It Wasn't Roaring, It Was Weeping

Interpreting the Language of Our Fathers Without Repeating Their Stories

De: Lisa-Jo Baker

Narrado por: Lisa-Jo Baker

Duración: 8 h y 4 m

Resumen del Editor

An honest and lyrical coming-of-age memoir of growing up in South Africa at the height of apartheid, and an invitation to recognize and refuse to repeat the sins of our fathers—from the bestselling author of Never Unfriended

“Heartfelt, emotionally charged reflections . . . [a] bracing memoir.”—Kirkus Review

“Important. Riveting. Unforgettable . . . a profoundly captivating story that can profoundly change your own story.”—Ann Voskamp, New York Times bestselling author of WayMaker

Born White in the heart of Zululand during the racial apartheid, Lisa-Jo Baker longed to write a new future for her children—a longing that set her on a journey to understand where she fit into a story of violence and faith, history and race. Before marriage and motherhood, she came to the United States to study to become a human rights advocate. When she naïvely walked right into America’s own turbulent racial landscape, Baker experienced the kind of painful awakening that is both individual and universal, personal and social. Yet years would go by before she traced this American trauma back to her own South African past.

Baker was a teenager when her mother died of cancer, leaving her with her father. Though they shared a language of faith and justice, she often feared him, unaware that his fierce temper had deep roots in a family’s and a nation’s pain. Decades later, old wounds reopened when she found herself spiraling into a terrifying version of her father, screaming herself hoarse at her son. Only then did Baker realize that to go forward—to refuse to repeat the sins of our fathers—we must first go back.

With a story that stretches from South Africa’s outback to Washington, D.C., It Wasn’t Roaring, It Was Weeping is a courageous look at inherited hurts and prejudices, and a hope-filled example for all who feel lost in life or worried that they’re too off course to make the necessary corrections. Baker’s story shows that it’s never too late to be free.

©2024 Lisa-Jo Baker (P)2024 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Using her father’s life as a point of departure, the South Africa-born author [Lisa-Jo Baker] offers heartfelt, emotionally charged reflections on their apartheid-riven homeland. . . . Throughout, Baker seeks to understand the many sins of both her homeland and her adopted land, and she makes a tender effort to forgive her father. . . . A painful, lyrical, and bracing memoir.”—Kirkus Review

“Important. Riveting. Unforgettable. . . . A profoundly captivating story that can profoundly change your own story.”—Ann Voskamp, New York Times bestselling author of One Thousand Gifts and WayMaker

“Achingly personal yet transcendently and triumphantly human, It Wasn’t Roaring, It Was Weeping is unputdownable.”—Karen Swallow Prior, PhD, author of The Evangelical Imagination

A story for even those whose fathers still wound. A story of the God who pursues, heals, and makes new.

As a daughter still waiting on a father persisting in his brokenness, I was hesitant to read this book, afraid it would temp jealousy and discontent with the way the Author of my story is writing. I need not have worried, Lisa Jo has written a story accessible to us all, about the question we are all asking; "Jesus, don't you care?" I won't spoil it by sharing here, but you must read/listen for the deeply healing and profound answer. (I would recommend listening over reading this one, to have Lisa Jo speaking the languages enhanced so much.)

The healing of the soul

Most excellent book. I found myself encouraged and challenged in my own life to face my memories, my past with Grace.

Beautiful story of Redemption!

What a deeply painful and beautiful story from start to finish. Every word carefully chosen to help transport us there. Loved every minute! Didn’t want it to end!

Beautiful storytelling, and a story of hope.

Lisa-Jo is an amazing storyteller! She transports you right with her, sharing her story from her childhood in South Africa, to law school and life in America. She shares her complicated upbringing, losing her mom in her teens, and being raised by an angry father. The most beautiful part is how God has redeemed her story, and healed her family. This is a must read, especially for those with complicated parent relationships. I highly recommend the Audible version, too, as Lisa-Jo reads it herself.

The authors command of language

I enjoyed that the author read her own book and that I could connect with it on so many levels, coming from South Africa and living in America, and having lost my parents at 17 years of age. I enjoyed hearing the different accents, which Lisa-Jo is so gifted at doing. Extremely well done!!!!!

