missing. After Robin, a white middle-class English girl, is sent to live with an aunt, Beauty is hired as her main caretaker. As both characters "grapple to deal with intense personal loss and political racial tensions," Putnam explained, "they discover that color is not a barrier to love." Marais, who was represented by Cassandra Rodgers' at the Rights Factory, is a South African now based in Canada; she graduated from the University of Toronto's creative writing program.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Deahl, Rachel. "Marais's 'Hum' gets Louder at Putnam." Publishers Weekly, 21 Dec. 2015, p. 6. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A438563251/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=be9f9569. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A438563251
In 'Hum,' two voices reveal nothing is black and white
(Aug. 9, 2017): Lifestyle: p03D.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
Byline: Charisse Jones
In Hum If You Don't Know the Words (Putnam, 432 pp., ***), South Africa native Bianca Marais gives us a glimpse into her country's fevered history through the eyes of characters rooted on both sides of the color line.
In June 1976, the lives of Robin, a white girl, and Beauty, a black woman, are upended by the Soweto uprising, a seminal moment in the anti-apartheid struggle when dozens of black children were killed by police after they took to the streets to protest Afrikaans becoming the official language of school instruction.
In the aftermath, Robin's parents are murdered, and Beauty's daughter, a young activist and leader, disappears.
With lyrical, evocative prose, Marais does an elegant job switching between the voices of a 9-year-old child and an older woman who are both searching for answers as they deal with overwhelming loss and a society's twisted social mores.
Marais' writing potently displays the everyday cruelty of the pro-apartheid regime, from the casual use of racial slurs to the absurdity of whites putting the quotidian necessities of life in the hands of brown and black people whose humanity most deny.
We are also introduced to the circle that embraces Robin and Beauty. Its members are alternately funny, warm and intriguing, yet because they are Jewish or gay or simply progressive in their views, they are also outcasts in this intolerant society.
Robin's story initially runs parallel to Beauty's, and at times her chapters can feel like a jarring interruption to Beauty's fraught narrative in which the mother searches for her child while navigating the indignities and hardships that come with being a black person in segregated South Africa. But when Beauty's path and life finally intersect with Robin's, the pace balances out, and the novel moves swiftly toward its emotional conclusion.
Hum sometimes treads perilously close to the tiresome template in which a precocious white character is courageous and compassionate far beyond her years, while the black characters are near-saintly in their selflessness. A scene in a "shebeen," an illegal township bar, in which Robin tries to prove that she's not like other whites by dancing to "kwela" music with a black youth -- garnering roaring applause from the black patrons -- is particularly treacly. But the less-than-impressed response from another character helps to pull this episode back from the brink.
Ultimately the portraits of Beauty and Robin are richly drawn. Both are brave and ambivalent, sorrowful and spirited, lost but ever-searching. Their journeys demonstrate that nothing is simply black or white.
CAPTION(S):
photo Jory Nash
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"In 'Hum,' two voices reveal nothing is black and white." USA Today, 9 Aug. 2017, p. 03D. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500224371/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a4dcab5c. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A500224371
read in a very long time.
Hum if You Don't Know the Words
By Bianca Marais, Putnam, 420 pages, $24
This debut novel by Toronto resident Bianca Marais – who was born in South Africa – vividly presents a country torn asunder by apartheid at a moment when it's too easy to see how violence and hatred can take over if left unchecked. The backdrop of racial unrest contrasts with a touching relationship that develops between an unlikely pair: a nine-year-old English girl named Robin Conrad, who has just lost her parents in the bloodshed surrounding the 1976 Soweto uprisings, and her Xhosa caregiver, Beauty, whose daughter has gone missing from the frontlines of the same protest. By all rights, these two are on opposite sides of a clash that has careened their lives into turmoil, but they don't see it that way. The motherless child and the daughterless mother gravitate towards one another in a novel that is both a lulling portrait of comfort found in an improbable place and an exhilarating page-turner. The stakes get progressively higher when the outside world can no longer be kept from threatening the bond Robin and Beauty share. The only weakness here is well-meaning: Subplots involving a gay couple and a Jewish family with a child Robin's age veer the narrative a little too close to sermonizing territory – but it's all so heartfelt. And at the moment, we probably need more of this kind of writing when it comes from the right place. Comparisons to The Help and The Secret Life of Bees are apt, and fans of those two novels should immediately add this one to their "to read" lists.
