Published in 1961, “Debbie Go Home” is a short-story collection by Alan Paton (1903-1988). Alan Paton was a South African writer and anti-apartheid activist. He believed in a peaceful fight against the injustices of apartheid. Some of his other works include the iconic “Cry, the Beloved Country” and “Too Late the Phalarope.” Paton is known for his raw and visceral writing about apartheid South Africa and his contribution towards fighting for equality amongst all races in South Africa.
Set in apartheid South Africa, “Debbie Go Home” portrays everyday racial and moral conflicts of that era. Paton takes the story of a country going through collective suffering and trauma, and places readers in each home, each life, each lived experience. Each short story in this book is a picture of pain and suffering - loud and silent. These stories illustrate the daily experiences of being Black and living under an apartheid government - under a system where your existence is a daily struggle and you are met with cruelty and hatred because of the colour of your skin. Paton exposes how the apartheid governments carefully curated forms of cruelty seeped into the very walls of Black households, leaving lasting stains of trauma.
In the story “Life for a Life,” Paton explores racism, injustice and grief. In investigating the death of a white man, police officers put a black family through unnecessary trauma. Paton writes, “Because one was a shepherd, because one had no certitude of home or work or life or favour, because one's back had to be bent though one's soul would be upright, because one had to speak the smiling craven words under any injustice, because one had to bear as a brand this dark sun-warmed colour of the skin, as good surely as any other, because of these things, this mad policeman could strike down, and hold by the neck, and call a creeping yellow Hottentot bastard, a man who had never hurt another in his long gentle life, a man who like the great Christ was a lover of sheep and of little children, and had been a good husband and father except for those occasional outbursts that any sensible woman will pass over, outbursts of the imprisoned manhood that has got tired of the chains that keep it down on its knees. Yes this mad policeman could take off his hat mockingly in one's house, and ask a dozen questions that he, for all that he was as big as a mountain, would never have dared to ask a white person.”
“Debbie Go Home” reminds that racism is not only systemic but it creates a trauma that lives on through generations. It creates wounds that cannot be healed. Though these stories are fictional, they are based on lived experiences. Debbie Go Home is a necessary piece of literature for understanding the depths of suffering racism causes.
About the reviewer
Moon Mokgoro
Moon Mokgoro studies physics and mathematics and is a writer based in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is the founder of Protest Poster Project, a non-profit organisation focused on fighting against gender based violence and building a library/archive of activist, anarchist and feminist literature. She's written for the Are.na 2023 Annual and others as well as occasionally writing on her Substack. Archiving and documenting, collecting and remembering are what Moon aspires to do in all her work.
More information
This review is part of the Book of the Month series 2025 from the Goethe-Institut South Africa. A new review by South Africans for South Africans will be published every month, check back regularly.
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The AFRO-Freedom Book Club is a public book club that focuses on African writers to inspire dialogue and civic engagement in the community. We strongly believe in the voice of Africans and the importance of telling our own stories. Everyone is invited to join our circle!
Silent Book club is about meeting other like-minded readers, chatting about what other people are reading and then reading together in companionable silence.
