It also enables him to tell much about the cultural and economic poverty in which he was brought up by a much loved but illiterate mother.
He has given his village a school for girls and named it for his illiterate mother, Ram Kali.
Mitchell excelled in his early education, working hard to study the lessons his illiterate mother somehow taught him.
"We have no love for the government school, but we have no money," said Phul Kumar Devi, an illiterate mother of four.
Thought of as a patrician New Englander, Adams was actually the son of a yeoman farmer and a probably illiterate mother.
Moreover, literate young mothers in 1880 were less likely to reside in a home with a spouse than illiterate mothers.
Minimally, obstetricians should provide leaflets for literate mothers and oral counseling for illiterate mothers on how to rear a child with a healthy psyche.
Pushed to study by his illiterate mother, he won a scholarship to medical school in Cairo.
Mathabane has credited his illiterate mother with encouraging him to excel in education and to escape the confinements of apartheid South Africa.
His illiterate mother dictated letters to relatives in Chicago, begging them to send steamship tickets so the family could emigrate to the United States.