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Where are you from? : 'playing white' under apartheid / Ulla Dentlinger.
Author
Dentlinger, Ulla
[Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/Created
Basel, Switzerland : Basler Afrika Bibliographen ; Frankfurt, Germany : Brandes & Apsel, 2016.
Description
140 pages : illustrations, 1 map, portraits ; 25 cm.
Availability
Available Online
JSTOR DDA
Copies in the Library
Location
Call Number
Status
Location Service
Notes
Firestone Library - Stacks
CT1928.5.D46 D46 2016
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Details
Subject(s)
Colored people (South Africa)
—
Biography
[Browse]
Racially mixed people
—
South Africa
—
Biography
[Browse]
Apartheid
—
South Africa
[Browse]
Passing (Identity)
—
South Africa
[Browse]
Apartheid
—
Namibia
[Browse]
Passing (Identity)
—
Namibia
[Browse]
South Africa
—
Race relations
[Browse]
Namibia
—
Race relations
[Browse]
Dentlinger, Ulla
—
Family
[Browse]
Series
Lives, legacies, legends ; 12.
[More in this series]
Lives, legacies, legends, 1660-9638 ; 12
[More in this series]
Summary note
“My family did the unthinkable: after getting away with ‘playing white’ for some years, we went one step further and ‘jumped the colour line’. By various obscure and not well-documented processes, we changed our ‘racial classification’ from ‘coloured’ – as defined by the apartheid policy of the day – to that of ‘white’ … The price we paid was anguish, constant fear of detection and a sacrifice of family connectedness. The decades-long process of becoming completely comfortable with my ultimate identity was psychologically so unnerving that I have only recently felt free to talk about it. This is certainly the first time I have ever written about it.”With these words the fascinating story of Ulla Dentlinger’s life history begins. Growing up in poor, rural Apartheid-Namibia in the early 1950s, Ulla Dentlinger soon learns that her parents are not prone to reminisce about their family’s past. The most mundane information about their background is guarded much like a state secret. As a child, she begins to panic at being asked the question so normal to others: Where are you from?Only in later years it dawns on her that she had to be a ‘Coloured’. The sense of conflict increases incrementally. Nonetheless, after living in Namibia for the first six years of her life, she grows up in a white area in Cape Town, goes to a white school and bears herself in a German fashion. She has, in fact, jumped the colour line.Returning to southern Africa in the 1990s, she now openly pursues investigations into her family background. Ulla Dentlinger portrays some of her relatives and their intimate, painful or straightforward stories as well as her own emotional realisation about her enriching heritage.—-Text provided by publisher
Bibliographic references
Includes bibliographical references.
Contents
A tormenting question
Rehoboth ... colourful and controversial
Lena of my childhood
Hedi's story
My story
The Enssles and the Dentlingers
Where are we all from? "Humanity is coloured".
Show 4 more Contents items
Other title(s)
'Playing white' under apartheid
ISBN
3905758792 (paperback ; : Basler Afrika Bibliographien)
9783905758795 (paperback ; : Basler Afrika Bibliographien)
9783955581862 (paperback ; : Brandes & Apsel)
3955581861 (paperback ; : Brandes & Apsel)
LCCN
2016593669
OCLC
962807291
Statement on language in description
Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage.
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Where are you from? : 'playing white' under apartheid / Ulla Dentlinger.
id
99129081915006421
Where are you from? : "playing white" under Apartheid / Ulla Dentlinger.
id
SCSB-12479919