The preface outlines three major events that have been central to writing and redrafting Indenture Aesthetics. First, the author explores the impact of his mother’s death on his relationship to time and space (Africa) and how the feeling of being unhinged informed the revisions of this book as an act of care and dedication to a woman whose life was severely curtailed by the intersecting structures of colonial apartheid and the everyday violence of patriarchy. Second, the author unpacks the complexities of contemporary South African society by examining the 2021 civil unrest that unfolded mainly in KwaZulu-Natal and a series of floods in the same area in 2022, which together revealed the precariousness of black and blackened life in rural and small-town South Africa. The preface offers a glimpse into South African society that rubs against the linear, progressive (neoliberal) narrative of freedom associated with the postapartheid era.