I Want to See the Sun Rise

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I Want to See the Sun Rise is a novel, published in the year 2019, written by Sam Shakong, a writer who spent his early years in apartheid-time South Africa. The novel is an attempt at adding to the contemporary lexicon of fatherhood, if follows how the writer nurtures a relationship, love, friendship with his daughter, Masai, from when she is born, to past being a teenager, to when she matures to being a young woman.

Quotes

…I had lived in Phokwane all my life where white people were a rare sight. You could only see them if you went to the edge of the village where a few shops were located…they generally looked overfed including their not so small women and children [with] their red faces which must have been responding to the lick of the African sun
- Page 36

I was young, volatile and adventurous…I also knew how to put my rags together to look good…I used my good eye for clothing to maximise advantage. I was always raring to go. The city was abuzz with night clubs and disco joints that were jumping at all hours of the night
- Page 65

[D]ue to the conspiracy of the economic system and the power relation between Africans and Whites, my father and my uncles were never allowed the opportunity to earn enough to enable them to assume the responsibility to raise us properly…and become the honourable men and fathers they needed to be… There is no way in hell I could lead a normal life in a shack, which is a distorted, grotesque and unsafe and twisted environment for human habitation, easily contributing to the break down of the family
- Page 186

The man you become is the result of the totality of your environment rather than the mercy of the men who may or may not even be there to be your role models. You must develop an awareness that will transcend the short comings that you experienced while growing up, such as the absence of significant others like fathers and uncles
- Page 197

A role model must be someone in my life, not a singer, actor or celebrity, for I do not know what their values are
- Page 190

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