Describing her childhood in the South African township of Soweto during the final decades of apartheid, Redi Tlhabi writes in her memoir, ‘to be a girl meant to be powerless.’ Born in 1978, Tlhabi's childhood coincided with the township uprisings. The now-renowned journalist and writer grew up in Orlando East, just down the street from many of the women interviewed for this book. She narrates her adolescence in Soweto with a mix of longing and lamentation, describing the township as:

Despite the increased interest in global histories of childhood and youth over the past few decades, we still know very little about childhood and youth in apartheid South Africa beyond the resistance paradigm. Given the emphasis placed on the histories of young activists, it is difficult to ascertain what a ‘normal’ adolescence was for African children and youth in apartheid South Africa. But primary and secondary sources alike demonstrate that during the 1970s and 1980s, young people's lives were increasingly shaped by escalating political conflict and violence. As Tlhabi acknowledges, ‘The Soweto in which I grew up in the eighties was very different from that of my father's day. Political violence was now the norm; young men and women disappeared, swallowed up by the never-ending struggle.’ Tlhabi's memoir offers a rich personal narrative of how young people's lives came to be distinctly shaped by the liberation struggle – even for those who stayed far away from politics themselves. She writes of the interruptions caused by ‘comrades’ at school who would ‘barge into our classrooms and order us home’. She grew accustomed to the large army tanks that patrolled Soweto's streets, and found herself fascinated by the ‘menacing soldiers with their big guns’.