Khaya Dlanga recently spoke to Sam Cowen on Talk Radio 702 about the events that inspired his memoir, To Quote Myself, the gigantic role his mother played in shaping his life and the power of reading as a way of imagining a different world for yourself.

Dlanga says he cannot take credit for any of the success that he’s achieved in his life. When he was about ready to give up and stop believing that anything would ever get better, his mom said “Oh hell no” and “forced me to make a way”.

The author took a taxi from the Eastern Cape to the AAA School of Advertising and when he wasn’t accepted he was too scared to tell his mother that he had lied. He explains how he made it through homelessness, poverty and not knowing how he was going to pay his school fees: “It was about surviving this moment so that I could survive the next moment.”

“I didn’t feel that anybody owed me anything,” he said, “I think I was privileged in some ways to get the kind of education that I’d had.”

Dlanga says reading was very important to him, allowing him to see past the now and into the future.

Listen to the podcast:

• Not loading? Listen on SoundCloud

Book details

• To Quote Myself by Khaya Dlanga
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781770103900
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!