Description
Raised during the Rhodesian bush war in the 1970s and then immigrating to South Africa at the age of 11, Terry is shaped by a white culture that is racist, unstable, privileged and deeply divided. Her childhood appears idyllic but it is tragically bizarre as the adults around her insist on living their version of normality while the world falls apart.
The first time Terry Angelos has sex with a black man, she’s paid £300, working as a 19 year-old call girl in London. Back home it’s 1989 and South Africa is being torn apart by political unrest. It’s a year before Nelson Mandela is released and 5 years before the country’s first democratic election.
White Trash is a remarkable memoir told in vivid detail, laced with dark humour and savage honesty as the narrator unravels what it means to be a white African and what draws her into the brutal world of teenage sex work. But ultimately it’s a story about finding a shard of light in the darkness, in a heroic quest to reinvent the self.
