A Person My Colour

Martina Dahlmanns, the daughter of parents who grew up in the shadow of post-war Germany, an adoptive mother of children who are black, and a member of a dialogue group of black and white women, urgently questions the very depths of what it means to be white in South Africa today. Her deeply personal memoir is unsettling because of what it reveals simultaneously about the enduring impact of inherited privilege and the repercussions of disadvantage

Her book is unsettling, precisely because of what it reveals simultaneously about the enduring impact of inherited privilege and the repercussions of disadvantage. But it is Dahlmanns’ dialogue with Tumi Jonas—whose own reflections appear in the last section of the book—that reveals so much of what’s possible, yet potentially destructive, in relationships between black and white South Africans today.