Down Second Avenue: Growing Up in a South African Ghetto is a semi-autobiographical memoir by Ezekiel Es’kia Mphahlele that explores his life under apartheid rule in South Africa. A Nobel Prize nominee, Mphahlele authors a book that dissects the atrocities committed by the segregation laws imposed on black people under apartheid. The experiences of Mphahlele growing up in South Africa are vivid, brutal, and horrifying.
Mphahlele and his family live in absolute poverty, under the watchful eye of the apartheid regime and at the mercy of a militarized police system designed to oppress them. He protests against the oppressive regime using a piece of a publication that brought the world’s attention to the poverty-stricken areas of South Africa that are overrun with over-policing and racially motivated crimes.
Inspired to remove himself and his people from the poverty trap, Mphahlele is determined to learn and master the skill of reading and writing. He runs through every book he comes across determined to devour all knowledge in them. Despite all the hardships and roadblocks that prevent black youth from achieving their dreams, Mphahlele eventually publishes his first book at 20 years old. He is full of life as he exercises his literal prowess as a perfectionist.
As a teacher and critic, Mphahlele utilizes his intelligence to fight for the liberation and freedom of the black natives of South Africa. Mphahlele criticizes religious missionaries who had willingly been infiltrated by apartheid operatives who used religious scriptures to promote colonial and racist propaganda. Mphahlele’s words of black empowerment are poetic and sophisticated. They are filled with so much color and virtual texture that greatly resonate with minorities all around the world. Down Second Avenue is work that has laid out an eternal foundation for all literal activists.
