SOPHIATOWN
Pat Van Hemelrijck
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For reasons never fully explained, Jakes, a black writer for Sophiatown’s Drum magazine, places an ad inviting a “Jewish girl” to come live in the house he shares with his family. And for reasons never fully explained, Ruth Golden shows up one day, suitcase in hand, ready to move in.
Ruth fascinates Jakes’s brother Mingus, a petty gangster who supports the family through robbery. Mingus falls all over himself trying to make the white-skinned boarder comfortable. He procures a bathtub when she mentions that she likes to take baths, and he gives her some stolen pearls–to the annoyance of Princess, his girlfriend. Eventually he makes an aggressive sexual overture, which Ruth rebuffs, and eventually, she declares her fondness for Jakes. The problem is that by the time these complications emerge, the bulldozers are on their way, and the plot is drowned in cries of outrage about the race laws.
