Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin, a ten-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation, but worlds apart, Beauty, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children after her husband's death. Told through Beauty and Robin's alternating perspectives, the narratives interweave to create a rich and complex tapestry of the emotions and tensions at the heart of Apartheid South Africa. Hum If You Don't Know the Words is a beautifully rendered look at loss, racism, and the creation of family.