Moving novel opens a window into South Africa's tortured history
Charisse Jones, USA TODAY Published 4:00 p.m. ET Aug. 7, 2017 | Updated 3:49 p.m. ET Aug. 8, 2017
636372840451610283-jacket-large-HUM-IF-YOU-DON-T-KNOW-THE-WORDS.jpg
(Photo: Putnam)
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In Hum If You Don’t Know the Words (Putnam, 432 pp., *** out of four stars), South Africa native Bianca Marais gives us a glimpse into her country’s fevered history through the eyes of characters rooted on both sides of the color line.
In June 1976, the lives of Robin, a white girl, and Beauty, a black woman, are upended by the Soweto uprising, a seminal moment in the anti-apartheid struggle when dozens of black children were killed by police after they took to the streets to protest Afrikaans becoming the official language of school instruction.
In the aftermath, Robin’s parents are murdered, and Beauty’s daughter, a young activist and leader, disappears.
With lyrical, evocative prose, Marais does an elegant job switching between the voices of a 9-year-old child and an older woman who are both searching for answers as they deal with overwhelming loss and a society’s twisted social mores.
Marais’s writing potently displays the everyday cruelty of the pro-apartheid regime, from the casual use of racial slurs, to the absurdity of whites putting the quotidian necessities of life in the hands of brown and black people whose humanity most deny.
We are also introduced to the circle that embraces Robin and Beauty. Its members are alternately funny, warm and intriguing, yet because they are Jewish or gay or simply progressive in the way they view the world, they are also outcasts in this intolerant society.
Author Bianca Marais.
Author Bianca Marais. (Photo: Jory Nash)
Robin's story initially runs parallel to Beauty's, and at times her chapters can feel like a jarring interruption to Beauty's fraught narrative in which the mother searches for her child while navigating the indignities and hardships that come with being a black person in segregated South Africa. But when Beauty's path and life finally intersect with Robin's, the pace balances out, and the novel moves swiftly towards its emotional conclusion.
Hum sometimes treads perilously close to the tiresome template in which a precocious white character is courageous and compassionate far beyond her years, while the black characters are near-saintly in their selflessness. A scene in a “shebeen,’’ an illegal township bar, in which Robin tries to prove that she’s not like other whites by dancing to “kwela’’ music with a black youth — garnering roaring applause from the black patrons — is particularly treacly. But the less-than-impressed response from another character helps to pull this episode back from the brink.
Ultimately the portraits of Beauty and Robin are richly drawn. Both are brave and also ambivalent, sorrowful and spirited, lost but ever-searching.
Their journeys and eventual love for one another poignantly demonstrate that nothing is simply black or white.
Hum If You Don’t Know the Words” by Bianca Marais
August 31, 2017 Joslyn Allen
“Johannesburg is a huge city filled with hundreds of thousands of white people, and what white people need more than anything is black people to labor for them. What white people do not need, however, is to have those same black people living near them threatening their way of life. This is how the township of Soweto came to be in the first place. Close enough to the city so that workers can commute there, but far enough away so that the white man does not have to smell the black man’s stench.”
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It is the summer of 1976 in South Africa, a time of tumult and tension, a society at a boil. Nine-year-old Robin Conrad is a white girl raised in the comfort and privilege of apartheid.
“If people didn’t come in the right colors, how would we know who to be scared of?”
But not 6 months later, Robin, it seems, has had an awakening.
“I was mute. I didn’t know what to say in a world where people were hated and attacked for not being the right color, not speaking the right language, not worshipping the right god or not loving the right people; a world where hatred was the common language, and bricks, the only words.”
