Initial reviews of Kaffir Boy in the spring of 1986 were mixed. New York Times Book Review critic Lillian Thomas appeared either unable or unwilling to grasp the significance of the book, suggesting that it should have been written in a different way and questioning why the author was no longer living in South Africa. Two other critics, whose reviews appeared in the same month as Thomas's, praised the uniqueness and power of the book. Both Charles R. Larson in the Washington Post Book World and Diane Manuel in the Chicago Tribune Book World commented on its uniqueness as an autobiography written in English by a black native who had actually lived in an apartheid-ruled South African ghetto. Larson believed that Kaffir Boy "might acquire the same status that Richard Wright's Black Boy or Claude Brown's.....
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