Seed is Mine, The

A microhistorical study by Charles van Onselen. It is a profound social history of an African peasant sharecropper and his family in a racially divided South Africa. Van Onselen paints a stark picture of the relationship between landowner and farmer and its development in an increasingly racist society. It shows its effects on one black man who tried, and ultimately failed, to preserve a patch of farmland for his own family. The book ''reveals the way an ordinary man can survive with dignity in such a world,'' Vincent Crapanzano said in the New York Times. The Seed is Mine was awarded the Alan Paton Award for non-fiction in 1997. “If ever one wondered whether the life of a single man could illuminate a century, [this] brilliant biography … proves the point.” — Carmel Schrire, The Boston Globe “A magnificent book [with] implications beyond its modest claims … This remarkable story compels foreboding but also kindles hope, for it shows the extraordinary courage of 'ordinary' men under severe difficulties.” — Eugene Genovese, Emory University “[Van Onselen] teases out the subtleties of the paternalistic relationships between rural whites and blacks which gave rise to real friendships but also to much betrayal, anger, and humiliation . . . It is a monumental masterpiece of research, and a poetic evocation of the human spirit to survive … ” — Linda Ensor, Business Day