Some memoirs tell you what happened. Others make you feel what it was like to live through it. Lulama Mali’s Held belongs firmly in the latter category.
Spanning three generations of one South African family, Held is deeply nostalgic, intimate and, at times, heartbreaking. Mali takes us from the erased neighbourhood of Wittebome, through the forced removals of apartheid and into township life in Gugulethu, while telling a much more personal story about family, grief, belonging and the truths we inherit.
At the centre of the memoir is a young girl raised by her grandparents in a home where politics, books, music and the everyday rhythms of survival existed alongside one another. It is also the story of a devastating family revelation. Mali grew up believing that her mother, Nokhephu, had died in a tragic accident, only to discover that the woman she believed was her sister was actually her mother, and that she was still alive.
But Held is not simply a memoir about uncovering a family secret. What stayed with me most was the way Mali writes about longing, grief and the things that carry us when life becomes difficult. For her, one of those things was music.
Music Can Hold Us When Nothing Else Can
Music runs through Held as more than entertainment. It becomes memory. It becomes identity. And amid the grief Mali experiences throughout her life, it becomes a refuge. That resonated with me because most of us have songs that instantly transport us somewhere else. A particular melody can return us to a childhood home, a person we once loved or a version of ourselves we thought we had forgotten.
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For Mali, that relationship with music feels even more profound. Her passion for it becomes one of the ways she moves through grief and makes sense of the world around her. There is something powerful about recognising that the things we love can sometimes become the things that save us. For one person it might be music. For another it might be running, writing, faith, friendship or creating something with their hands. These passions cannot erase grief, but they can give us somewhere to put it. Held reminded me of that.
Grief Does Not Always Have a Beginning and an End
One of the most affecting aspects of Held is the way grief moves through generations. Mali’s story demonstrates that grief is rarely as straightforward as losing someone and eventually moving on. Sometimes it comes from absence. Sometimes it comes from discovering that what you believed about your childhood was not the full truth. And sometimes it is inherited through stories, silences and experiences that began long before you were born.
That makes Held as much a book about memory as it is about grief. The memoir asks us to consider how much of our understanding of ourselves is built from what our families tell us. What happens when those stories change? And how do you reconcile the person you thought you were with the truth you later discover?
Mali does not treat those questions as problems with easy answers. Instead, she allows the contradictions to remain. Love and hurt can exist together. So can gratitude and anger. The people who protect us can also keep things from us. And sometimes understanding where we come from means accepting that family history is complicated.
The Meaning of Being Held
The title becomes more powerful the further you move through the memoir. To be held can mean being loved and cared for. But it can also mean being held by memory, grief, history and the things we cannot easily leave behind. Mali’s grandparents provide the kind of care that gives her childhood stability. Their home may not be defined by material wealth, but there is abundance in routine, ritual, memory and the ways people show up for one another.
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That idea feels particularly moving in a South African context. Our understanding of family is often larger than the traditional nuclear family. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins and members of the wider community can all become part of raising a child. Held captures that beautifully while also acknowledging that love does not make families uncomplicated. Sometimes the people who hold us are carrying their own secrets, grief and history too.
A Personal Story Shaped by South African History
Although Held is an intimate memoir, Mali’s story cannot be separated from the country in which it unfolds. The forced removals of apartheid and the displacement of communities form part of the family’s history, showing how political decisions eventually become personal memories passed from one generation to another.
History in Held is therefore not something abstract that happened somewhere else. It happened to families. It changed where people lived, how communities were formed and what future generations inherited. That wider history gives Mali’s personal story additional weight because the memoir shows how individual lives and national history constantly overlap. The political becomes personal, and the personal becomes part of a much larger South African story.
Why Guys Should Read Held Too
There is also something here for guys, particularly when it comes to grief. We often speak about grief as something to overcome. We want a timeline. We want to know when someone is going to feel better and when life will return to normal.
Held offers a different perspective. Grief can become part of us without becoming all of us. Mali’s life is shaped by loss, but it is also shaped by music, ambition, family, memory and the desire to understand where she comes from. Her story reminds us that surviving grief does not necessarily mean leaving it behind.
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Sometimes survival means learning how to carry it differently. For guys who have been taught to contain difficult emotions rather than examine them, that is an important idea. There is strength in acknowledging what has hurt you and recognising the things and people that have helped you through it.
Why Held Stayed With Me
What I appreciated most about Held was its nostalgia. There is something deeply moving about following someone through the memories that made them, particularly when those memories contain both joy and pain.
Mali writes about longing and grief, but the memoir never feels defined solely by sadness. Music runs through her story like a lifeline, reminding us that even during periods of profound loss, there can still be something capable of bringing us back to ourselves.
I finished Held thinking about the things that hold us throughout our lives. Sometimes it is family. Sometimes it is memory. Sometimes it is the history we inherit. And sometimes it is a song. Held is a deeply personal South African memoir about grief, belonging and survival, but it is also a reminder that the things we love can become anchors when the world around us feels uncertain. For Lulama Mali, music became one of those anchors. And perhaps that is one of the memoir’s most beautiful ideas: we may not get to choose everything that happens to us, but sometimes we find something that helps us carry it.
