This paper examines the form and aesthetics of two memoirs by daughters whose (exiled) parents participated in the Liberation Struggle of South Africa: Being Chris Hani’s Daughter by Lindiwe Hani & Melinda Ferguson (2017) and Always Another Country by Sisonke Msimang (2017). I consider how the memoirs represent what I term ‘(political) orphanhood’. Drawing on the ideas of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Are, I read orphanhood not only as a concept that defines those who have lost a parent or parents (i.e. Chris Hani), but as a metaphor of subject positioning that suggests the ‘loss’ of a metaphorical (patriarchal, systemic) parent: a nation or political party. What are the authorial acts, the motifs these women employ to frame (in-text and in paratext) their subject positioning, and to narrate their journeys of recovery (from i.e. substance abuse), and of self-discovery. Furthermore, to what extend can I read the dialogue between the texts as textual activism that produces a discourse of self-empowerment, acceptance and love.