Novelist connects with her past

Should stories of the Holocaust and apartheid still be told?

This was the question posed by Sea Point author Angela Miller-Rothbart during a University of the Third Age (U3A) Atlantic Seaboard meeting held at Sea Point Place (CPOA) on Thursday, June 12.

Addressing a group of her peers, she reflected on the power of writing to process memories and preserve difficult histories.

Miller-Rothbart said writing helped her work through her feelings, reconnect with her past, and contribute to the collective memory of events many would rather forget.

“It became cathartic for me. It was therapeutic writing about it all. It was my way of saying Jakub. Jakub, I’m sorry I couldn’t help you. And Amelia, forgive me? I was just a kid,” she said, adding that she managed to express all her feelings in this book.

In her second book, Space between the Stars, based on a true story, Ms Miller-Rothbart writes about the trials of being in an inter-racial love story, which challenged apartheid.

She penned a novel about her nanny Margie, who cared for her between the ages of three and 13 in Paarl, more than six decades ago.

About 20 years ago, Ms Miller-Rothbart returned to Paarl to look for Margie, with whom she was reunited after an article was published in the Paarl Post. 

During this meeting and subsequent visits, Ms Miller-Rothbart can have all of her unanswered questions answered.

In particular, what happened to the child, she was pregnant, when she had to leave the Miller family. 

The story chronicles an interracial relationship during the 70s and 80s in South Africa as the partners are torn apart by racial hate. 

Ms Miller-Rothbart read from her book and explained that she wanted to give Margie, named as Miemie in the book, “a beautiful death”.

Margie died a while back.

Margie gives birth to a daughter, named Elizabeth in the book, who marries a white British man and leaves her homeland. Haunted by her past, she overcomes grief and tragedy to find the answers she seeks in post-apartheid South Africa.  

Now, a grandmother, Ms Miller-Rothbart speaks to her grandson about the past, when being in an interracial relationship was prohibited.

“They couldn’t be seen together. They would have gone to jail. He looks at me like the old girl has lost her marbles. They can’t comprehend that such a thing could ever have happened. It is inconceivable, but it did, and I hope that by writing Space between the Stars, I’ve put all my demons to bed, and I hope that a lot of you would be able to do the same,” she said. 

Ms Miller-Rothbart was born in Paarl, where she attended La Rochelle Girls’ School.

She joined the U3A writing group eight years ago. U3A is a network of groups focused on learning and social interaction, offering a wide variety of courses to stimulate and introduce seniors to new ideas. 

In 2022, she wrote her debut novel, The Lightness of Air, in which she weaves the life reminiscences of a holocaust survivor, Helena Jablonski.

Her writing skills were inspired and sharpened with the tenacity of the U3A writing group.