When Morning Comes

by Arushi Raina

Overview

It’s 1976 in South Africa.

Written from the points-of-view of four young people living in Johannesburg and its black township, Soweto—Zanele, a black female student organizer, Meena, of South Asian background working at her father’s shop, Jack, an Oxford-bound white student, and Thabo, a teen gang-member or tsotsi—this book explores the roots of the Soweto Uprising and the edifice of Apartheid in a South Africa about to explode.

In the black township of Soweto, Zanele, who also works as a nightclub singer, is plotting against the apartheid government. The police can’t know. Her mother and sister can’t know. No one can know.

On the affluent white side of town, Jack Craven plans to spend the last days of his break before university burning miles on his beat up Mustang, and crashing other people’s parties.

Their chance meeting changes everything.

Already a chain of events are in motion; a failed plot, a murdered teacher, a powerful police agent with a vendetta, and a secret network of students across the township. The students will rise. And there will be violence when morning comes.

Introducing readers to a remarkable young literary talent, When Morning Comes offers an impeccably researched and vivid snapshot of South African society on the eve of the uprising that changed it forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781926890777
Publisher:	Tradewind Books
Publication date:	07/15/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	1,056,757
File size:	663 KB
Age Range:	14 Years

About the Author

Arushi Raina grew up in South Africa. She now lives and works in Vancouver, BC. This is her first published book.

Editorial Reviews

★ 11/28/2016
This fictionalized account of a student uprising that began in Soweto, South Africa, on June 16, 1976, unfolds through the first-person narratives of four young adults from different backgrounds whose lives intersect. An African student, Zanele, secretly organizes the protest against the Afrikaans Medium Decree Act, which required the use of English and Afrikaans (“the language of the oppressors”) in schools. Her apolitical friend Thabo heads a local gang, extorting money from an Indian store owner, whose daughter Meena, is sympathetic to the students. Meanwhile, Jack, a white Afrikaner, meets, befriends, and comes to love Zanele. Unlikely alliances develop and shift among the four protagonists, each of whom feels pressure from loved ones to conform to expectations. Raina’s story powerfully demonstrates the high stakes of the teenagers’ choices while maintaining a bracing pace that builds steady tension. Each character’s distinct voice contributes to a sense of imminent change; in Zanele’s words, “Morning was coming, and it seemed as if I’d waited for this a long, long time—longer even than I’d been alive.” A riveting and accomplished debut. Ages 14–up. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Arushi Raina employs plot, characterization, and narrative style to advance (her) themes with sophistication. In the process of crossing boundaries, (her characters) evolve into strong friends, compassionate human beings, and responsible citizens."

Africana Book Award Committee

"Explosively powerful and agonizingly raw, the novel highlights the harsh realities of life in apartheid South Africa and is a timely reminder of the sacrifices involved in deconstructing an unjust social order…The stakes are high, the four voices powerful and committed, and the power of youth to effect political change is exposed in this tense, and often violent novel…The representations of different cultural groups are nuanced and complex, without resorting to stereotypes…An important story."

Geoffrey Bilson Award Jury

"When Morning Comes is a multi-faceted novel that covers many important themes… Arushi Raina employs plot, characterization, and narrative style to advance the themes with sophistication."

Africana Book Award Jury

(This) riveting story about the Soweto Uprising of 1976 focuses on four young people (whose) lives have become inextricably intertwined...Its characters are engaging, its description of societal differences and injustice is thought-provoking, and its action sequences are at times heart-stopping. (Raina) create(s) believable characters quickly...At its best, historical fiction allows us to feel as if we are living through something we have only read about. That is especially true in the case of When Morning Comes.”

Montreal Gazette

"Readers...will recognize parallel themes from youth involvement in the American civil rights movement (and) historical fiction fans will find common ground here with teens who favor dramatic thrillers."

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"A simply riveting read from cover to cover, When Morning Comes is especially recommended for both school and community library YA Fiction collections."

Midwest Book Review

12/01/2016
Gr 8 Up—Zanele is a student who is secretly plotting against her South African government. Jack loves his Mustang and lives in a wealthy white neighborhood. Thabo, Zanele's best friend, has many enemies because he is in a gang. Then there is Meena, who finds illegal pamphlets containing what the government claims are terrorists' musings. Instead of throwing them away, she keeps them. Through all four characters, readers learn about apartheid in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the days leading up to the Soweto Uprising of 1976. The uprising was a protest led by black students over the Bantu Education Act, which enforced racial separation in schools. With its issues of racial inequality, the story is easily relatable for today's teens. The narrative is spare and engaging, but it also unloads a wealth of information about the time and a vivid sense of the setting. With careful detail, Raina describes Jack's spacious, wealthy home as well as the grit in Zanele's township, where she lives in a tin shack. The theme of how individual actions can have wide reach runs throughout. A glossary of Zulu and Afrikaans words incorporated in the story and an appended historical note further assist readers. VERDICT An eye-opening view of a rarely covered time and place in YA literature, this title offers rich opportunities for discussion and classroom sharing.—Maeve Dodds, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, NC

School Library Journal

A privileged Johannesburg student falls head over heels for a girl from the other side of town. The only problem is that she is Black and he is white and they live in apartheid-torn South Africa in 1976. Contributing a spot-on South African accent, narrator Patience Mpumiwana leads a quartet of fresh voices in providing distinct characters, clarity, and cultural grounding for this story of four high school students whose destinies become intertwined in the search for racial equality. As the action and tension ramp up, the story closely follows the historic incidents that led to the unprecedented and bloody Soweto Youth Uprising of 1976. A Romeo-and-Juliet tale for a time when 10,000 children raised their voices and changed South Africa forever. B.P. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2020 - AudioFile

A privileged Johannesburg student falls head over heels for a girl from the other side of town. The only problem is that she is Black and he is white and they live in apartheid-torn South Africa in 1976. Contributing a spot-on South African accent, narrator Patience Mpumiwana leads a quartet of fresh voices in providing distinct characters, clarity, and cultural grounding for this story of four high school students whose destinies become intertwined in the search for racial equality. As the action and tension ramp up, the story closely follows the historic incidents that led to the unprecedented and bloody Soweto Youth Uprising of 1976. A Romeo-and-Juliet tale for a time when 10,000 children raised their voices and changed South Africa forever. B.P. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2020 - AudioFile

★ 2016-11-02
In her debut novel, Raina applies the now-familiar "teenage girl takes on the government" trope to the Soweto uprising of June 1976.Zanele, a black grade-12 student, is not a reluctant hero. She starts her portion of the narration by describing her role in the attempted bombing of a power plant and goes on to be one of the primary organizers of the student protest against unjust language laws. She is a leader by conviction. The author uses three other narrators to highlight this. Jack is Zanele's most obvious foil. A white boy from a middle-class family, his understanding of racial inequality extends only to his attempts to get close to Zanele, who occasionally assists her mother in serving his family. A black gang member and an Indian shopkeeper's daughter respectively, Thabo and Meena are united by their friendship with Zanele but diverge in the ways in which they engage with the community and the police. The presentation of characters with different racial identities beautifully highlights how those identities shape the characters' understandings and experiences of apartheid and their subsequent reactions to the uprising. Small details, such as Jack and his friends listening to Miles Davis as they put on blackface, stoke the tension in the prose. The violence that erupts is gut-wrenching but unsurprising. Readers who love the fast pace and high stakes of dystopian teen literature should snag this book. This timely reminder of the power and passion of young people contextualizes current student protests by honoring those of the past. (historical note, glossary, glossary sources) (Historical fiction. 13 & up)

Kirkus Reviews