A radical gift

Lisa Jo’s memoir is storytelling art. The way Lisa Jo time travels you into her story while, at the same time, also somehow transporting you back into your own story…I am amazed. This book is a vulnerable, raw, human and humble look at healing. I am so grateful to Lisa Jo for being brave enough to write it for all of us, for our healing . The audio production was incredible!!! I loved hearing Lis Jo’s accent and hearing her speak occasionally in her native tongue. It added such a deep richness to an already captivating memoir.

A must read!

I absolutely loved this heartfelt story and the redemption it provides! A must read for anyone with a past!

Ten Masterfully Penned Stars

I love almost all books. I’m not critical until asked to be. But this book calls for a critique to number a few of the multitude of reasons I recommend this book to everyone.
1. The lived-out examples of how to fold together a story that requires forgiveness and great grace from Lisa-Jo herself, her little brother Luke who stayed and from Jesus, the one who allowed himself to be crucified and who stayed on the cross till my sins were forgiven, were so poetically put before us people who tend to be self-serving to the point of causing our own hearts and minds great pain by not walking through hard reconciliation. 2. The example put before us isn’t calling anyone to be a doormat and to allow hurts to continue but the readers see how differences in response to pain can both be right; you can stay and you can go- both can work- in order to move forward in your healing during and after traumas.
3. The emotional capturing of the story because it is read by Lisa-Jo herself knowing how to phrase aloud her sentences is profound. Her voice for Dad and prison guards and Dutch and Afrikaans and each time she uses vocabularies of other tongues creates the best rendering of her telling the truth and Truth about God lived out in her journey across an ocean of space and recovery from what happened in her childhood.
4. In sharing her childhood wounding, many are free to acknowledge how they love their parents who wounded them. In this almost unavoidable truth of parenting, child and parent both see that they can pick up peace and share it like the manna found in the wilderness.
5. The assimilating of the horrible things whites have done to black and brown bodies into a language of regret and sorrow is especially helpful for the white reader to learn to pray like Daniel in Ch 9v5 the Bible in that “we have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws.” We, as whites, can express deep sorrow and regret though not having done the wrongs of the past ourselves. We learn how to grow in our maturity to be people that listen and say please forgive us. We are often speaking to ones who also aren’t in chattel slavery any longer but we all bear the scars of being humans who racially and then relationally hurt one another.
6. The history learned, plowed up and turned over is good soil for planting health for people and nations. This book teaches through the history of one family what needs to be taught to all-deep and humble forgiveness.
7. This story doesn’t speak of an overnight miracle but a life time of waiting to get answers. The way in which our connectedness to strangers in a neighborhoods that both reject and welcome calls us to examine how we move in the places we live toward others.
8. The mastery of penning sentences is on display here if you overlook every implication in the authors life. There is the richest of imagery that takes you in a trip to South Africa, DC and Washington separately and together, Mass and living rooms and topography you will never stop your toe. There is the alliteration and simile, metaphor and hyperbole, idioms American know and others from Africa explained in some fashion. The vocabulary is precise and smart. I CAN NOT TELL YOU HOW PLEASING AND IMPORTANT IT IS TO READ WELL because someone took years to tell again of the years of their actual life SO THAT one might heal and experience tremendous joy from using the will and mind and spirit and soul to hear Lisa-Jo explain how they weren’t roaring but actually weeping such grief that it was often understood as wild rage.
9. This book is also personal to me, the one writing the review. Though no part of parental abuse ever occurred in my home, though no similarity to running away and repeating parental wounds is a part of my narrative, I still feel so empowered to forgive like was taught to me in this story and I have never forgiven THAT deeply. Now a new level of freedom is mine from moving in this same direction though. Though I never feared a parent, I have seen and feared much, to the point of developing severe PTSD or from being in trauma for a long time- CPTSD. At times, I wasn’t sure I could keep listening but I have wanted to heal strongly enough that I stayed in the safe but hard reading space the author has created.
10. It is a spectacular crafted piece you get to read, first in living this book and then in writing it for others.
Thank you Lisa-Jo and those who got it into the readers hands.

Changes trajectories!

I’ve read Lisa Jo for a while now. But, I’m so grateful to have been drawn into THIS story, this message, this healing journey. Her telling matches the beautiful writing in which her family tree unfolds, in all it’s broken, raw, tilled-up places into the hope of healing, forgiveness and change in trajectory for our family lineage. Thank you Lisa Jo for lending us your courage and your honesty. I’m so very blessed.

beautifully moving

I was sceptical, being South African... would she capture the depth of this nation? and LisaJo absolutely did. what a great memoir. inspiring and full of hope.