Book Review of
It Wasn’t Roaring It Was Weeping

Lynn's Review

It Wasn’t Roaring It Was Weeping by Lisa-Jo Baker is a memoir published in 2024.

I have a goal to read one memoir a month in 2025. It Wasn’t Roaring It Was Weeping was my memoir for January. 

It Wasn’t Roaring It Was Weeping is about Lisa Jo-Baker’s life growing up in South Africa during racial apartheid and all the changes that happened in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. It is about losing her mother to cancer, living with an angry father, and how coming to America changed her. 

I debated whether I should put this on my list of nonfiction reads this month or my Christian nonfiction reads for the month. 

This book is listed as a Christian Issues book by Amazon. I am not sure why it is a Christian Issue book. I would have put it under Christian Memoirs, but this book is much more than a Christian book. 

This book has elements of faith, and God weaved throughout it, but it is about Lisa Jo-Baker’s life growing up in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s. Yes, she talks about God, but because there is so much about what it was like to grow up in South Africa, I think this is a book that anyone can enjoy. 

She discusses visiting her father’s family farm on the South African Outback. She describes the people and place so well. She talks about her father’s life as a doctor in South Africa, And she deals with the really rough parts of her and her father’s childhoods. 

Like many memoirs, this is not easy to read, but it was so worth it. 

Lisa-Jo Baker tackles some complex topics in such a raw and honest way. She shares her heart and her story. She shares how our family’s stories shape us into who we are. She shares her and her father’s story of forgiveness and change and God’s role in that change. 

I find this book a bit hard to describe and explain, but it is one of the best memoirs that I have read in a while. If you like memoirs that take you around the world, I think you will enjoy this one.