Under Our Skin

Don McRae grew up in a South Africa where his father would call the black men he met boy and where his mother insisted that their black servants used tin mugs, plates and cutlery as they ate the familys left-over food in the backyard of their grand suburban property. The McRaes, like so many white people, seemed oblivious to the violent injustices of apartheid. As the author grew up, the political differences between father and son widened and when Don refused to join up for National Service, risking imprisonment or exile overseas, the two were torn apart.

It wasnt until years later that the author discovered that the father with whom he had fought so bitterly had later in his life transformed himself into a political hero. Risking everything one dark and rainy night Ian McRae travelled secretly into the black township of Soweto to meet members of Nelson Mandelas then banned African National Congress to discuss ways to bring power to black South Africa. He had no political ambitions; he was just a man trying to replace the worst in himself with something better.

Under Our Skinis a memoir of these tumultuous years in South Africas history, as told through the authors family story. It offers an intimate and penetrating perspective on life under apartheid, and tells a story of courage and fear, hope and desolation and love and pain, especially between a father and his son.