Narrating Our Healing:Perspectives on Working Through Trauma

Authors

Shane Graham, Utah State UniversityFollow
Chris van der Merwe
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

Document Type

Book Review

Journal/Book Title/Conference

English Academy Review

Volume

26.1

Publication Date

2009

First Page

100

Last Page

104

Abstract

Many thousands of words from every imaginable perspective and in every genre have been written about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) since it began its work thirteen years ago. Among the most interesting and moving of those works was A Human Being Died That Night: A Story of Forgiveness by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, a psychologist who worked for the TRC. Gobodo-Madikizela's account of her meetings with convicted death squad commander Eugene de Kock (aka ‘Prime Evil’), and her struggles to reconcile knowledge of his horrifying deeds with the humanity she found in the man, personalized her calls for forgiveness and reconciliation, giving them a poignancy beyond the easy platitudes occasionally offered up by some other TRC proponents.

Comments

Double Review

Recommended Citation

Double Review: Mark Sanders, Ambiguities of Witnessing: Law and Literature in the Time of a Truth Commission and Chris van der Merwe and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Narrating Our Healing: Perspectives on Working Through Trauma. English Academy Review 26.1 (March 2009): 100-04.