Through the mouths of babes, Bianca Marais describes the heartache and struggle of a burgeoning ethic with simplicity and pin-point accuracy. These words capture not only the ethos of the story’s setting, an ethos historically and geographically distant. They also deftly depict the spirit and sorrow of today, of here and now. Marais’ novel is history and allegory, and she pulls no punches.
The story’s other narrator and protagonist is Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman from the rural Transkei who has come looking for her daughter, who has disappeared in the Soweto Uprising.
“When it is our turn, Andile tries to wrap his arm around my shoulders, but I gently shake him off. I will bear myself with dignity. I walk inside and go to the counter. Behind the glass, a white policeman stands with his head bent. I clear my throat, but he does not look up. He does not appear to know I am there.
‘Good morning, sir, my name is – ‘
Without raising his head, the man holds up his hand. ‘I haven’t addressed you yet. You’ll wait until I’m ready for you.’ He shakes his head and then mutters, ‘Geen fokken maniere, hierde kaffirs.’
I understand Afrikaans. It is one of the six languages I speak. No fucking manners, these kaffirs.
I fall silent. He is writing on a piece of paper, taking his time with each word. He pauses between sentences, and even as I read them upside down, I can see he has spelled three words incorrectly. I do not dare correct him. The clock overhead ticks away a minute and then another two as the man continues writing at a snail’s pace. When the document appears to be done, he reaches for an ink pad and spends another minute stamping and signing the document.
Finally, he sighs and puts the paper in a folder. He looks up though he does not meet my gaze. His eyes hover just above me. ‘Name?’
Beauty is not fearless, nor will she bow to her fears. Her strength and poise, her perseverance and faith are always engrossing and often astonishing.
The Soweto Uprising and its aftermath has brought these two unlikely protagonists together. Beauty and Robin find their worlds devastated, yet from that chaos comes an unexpected and unbreakable bond.
Though this is a story written by a white South African, featuring the ‘awakening’ of a white South African, and including at least a few ‘good’ white people, this book is neither about (useless) white guilt nor about (specious) white goodness. It is, instead, about struggle, recognition, and growth. Many of Marais’ white characters are either overtly racist or shamefully complicit, and the outrages her characters of color face range from stomach-turning violence to pervasive ‘casual racism.’ It is these offenses that Robin (and many of us) must face.
“Hum If You Don’t Know the Words” is an incredibly insightful and finely-crafted debut. Bianca Marais has written an honest, thoughtful novel that explores our troubled past and the deep seeds of our future. Through it, she inspires us to see ourselves and each other.
“What greater gift can you give another than to say: I see you, I hear you, and you are not alone?”
Thank you to G.P. Putnam’s Sons for providing a complimentary Advance Reader’s Copy in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Rousing quest for redemption in apartheid South Africa
Bianca Marais's Hum If You Don't Know the Words is both delightful and deadly serious.
By Rayyan Al-ShawafSpecial to the Star
Fri., July 21, 2017
Hum If You Don’t Know the Words, the title of a delightful yet deadly serious novel by Bianca Marais, is also a metaphor for how Robin, a white girl in apartheid South Africa who co-narrates with an educated black maid named Beauty, muddles through a fraught childhood. In 1976, when Robin is nine years old and oblivious to life outside her Johannesburg suburb, her parents are murdered for the colour of their skin. The perpetrators are black men enraged by the police’s gunning down of at least 176 protesting black schoolchildren in the now-famous Soweto uprising.
Marais, who is white, lives in Toronto, but was born and raised in South Africa. She manages to capture, sometimes simultaneously, the abominable nature of apartheid and the racial/cultural complexity of her homeland, as when Robin discovers that some people are neither white nor black. “If people didn’t come in the right colors, how would we know who to be scared of?”she asks.
Of course, Marais isn’t the first white South African writer to do this. And highlighting the absurdity of what purportedly sophisticated grown-ups have wrought by presenting it through the eyes of a mystified child is hardly original. Robin initially seems like the heroine of a young adult novel. Marais even has her grapple with forms of bias other than anti-black racism, such as homophobia and anti-Semitism, in a heavy-handed attempt to illustrate their commonalities.
