I Wanna Fight (I Need Peace): We Inherit the Fire by Kagiso Lesego Molope

You hear it often enough: the past clings and refuses to let go. Or how it echoes into the present with the crippling fear of repetition. It’s almost like condemnation, scorn and a warning all wrapped in one. Too much reminiscing about the past leaves you blind to the present, but forgetting leaves you susceptible to the same patterns. It’s about healthy balance; acknowledging your experiences—good or bad—and learning to adapt from them to march onward. But what happens when, say, a South African woman once hailed as “the mother of the nation” during the apartheid era, now must make peace with no longer needing to fight? To bear the title of a so-called terrorist, activist, ex-convict while being a mother to four Black daughters with a husband who values the laurels more than normalcy and safety? How does this past affect the daughters’ future?

Kagiso Lesego Molope, writer of We Inherit the Fire, is an Indigenous South African Canadian novelist and playwright of the San people of Southern Africa. Graduating from the University of Cape Town, later to move to Canada and earn her Masters in English Literature in Carleton University. Molope has won multiple awards; being the first Black novelist to win the Ottawa Book Award in 2019 and the 2014 Percy Fitzpatrick Award.

I’m unsure how to fully encapsulate this novel without excluding important details; the intricacy in which Molope writes is with careful consideration to draw readers in. It sounds like a cop-out, I know. I could write about how Kewame “Dolly” Malaka was a freedom fighter during the late apartheid South Africa. But that’s not the only focus. This story weaves two different perspectives—Kelelo, the second oldest daughter, and Kewame, her mother. It’d be in my best interest to include
their fractured relationship and how both women face the inherent grief and struggle of being a Black woman. Of being known. Of surviving as Black women, an activist, a mother-sister-daughter-grandmother-storyteller all wrapped in one body. It’d be a disservice if I didn’t mention how, despite these two being distant with a past that haunts them both, Kelelo and Kewame are echoes of each other.

We Inherit the Fire is a heavy read. Black women, especially in this novel, work hard to maintain bonds with each other. We see it through storytellers, “prison mothers” and Oumama. They’re a blessing because it carves a space for Black women to find solace amongst each other. It also becomes burdensome because they’re forced to maintain that bond with a backbreaking dedication. As such, I find it interesting, if not painful, to see how difficult their relationship is. Kewame moves mechanically through her days while her thoughts are rooted in the past. She’s surprised by her
children’s presence but will drill into them to always be cautious. You almost want to get mad at Kewame for her negligence.

She’s surprised by her children’s presence but will drill into them to always be cautious. You almost want to get mad at Kewame for her negligence.

But we get deeper insight into Kewame’s perspective—something I hadn’t expected at all. The internal thoughts of a traumatized, battle-ready “soldier” that was forced into that mindset since childhood; it’s all she’s ever known. Patterns are hard to break. Molope does a wonderful job in revealing how her mind runs in cyclical loops while her body defaults into a slapdash auto-pilot. Overwhelmed and almost dissociative, Kewame’s character is an example of struggling to come to
terms with unhealed trauma. The difficulty of being a mother at the end of apartheid South Africa when she wasn’t offered the same. It’s heartbreaking and tense because they’re both still grieving. It’s not just miscommunication, but fear, too. They both had to grow up quickly at a young age, unable to fully comprehend the hardships they faced.

Molope skillfully captures a realistic portrayal of the complicated balance of rage and vulnerability that leaves you feeling exposed. You want peace but you’re forced to hide all weaknesses because “Black women have to be strong” all while using that rage to keep going. Bullshit, in my opinion. Spite being your driving force is tiring as hell, and you almost become a spectator to your own life. Being in that fight-or-flight response without knowing comfort whatsoever is agonizing. It wears you
down. It’s that tightrope of wanting to fight (for family, for large-scale action, for something better) but needing peace because the body and mind are exhausted.

Molope skillfully captures a realistic portrayal of the complicated balance of rage and vulnerability that leaves you feeling exposed.

We Inherit the Fire has an overall air of melancholy that’s appreciative, in all honesty. There’s no guarantee of everything being okay now that Kelelo’s gone to varsity. She’s still distant with her mother. The damage is already done and it’s hard to even figure out how to address all the trauma that has consumed so much of their lives. Healing is rarely straightforward, and tormenting yourself is never a way to go about that either. It’ll hurt. It won’t be fixed immediately. But it can be in those moments where you realize the patterns of what happened in the past, and figure out ways to help your current self and whatever path you choose in the future.

Kagiso Lesego Molope (she/her) is an Indigenous novelist and playwright of the San people of Southern Africa. She is the author of four other novels: Dancing in the Dust, which was on the IBBY Honour List for 2006; The Mending Season; Such a Lonely, Lovely Road; and This Book Betrays My Brother. She has been nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award four times. She is the winner of the 2014 Percy FitzPatrick Award, the 2019 Ottawa Book Award for Fiction, and the 2019 inaugural Pius Adesanmi Memorial Award. Across Southern Africa and in parts of Europe, her works are read in schools in several languages. She wrote the play Maya Angelou: Black Woman Rising, which was staged for five years at Oslo’s Nordic Black Theatre. She lives on the unceded and unsurrendered Anishinaabe Algonquin territory.

Publisher: Penguin Random House Canada (January 13, 2026)
Paperback: 6″ x 9″ | 336 pages
ISBN: 9780771019852

Alicia Beggs-Holder

With a BA in English from Toronto Metropolitan University, Alicia Beggs-Holder has experience editing and reviewing various literary works. Possessed with boundless curiosity, she’s an avid pursuer of anything interesting. From folklore to insects, she’s a “spooky” enthusiast with a passion for all literature and writing short stories or dabbling in traditional art.