BOOK CLUB | Tafadzwa Z Taruvinga, Ndileka Mandela, Jonathan van Ness, Megan Phelps-Roper, Demi Moore

Published in the Sunday Times: 10/11/2019

Tafadzwa Z Taruvinga was a Rhodes University student, often going to bed hungry, working the jobs that no-one else would do to pay his fees. It's not a tale we read about often and The Educated Waiter (MF Books Joburg) brings to life what it means to be an African immigrant in SA.

Madiba's eldest grandchild Ndileka Mandela writes about how being part of the Mandela family is not easy, in her memoir, I am Ndileka: More than My Surname (Jacana Media).

Queer Eye's Jonathan van Hess becomes even more of a precious heartstealer in Over The Top (Simon & Schuster), where he uncovers the difficulty of "growing up feminine in a rural midwestern town".

Megan Phelps-Roper was part of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, a cult made up mostly of her family. She was the frontperson, tweeting her church's hateful beliefs. Through this engagement with others, she started questioning her indoctrination. In Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church (Quercus), Megan opens up about how she left "The Most Hated Family in America".

The A-list celebrity memoir to read this year is Demi Moore's Inside Out (HarperCollins), where she dishes the dirt about Ashton Kutcher, her near-death experience with drugs, and her self-destructive insecurities.