Yet two story elements steer Hum If You Don’t Know the Words away from the predictable and the pedagogic. The first assumes the form of Beauty, a black character who — in contrast to Robin — narrates her chapters in the present tense, imbuing them with immediacy. In Johannesburg, Beauty becomes nanny and surrogate mother to Robin, whose maternal aunt/nominal guardian is often abroad for work. However, Beauty’s main concern is finding her 19-year-old daughter Nomsa, who was living with her uncle in nearby Soweto but has gone missing since the uprising began. Has the fiery Nomsa joined the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC) resistance organization?
“I allowed her to come to this city to study so long as she promised she would not get involved in anything dangerous,” recounts a desperate Beauty, who was at the time living in the far-off Transkei region, “but I should have known she was lying. The only thing a warrior cannot fight is her own fierce nature.”
Meanwhile, Robin cannot bear to be separated from Beauty, even for the sake of Nomsa. So she makes a selfish, shocking, and fateful decision. A sure-footed Marais then tracks Robin’s attempts to rectify the mess she’s made. And in the process, the author turns Hum If You Don’t Know the Words into a brave girl’s rousing quest for redemption.
Rayyan Al-Shawaf is a writer in Beirut.
Hum If You Don't Know the Words
by Bianca Marais
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It’s probably not quite right to call a novel set in apartheid-era South Africa “entertaining,” yet Bianca Marais’ HUM IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS manages to be just that, even as its action unfolds against the background of nearly unimaginable injustice and inequality.
The novel begins in June 1976, just days before a historic uprising of black schoolchildren from the Soweto township of Johannesburg. The students, who were inspired to protest by the government’s insistence that they learn Afrikaans, the language of their oppressors, soon grew violent, as police released dogs and then bullets at the protesting youth.
"HUM IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS is an effective evocation of a difficult time in history, and its compelling storyline will both enthrall and, yes, entertain readers."
In Marais’ novel, one of those children is Nomsa, the daughter of Beauty, a teacher from rural South Africa who has sent her only daughter to school in the city, in the hopes that she might achieve at least as much education as Beauty herself once did. Beauty has received word from her relatives in Soweto that Nomsa might be in danger. Fearing for Nomsa’s life, Beauty rushes to Soweto just as the student uprising is beginning --- but Nomsa is nowhere to be found.
Meanwhile, across Johannesburg, nine-year-old Robin lives in a comfortable suburban home with her mother, father and twin sister Cat. On the night after the student uprising --- an event that might as well be a world away from where Robin resides, rather than just a few miles --- Robin’s life is turned on its head, and in one fell swoop she loses not only the life she once had but essentially all the loved ones in her life.
Soon Beauty is desperately seeking her missing daughter among the carnage following the student protests, risking her own safety due to her lack of proper papers. And Robin is living with her aunt Edith, an air hostess who couldn’t be less well-suited to accidental guardianship. Robin and Beauty’s seemingly very different stories soon begin to share certain parallels --- and eventually the two are brought together in a new and surprising relationship that changes both their lives.
Readers who barely remember or don’t know much about apartheid-era South Africa will certainly have their eyes opened by this novel. Marais includes vivid and powerful details about life under apartheid and about ordinary citizens’ heroism and bravery in the face of this oppressive and cruel policy. HUM IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS is also a moving story about the progression of an unlikely friendship; the circumstances that bring Beauty and Robin together may seem somewhat contrived, but the bond the two eventually create is genuine and poignant. The book at times makes some fairly simplistic commentaries about race and diversity, but given that at least half the story is narrated from the point of view of a child, perhaps these straightforward observations and conclusions should not seem out of line with the novel’s overall focus and tone.
All told, HUM IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS is an effective evocation of a difficult time in history, and its compelling storyline will both enthrall and, yes, entertain readers.
Reviewed by Norah Piehl on July 14, 2017