Mother to Mother: Education edition

This powerful novel starts with a 1993 incident in South African history: Fulbright scholar Amy Elizabeth Biehl, in Capetown to help organize elections, was killed in the black township of Guguletu. The killer's mother, Mandisa, addresses herself to the mother of the dead girl, gives a compelling account of the harrowing life of Africans in the townships. "The intense cry of sympathy and pain aroused by an all-too-actual tragedy. . . . Risky and honest, Mother to Mother raises a host of hard questions and, for all its compassion, resists consoling answers. I admire it immensely."—Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After