Jua’s Musings
Finished books by Juanita Catherine van Zyl, Amber’s wife, shared with anyone who wants to read them. Every chapter has its own page, so you can read one sitting at a time, and every chapter can also be listened to.
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The books
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Metamorphosis
Surviving the Architecture of Control
A memoir of survival inside an architecture built to erase her.
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The Work of Hope
Reclaiming Dignity and Democracy in a Time of Crisis
Part diagnosis, part toolkit: how democracies fail, and the daily work of repairing them.
Meet Jua
Juanita (Jua) Catherine van Zyl is a writer, scientist, and advocate. Born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, in 1979, she grew up on the grounds of Pretoria Central Prison, the child of a Colonel in the Prison Service. For more than fifteen years she worked as a remote sensing and geo-informatics specialist, mapping droughts, fires, and failing harvests across southern Africa, while privately fighting a much longer war for her own survival.
In 2015 she took on South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs in a very public battle for legal recognition of who she is, and won. She emigrated to the United States in 2023 and survived colon cancer the following year. She lives in Boston with her wife, Amber.
Reading here
There is nothing to sign up for. Your reading place, your text size and your choice of light or dark reading mode are remembered only in your own browser. Nothing is tracked and nothing is sent anywhere.
This narration is an AI-generated voice. These books are a passion project, and I wanted them to be accessible to everyone, including people who would rather listen than read. The voice may stumble over some names and Afrikaans words.
You are welcome to share the link to these pages. Please do not copy or republish the books themselves.
