This novel has been added to my top books of 2024. It was that good. Lisa-Jo is an immaculate storyteller and I was so deeply invested in this story about family trauma and reconciliation, new experiences, historical injustices and self-discovery all wrapped into a memoir.

Being born white in South Africa during apartheid while dealing with her mother’s death and father’s vitriol was clearly a painful yet eye-opening experience for her. Yet still, the beauty of love, friendship and forgiveness shone brightly.

An interesting read particularly as I am just a couple of years younger than the author and also grew up in South Africa. Unlike her, I grew up in the rural areas and have a bit of a different experience of life then as opposed to living in a city and only coming to the farm over holidays.
During the apartheid years, South Africa was very patriarchal and after 1994, things should have gotten better for many but in reality in many communities, regardless of colour, women are still seen as very much second-class citizens. I read with interest the author's account of them walking home at night in DC and can think of very few places in South Africa where a woman or even a couple can safely walk home at night regardless of your colour or what "class/colour" the suburb is seen as.
With the South African general elections occurring very soon, I found the words of her father before she cast her first vote in 1994 to be very profound - that a strong opposition party is needed - and realize that a lot of South Africa's problems before 1994 AND after 1994 could have been prevented if there is someone to keep the ruling party accountable.
What intrigued me the most was the attitude of her mother's church regarding her father's divorce. It was rather mind-blowing to read this about a church in one of our largest cities being so prejudiced against divorce. This was not the reality I grew up with in our small town conservative churches, especially after 1994.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read this book. There was a lot to digest and ponder about in its pages.

When I picked up this book, I never expected to be so drawn in that I couldn't put it down! I also learned more about South Africa and apartheid. The memoir is beautifully written, heartbreaking, and hopeful. This one will stick with me.

An astonishingly honest and thoughtful memoir that effectively weaves the pain of a family into the large context of the pain of two nations. Baker, raised in South Africa largely by her angry father, didn't realize how much he impacted her until the day she found herself raging at her son. This set her off on a journey to understand how she came to that place. For all the difficulty of the subject matter, it's well worth the read. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Relevant in more ways than one.

It Wasn’t Roaring, It Was Weeping by Lisa-Jo Baker. I received a copy of this autobiography and wasn’t sure how I would feel about it. I read a lot of thrillers but also enjoy memoirs. The writing of this book was so beautiful it took my breath away. This book took me to many places I’ve never been. It taught me things about living in South Africa and apartheid. I’m thinking this book was cathartic for the author and probably hard too. It takes courage to open your life to other people and I admire her for doing so and taking me along. A huge thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the eArc.

This book! I couldn't put it down! Lisa-Jo's captivating and beautifully written memoir will sweep you around the world, from South Africa, through Europe, to the US and back. Perfectly woven between her father's life and her own, it's a story of heartbreak and healing, humbling and reckoning, grief and love. This journey will leave you with your jaw dropped more than one time and bring you to tears. This is a must-read and will likely be my favorite book of the year. I also highly recommend that you listen on audio to get a full appreciation for the languages and dialects that Lisa-Jo portrays.

It Wasn’t Roaring, It Was Weeping – Lisa-Jo Baker – 2024 –
The story begins with the author’s childhood in the South African Zulu Nation. Ms. Baker’s writing at times is almost magical as she recalls her experience on the family farm, “some of the harshest farming territory” - where she rode horses with her father, helped trap (much hated) Baboons, had daily traditional teas on her grandmother’s finest dishes, and listened to the Bible stories her father read to his three children.

Ms. Baker recalled her father, a stern (white) doctor that attended medical school at the University of Cape Town. After submitting a request for a hospital maternity wing that was declined because the government did not want to increase funding for the “births of black babies”- her parents left for the U.S. where her father earned a MFA in theological/religious studies. During those years, no one admitted to be affiliated with Nelson Mandela’s political party: the African National Congress (ANC). When the family returned to South Africa, (her father declined the invitation to practice medicine in the U.S.) and openly treated Black patients, resisting the Apartheid.

After her mother’s sudden death from Cancer, her father quickly remarried, which began years of her polite distance from her father’s life. Years later, as a wife and mother herself, she would better understand her father with a more loving and forgiving viewpoint. This is a warm story of family relationships and the ways we remain connected to those we love most. Stories of Christianity, spirituality, faith, and Bible verses were included for a deeply religious vibe. - (3.5*GOOD) With thanks to Random House via NetGalley for the DDC for the purpose of review.

A powerful and raw book that does not shy away from the hard parts of the author's life and her homeland. I was struck by her vulnerability and the redemption found in the most difficult stories. The writing is beautiful and thoughtful. It was a book that forced me to slow down my reading the best possible way and just dwell in each sentence of her story. A fantastic read!

What a well written book. The author definitely has the gift of words.
The author grew up in South Africa at the height of apartheid, and realizing as she grew up that all people were not treated equally.
The book besides what is going on in her country, but also what was going on within her adopted country as well in the USA. Both have had harsh pasts and a lot of racial conflict.
The story focuses on her relationship with her father, who had grown up to be a unforgiving and harsh man, who she was afraid of most of the time.
And without realizing it, she grew up having a lot of her fathers characteristics, such as the yelling which terrified her as a child. She started doing this to her own child, until she realized what she was doing, and vowed to change that behavior.
There are a lot of great memories in the book, but also a lot of stories that are very hard to hear in this book.
This book was a way to put her past to rest, and to move on trying to make a better future.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Convergent Books for a copy of this book.

