In 1993, Amy Biehl, a promising American Fulbright scholar and anti-apartheid activist, found herself in the tumultuous landscape of South Africa. While driving through a township near Cape Town, she became a victim of a senseless act of violence. A mob attacked her, throwing bricks at her, beating and stabbing her. Though she was with friends at the time, they were unable to save her, and she was pronounced dead at the site. She was 26 years old.
Following her death, her parents traveled to Cape Town to both retrace their daughter’s steps in an effort to understand what happened and to collect Amy’s remains to cremate them and bring them back to the US. While packing up her belongings, her mother Linda found Amy’s journals and, upon reading them, also found a doorway to an inner resolution. Through reading about her daughter’s love of South Africa and her convictions around her work there, a beacon of light was ignited amidst her grief. She and her husband, Amy’s father, Peter, decided to reach out to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to take part in their post-apartheid hearings.
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