It Wasn't Roaring, It Was Weeping

Interpreting the Language of Our Fathers Without Repeating Their Stories

 

It Wasn’t Roaring, It Was Weeping  is a lyric from the anti-apartheid protest song, called  Weeping  written by Dan Heymann in the mid-1980s, after he had been conscripted into South Africa’s military during one of its most racially violent periods in history. Since then, it has gained worldwide acclaim and has been recorded by many well-known musicians, most notably Josh Groban who recorded it with one of South Africa’s most beloved musical exports, Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

 

As used in the context of this book, the line is also an acknowledgment that as much as we may have lived in fear, awe or misunderstanding of our fathers and our families, their own actions are more likely lodged in a much more vulnerable place than we would have expected—that anger is, more often than not, simply sorrow that has metastasized.