Pay in installments of $25.00 with
,
and
Shipping Estimate
USA
- USA
- CAN
- USA
- CAN
Ships within 48 hours · Estimated delivery Jul 23 - Jul 28
Promo Codes Available:
For Your Every Summer RSVP, with Code: SUMMER15
Description
A Working Life, Cruel Beyond BeliefAlfred Qabula was a central figure in the cultural movement that emerged among working people in and around Durban in the 1980s. The movement was an innovative attempt to draw on the oral poetry developed among the Nguni people over many centuries. Qabula was a forklift driver in the Dunlop tyre factory in Durban at the time this book was developed. He used the art of telling stories to critique the exploitation of black workers and their oppression
Alfred Qabula was a central figure in the cultural movement that emerged among working people in and around Durban in the 1980s. The movement was an innovative attempt to draw on the oral poetry developed among the Nguni people over many centuries. Qabula was a forklift driver in the Dunlop tyre factory in Durban at the time this book was developed. He used the art of telling stories to critique the exploitation of black workers and their oppression under apartheid.
A Working Life, Cruel Beyond Belief is the first book in the Hidden Voices series and is Qabula’s testament, telling the powerful story of his life and work. It also contains a generous selection of his poetry. The Hidden Voices Project emerged out of an interest in intellectual left contributions towards discussions on race, class, ethnicity and nationalism in South Africa. Specifically, the project seeks to examine and make available writings on left thought under apartheid. The aim is to look at hidden voices – voices outside of the university system or academic voices suppressed by apartheid pressures. Before and during the apartheid years, many universities were closed to existing local ideas and debates, and critical intellectual debates, ideas, texts, poetry and songs often originated outside academia during the period of the struggle for liberation.
Shipping Notes
- Free Standard Shipping on $100+ Orders to the USA.
- Except Preorder products are shipped in 48 hours.
- Delivery to the USA:
- Standard Shipping : 3-10 business days
- If time is of the essence, please consider selecting expedited delivery for faster service.
Exchange/Return Notes
- We offer a 30-day return/exchange service after receiving.
- Final sale items are not eligible for returns or exchanges.
- To process your return/exchange, please contact us at [email protected]
- Please click here for more details>>> Return & Exchange Policy
4.1 ★★★★★
Based on 8 reviews
Sort
Product Reviews
★★★★★ 5
Well done classic
Format: Paperback
A very well-done Manga book. The artist captures the feel of these books and retells the classic Rudyard Kipling story in an eye-catching way.
Recommended for young readers and as a classroom or library resource.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2017
★★★★★ 5
Unique
Format: Paperback
It’s rare to find a Manga that’s as close as possible to the original storyline, although it’s they’re could be more to come in the future later on other than that it’s a good manga to have in your personal library
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2025
★★★★★ 5
Beautiful
Format: Hardcover
A gorgeously written book about a young Palestinian American who finds her voice and identity.
Genre: Upper Middle Grade/Lower YA
-also some magical realism elements: olives cause time travel
Author:Nora Lester Murad
Publisher: Crocodile Books/ Interlink
This beautiful hardcover (the book truly is absolutely gorgeous and I just cant stop staring at it!) tells the story of Ida- a young 13 year old Palestinian American daughter of immigrants. Bullied out of her school due to being Palestinian, Ida struggles to fit in.
But one day, when she eats special olives, she is transported to a new type of multiverse where Ida’s family is still in Palestine.
And by going back and forth, Ida realizes who she wants to be and what her passion in life is.
This gorgeous book truly transported me to Palestine!! The rich descriptions helped me feel grounded in the setting, and I almost felt like I could taste the crackling olives, listen to the adhan of the Mosques, and walk the streets of Palestine. Tbh- as a Syrian myself, I found many parallels with life in Damascus to life in Jerusalem, and it made me fall in love with the book even more.
Juxtaposed with the beauty of the land and the liveliness of the family and community around Ida is the harsh reality of Israeli occupation. The author does not minimize it, she portrays it in the voice of a teenager quite honestly, and her emotional scenes showing Ida helping a young boy and trying to figure out how to save her village and heart-wrenching and emotional.
I also appreciated how nuanced the book was. The occupation is clearly presented as apartheid and wrong, but there is no antisemitism. The author mentions her Jewish background in the author’s note, the book states that there are Jews who support Palestinian rights and Ida sympathizes with Jews who immigrated to America to escape persecution.
I really liked how this book was written- the layers of searching for identity, holding onto your homeland, resisting occupation, and the encouragement for the reader to practice BDS and raise their voices for justice.
Definitely a must read and book I can see be adapted in curriculums for middle schools.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2023
★★★★★ 5
Compelling from start to finish.
Format: Paperback
This is a wonderful book -- no doubt for young adults, but for all the rest of us, too. Here is the review we included in Rethinking Schools magazine: Middle school student Ida tries to sit where she is “unnoticeable, like the dust on last year’s history books.” She seeks to avoid stereotypical insults hurled at her for being from a Palestinian immigrant family. The school’s silence aggravates the problem. Ida notes, “Nobody even says the word ‘Palestine’ in my school. The teachers are afraid to teach anything about the Middle East, even if the topic has nothing to do with politics.” As the mother of three girls raised in the West Bank and now living in the United States, author Nora Lester Murad is deeply grounded in the book’s characters and themes. And she knows how to captivate middle school readers. Ida eats an olive that sends her time traveling from her home in Massachusetts to her family’s home in the West Bank, introducing readers to both the beauty of their village and the violence of the Israeli occupation that eventually forced her family to leave for their safety. This experience gives Ida the courage and conviction to speak in a school assembly about the realities of the occupation, comparing it to what happened to “Indigenous peoples here. How they were pushed off their land and survived so much violence, as if they weren’t human.” Stepping out of the shadows, she insists that students and teachers see her and her family’s humanity.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2024
★★★★★ 5
Couldn't put Ida in the Middle down until the end
Format: Hardcover
Ida in the Middle so vividly captures the point of view of a girl not only sorting out feeling like and being treated like an outsider in a new school, but her relationship with her immigrant parents, her younger and older sister (she is in the middle), and her growing awareness of her family's community in the Middle East. It is is warm novel of feelings, friendship, and the magic transport to the "Its A Wonderful Life" alternate reality of what being in 8th grade would be like if her family had stayed in the village where her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins still live. It is also a novel, like those set in other wartimes, that exposes hard realities. Descriptions of her alternative private school in the US and watching the "Arabs Got Talent" music competition on TV have some of sly wit of Where'd You Go, Bernadette, but the learning that Ida and the reader develop about both the community ties and the danger and dehumanization of checkpoints, home demolitions, and raids takes the book to another level of complexity and empathy for difficult circumstances and choices. Throughout, Ida's viewpoint as a 13-year-old trying to understand the world around her is fresh and appealing. She proves to be an unexpectedly level-headed protagonist as the plot carries her into danger and into new readiness for action. Through the course of the novel, both the reader's and Ida's empathy grows for the desperate situation of Palestinian farmers whose land is under siege (and of all living under occupation), for parents' struggle over the choice to remain out of the country, and for the daily decisions to claim joy and pleasure even if it entails contradictions. Ida left me energized and inspired, and ready to gift this book to the middle-grade kids I know, and also to my teacher friends who keep books in their classrooms for students to read.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2023