Sisonke Msimang

[5] Between 1992 and 1996 Msimang earned a Bachelor of Arts in politics and communication studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota,[4] and returned to South Africa in 1997.

[2] Between 2002 and 2005 she obtained a master's degree in political science[4] from the African Gender Institute[6] at the University of Cape Town.

[4] Msimang's first job was in 1997 as a programme officer at the Australian High Commission in Pretoria, which is where she met her husband Simon White.

[5][7] From 2003 to 2005 Msimang worked as a gender advisor for UNAIDS to help forge HIV/AIDS policies specifically relating to African women and girls.

[5] She has been both storyteller and facilitator for The Moth and TED events,[13] has hosted and participated in several Doha Debates,[14][15] and in 2020 was the Literature and Ideas curator for Perth Writers Week.

[10] Written after the sudden death in 2014 of her beloved mother Ntombi, who had championed microfinance for female entrepreneurs in South Africa,[1] the book was highly praised by authors Tim Winton, Njabulo S. Ndebele and Alice Pung,[10] and earned accolades such the New York Times 2018 staff favourite of 2018 and CBC's Best International Non-fiction of 2018.