Looking at the diversity of South African life now, it is amazing to think that just twenty years ago, the country was still struggling through one of the bitterest racial struggles of modern history. So while Paton worked to improve these awful conditions for the young men living at Diepkloof, he also used some of his experiences there as a source for his novel, to spread the word about social causes for the growing racial inequality dividing the nation.Įven though Cry, the Beloved Country actually appeared before racial segregation in South Africa reached its absolute worst stages in the 1950s through the 1980s, Paton's passionate and heartfelt discussion of prejudice has made his novel consistently relevant throughout South Africa's later anti-racist political struggles.
When he first arrived at the reform school, he saw that the youths were locked into their rooms at night (with around twenty per room) with a container of water to share and an empty bucket to pee in until the next morning ( source). Paton is definitely in the running for Shmoop's Most Unusual Day Job For an Author prize: before quitting to become a novelist full time after the financial success of Cry, the Beloved Country, Paton was a warden at Diepkloof, a juvenile detention center for black youth ages nine to twenty-one, in the segregated city of Johannesburg.Īs Paton started running Diepkloof, he realized exactly how bad the public facilities available for black people could be in South Africa. Without a doubt, Paton's legacy as a writer and as a social reformer continues on today.Īs for how Paton came to write his hugely successful book, we have to start with his pre- Cry job. What's more, as South Africa's first internationally bestselling author, Paton paved the way for later well-known South African writers such as Nobel Prize winners Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Not only is his novel an Oprah's Book Club pick, but in the forty years between its publication in 1948 and Paton's death in 1988, it was translated into at least twenty languages and sold over fifteen million copies worldwide ( source). We can promise that, if Paton had called the book Cry, the Beloved Shmoop, the title would definitely have been accurate.Īnd we aren't alone in finding Paton's work incredibly moving and powerful. While we can't necessarily speak for the "Beloved Country" (South Africa) of Alan Paton's heartwrenching 1948 novel about racism and injustice, we can say that Cry, the Beloved Countrymade us weep buckets of tears.
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