Magona explains the real-life event that inspired Mother to Mother: the 1993 murder of American student Amy Biehlin a black community near Cape Town, South Africa. The case attracted a lot of media attention, not least because Biehl was in South Africa as an anti-apartheid activist. Magona wonders, however, whether it might not also be important to think about Biehl's killers, and the circumstances that led them to commit the murder. Those circumstances, Magona says, are inseparable from the "legacy of apartheid—a system repressive and brutal, that bred senseless inter- and intra-racial violence as well as other nefarious happenings" (v). She explains that in the novel she has written, the (fictionalized) killer's mother combs back over her son's life in an effort to find peace and understanding.

Mandisa addresses the mother of Amy (here, an unnamed American student) directly and explains who she is: "My son killed your daughter" (1). Since the murder, Mandisa says, people have treated her differently, as if they hold her responsible for her sons Mxolisi's actions—though in reality, she has never had much control over what her son does. She scoffs in particular at the idea that she would have encouraged him to kill a white woman: "People look at me as if I'm the one who woke up one shushu day and said, Boyboy, run out and see whether, somewhere out there, you can find a white girl with nothing better to do than run around