Bom Boy is a novel that delves into the complex inner life of a shy adopted black child who grows up in Cape Town’s southern suburbs.
The boy, Leke, becomes an even stranger man. The book alternates between 1992, when he is a child, and 2012, when he is a young adult.
He is the son of a light-skinned coloured mother who passes for white and gives birth to him at a clinic in Constantia thanks to her connections, while his father is a highly educated Nigerian laboratory technician who ends up in prison and never meets his son.
Leke’s mother, who is struggling financially, eventually gives him up to a liberal white couple who try to bring a black child up in pre-1994 South Africa.
The novel also gives an insight into the life of African immigrants living in a xenophobic society.
It brings up the issue of latent racism that exists in Cape Town among some light-skinned people – the darker man is the “swart gevaar” of Verwoerd’s time. It also reflects how a lot of people still feel superior because their skin colour gives them a sense of power and a perceived easier path through life.
Leke later develops a strange habit of stalking people, stealing small objects and going from doctor to doctor in search of companionship rather than a cure. Through a series of letters written to him by his biological father he learns about a family curse – which his father tried unsuccessfully to remove.
Omotoso was born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria with her Nigerian father and West Indian mother and two older brothers. She and her family moved to South Africa in 1992. She is an architect and lives in Cape Town working as designer, freelance writer and novelist. – Cape Argus