Author and academic Louise Yelin says that Gordimer's novels often feature white South Africans opposed to apartheid and racism who try to find their place in a multiracial society. Gordimer suggested options for whites in a 1959 essay "Where Do Whites Fit In?", but the rise of Black Consciousness in the 1970s questioned whites' involvement in the liberation struggle. Stephen Clingman has suggested in "The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: History from the Inside" that "Burger's Daughter" is Gordimer's response to the Black Consciousness Movement and an investigation into a "role for whites in the context of Soweto and after".