"It Wasn't Roaring, It Was Weeping" is a beautifully written, moving memoir that explores themes of identity, family history, reconciliation, and redemption against the backdrop of both South Africa's and America's complex social and political landscapes. A gifted storyteller, Lisa-Jo Baker navigates the intricacies of personal and collective trauma with grace and insight.

The interweaving of her personal narrative with broader historical contexts - the legacy of apartheid in South Africa and racial inequity in America - adds layers of depth to the story, highlighting the interconnectedness of individual experiences with societal forces. The redemptive arc, centered around her journey towards personal responsibility, understanding and forgiveness, as well as her father's transformation to the man she loving offers homage to at the end, offers hope and healing in the midst of confronting painful truths and breaking cycles of hurtful behavior.

"It Wasn't Roaring, It Was Weeping" is an honest, heartfelt and thought-provoking exploration of resilience and reconciliation. I truly enjoyed reading this book. Thank you to NetGalley and Convergent Books for the ARC.

So beautifully written. I really knew very little of apartheid. A moving story of how someone can move forward after repeating the sins of the father.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This is an excellent book. It’s a memoir of growing up in apartheid South Africa with a father who has been scarred by needing to being hard/brutal. The author realizes that she is too much like her father and has been parenting out of pain and fear—her child is scared of her yelling the same way she was terrified of her own father.
The author doesn’t shirk at the culpability of her family in South Africa’s horrifying history but also goes beyond it to her personal stories. This is just a really good book and folks should read it.

I received an eARC of this book for free from NetGalley in return for my honest review.

I’ve been following Lisa-Jo’s work for years and was excited when I saw her new book! This is an extremely raw and honest story of Lisa-Jo’s childhood in Apartheid South Africa and her relationship with her father. The pages flew by on this beautifully written memoir

I'm going to rate this just under 4 stars.
It has to be difficult to write a memoir as a South African raised during Apartheid. You clearly can't ignore it, but if you are white, it might not be the main part of your story or the story you're trying to tell. Whether you were aware of it at the time or not though, it is always lurking.
Because of this, this book felt incomplete to me. The author was clearly aware of the need to discuss these issues, but it felt like she kept presenting an episode and then promising "We'll get into more of this later," but never really delivered.
It was still an immensely touching story, and one that I related to more than I expected. As a family story and a story of rejecting using religion to excuse abuses by the powerful it was great.

Brutally honest and beautifully written, this exquisite memoir will stay with you long after the final page is turned. After all, “It Wasn’t Roaring, It Was Weeping” is an invitation to ask is anything, really, truly the final page? Between her tender admissions and confessions, her captivating descriptions that transport from one place to another, and the weaving together of both hope and heartbreak, Baker offers a book that seems to say: Perhaps even the ghosts that haunt can be redeemed.

I loved the evocative way Lisa-Jo Baker conjured up the country of my youth. Her writing took me straight back to the magic of the Karoo and the Jacaranda-lined streets of the capital city. It also transported me back to my blinkered youth, and my own gradual awakening to the horrors on the periphery of our privileged lives. This book, however, is not of that angst-filled, guilt-ridden genre. Instead it’s a memoir that focuses on the author’s relationship with her complex father. She tells the story, parts of which must have been very difficult to write, with candour and courage. This was a great, well-written read, although I enjoyed the first half much more than the second.

I’ve been a fan of Lisa-Jo Baker and her writing since I found her blog about a million years ago (give or take a few). I’ve always been captivated by her storytelling and how her writing is accessible to anyone. Ever since her first book, I’ve wanted to know this story. The writing is stunning. Lisa-Jo has this way of explaining things where you feel like you’re there with her feeling the same things. This book is filled with unbelievably vulnerable accounts of her story and the stories of others and the grace that came in later years and really, all along the way.

Thank you to NetGalley for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

A beautifully welk-written autobiographical study of growing up in South Africa. I have been follow the author's blog for years and loved this in depth look at family and faith.

A beautifully written memoir, the best I've read in a long time. Thank you, Lisa-Jo, for sharing this story with your readers.

Thank you, NetGalley and Convergent Books, for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

It Wasn't Roaring, It Was Weeping
Interpreting the Language of Our Fathers Without Repeating Their Stories
by Lisa-Jo Baker
Pub Date 07 May 2024
Convergent Books
Biographies & Memoirs| Christian


Convergent Books and Netgalley gave me a copy of It Wasn't Roaring, It Was Weeping to review:





In the heart of Zululand during the apartheid era, Lisa-Jo Baker longs to write a new future for her children - a longing that sets her on a journey to understand where she belongs in a story of violence and faith, history and race. Prior to getting married and having kids, she came to the US to study human rights.
Having naively walked right into America's turbulent racial landscape, Baker experienced a painful awakening that is both personal and universal. Yet years would go by before she traced this American trauma back to her own South African past.Her American trauma wouldn't be traced back to her South African roots for years.





During her teenage years, Baker's mother died of cancer, leaving her with her dad. Although they shared a language of faith and justice, she often feared him, not realizing how deeply rooted his temper was in a family's and a nation's pain. Decades later, old wounds have reopened when she became a terrifying version of her father, screaming at her son until she was hoarse. Only then did Baker realize that to go forward—to refuse to repeat the sins of our fathers—we must first go back.Then Baker realized that if we want to go forward-to refuse to repeat the sins of our fathers-we must go back.



From South Africa's outback to Washington, D.C., It Wasn't Roaring, It Was Weeping is a brave look at inherited hurts and prejudices, and a hope-filled example for anyone feeling lost in life or worried they're too off track. A story like Baker's shows you it's never too late to change.


I give It Wasn't Roaring, It Was Weeping five out of five stars!


Happy Reading!