Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience [Hardcover]

Kwame Anthony Appiah (Author), Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0465000711 | ISBN-13: 978-0465000715 | Publication Date: October 27, 1999 | Edition: 1st

Inspired by the dream of the late African American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois and assisted by an eminent advisory board, Harvard scholars Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Kwame Anthony Appiah have created the first scholarly encyclopedia to take as its scope the entire history of Africa and the African Diaspora.Beautifully designed and richly illustrated with over a thousand images - maps, tables, charts, photographs, hundreds of them in full color - this single-volume reference includes more than three thousand articles and over two million words. The interplay between text and illustration conveys the richness and sweep of the African and African American experience as no other publication before it. Certain to prove invaluable to anyone interested in black history and the influence of African culture on the world today, Africana is a unique testament to the remarkable legacy of a great and varied people.With entries ranging from ”affirmative action” to ”zydeco,” from each of the most prominent ethnic groups in Africa to each member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Africana brings the entire black world into sharp focus. Every concise, informative article is referenced to others with the aim of guiding the reader through such wide-ranging topics as the history of slavery; the civil rights movement; African-American literature, music, and art; ancient African civilizations; and the black experience in countries such as France, India, and Russia.More than a book for library reference, Africana will give hours of reading pleasure through its longer, interpretive essays by such notable writers as Stanley Crouch, Gerald Early, Randall Kennedy, and Cornel West. These specially commissioned essays give the reader an engaging chronicle of the religion, arts, and cultural life of Africans and of black people in the Old World and the New.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Legendary scholar-activist W.E.B. Du Bois labored to complete an "Encyclopedia Africana" before his death in 1963. Just over 35 years later, two Harvard educators, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Ghanaian-born Kwame Anthony Appiah, have brought Du Bois' intellectual dream to life in Africana, the most complete and comprehensive record of the Pan-African diaspora compiled into one volume. With over two million words and 3,500 entries from more than 220 contributors, Appiah and Gates sought, as they put it, to "give a sense of the wide diversity of peoples, cultures, and traditions that we know about Africa in historical times, a feel for the environment in which that history was lived, and a broad outline of the contributions of people of African descent, especially in the Americas, but, more generally, around the world." To fulfill this aim, they consider biographical, political, artistic, economic, historical, and geographical data; a brief sampling of topics includes "Food in African-American Culture," "Creolized Musical Instruments of the Caribbean," and "Anthropology in Africa." The section on Africa fills about two thirds of the book, loaded with invaluable information--from the ethnic and colonial factors that contributed to violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Eritrea, and Sierra Leone to the educational, linguistic, and social advances in Tanzania, Gabon, and South Africa. The legacies of the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe are also presented in great detail. The encyclopedia also contains documented evidence of African-derived peoples in Asia, including the exploits of Malik Ambar, who arrived in India from Ethiopia as a result of the East Indian slave trade.

Turning to the Western Hemisphere, Africana skillfully and succinctly synopsizes the lives and achievements of a multitude of African Americans, from 18th-century inventor-astronomer Benjamin Banneker to late-20th-century heroes like Colin Powell, Tiger Woods, and astronaut Mae Jemison. You'll learn about the little-considered black presence in Canada; Africana also uncovers hidden pockets of black culture in surprising places like Chile, Paraguay, and Argentina (where the Negro population, we discover, was reduced by a process of miscegenation known as blanqueamiento, or whitening). The upper-crust veneer of the Argentine tango is peeled away, revealing the dance's roots in the rhythmic innovations of 19th-century Afro-Argentines. With all of the aforementioned headings and topics, however, it's the special essays that best detail the treasure chest of scholarship of Africana. Robin Kelley examines the volatile clash between "Malcolm X and the Black Bourgeoisie"; Thomas Skidmore deconstructs "Race and Class in Brazil" and the myth of "racial democracy"; Mahmood Mamdani, in "Ethnicity in Rwanda," brilliantly decodes the complex and maddening colonial manipulations that erupted in genocide and made the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups "more political than cultural identities ... one is power and the other is subject."

A splendidly packaged reference work that will adorn libraries and homes for years to come, Africana defines the black experience in the same sweeping way that the Encyclopedia Britannica defined Euro-American civilization. More importantly for young readers, the magnificent collection shows that Africans and the continent's descendants are a truly global people who have made tremendous contributions to human civilization. --Eugene Holley Jr.

From Publishers Weekly

In 1909, W.E.B. Du Bois dreamed of editing an "Encyclopedia Africana" filled with all that scholars knew of the history, literature and art of the great continent and its diaspora. Such a tome, Du Bois hoped, would, like Diderot's Encyclop?die, serve as a springboard for future scholarship and a bulwark against racist misconceptions. At the century's close, editors Appiah and GatesAan African and African-American respectivelyAhave fulfilled Du Bois's vision with aplomb. For this accessible, fascinating volume, the two Harvard professors have commissioned and condensed more than 3000 articles by more than 400 scholars. Though the bulk of the entries are devoted to the African continent and its descendant cultures in Latin America, the Caribbean and North America, the encyclopedia also addresses the African presence in Europe, Asia and the rest of the world (each article is color coded for easy reference). Entries range from a paragraph on Abaku s, "all-male secret societies created by African slaves living in Cuba during the mid-19th century," to Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham's six-page essay on "Women and the Black Baptist Church." The selections, which run the gamut from the Middle Passage, Rastafarians, the Montgomery bus boycott, rap and every African country, are notable for their clear presentation of facts and their cogent, fair-minded analysis. Some entries, such as John Burdick's "Myth of Racial Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Interpretation," are really treatises on significant social issues. And the many minibiographies of accomplished artistsAsuch as actor Paul Robeson, singer Diana Ross and saxophonist Charlie ParkerAhighlight the tremendous impact African-Americans have had on North American culture. Bursting with information and enhanced by contributions from its illustrious advisory board, which includes Jamaica Kincaid, Nell Irvin Painter, Cornel West and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, this book belongs on every family's reference shelf. Du Bois himself could not have done better. 1000 photographs, maps and illus. Agent, Lynn Nesbit. $500,000 national marketing campaign; featured selection of BOMC, the History Book Club and QPB; 10-city author tour; 22-city national radio and TV satellite tour. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 2095 pages
• Publisher: Basic Civitas Books; 1st edition (October 27, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465000711
• ISBN-13: 978-0465000715
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.6 x 2.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #901,009 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars African Experiance Finally Gets It's Place in the Sun!, December 9, 1999

By 

"meggyg" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (Hardcover)

Upon opening this book, I realized I had stumbled on to the missing link in American History. Africana provides a glimpse of what traditional history books have been all to willing to ignore. As a person of Native American and European heritage, I have seen time and time again, the way American History Books have focused primarily on the accomplishments of Europeans, leaving out the rich history of all of her people of color. With it's amazing photographs and easily followed geographical references, Africana fills this gap, as it provides a much wider view of the true history of America. I hope someday that traditional American History Books will include this information in their pages and there will be no need for separated histories... but until that time, Africana is a book that every parent should buy for their child and every American should have in their home. The history that this book brings to the table of humanity, can help us heal and grow as a country... and a people.

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Debater's Tool, December 2, 1999

By 

L. Young (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (Hardcover)

I find myself online engaged in debates about African-Americans and Africa that only scholars on the topic can participate in. Now, with this Encyclopedia, it's not only good reading for knowledge and scholastic research, but also for validating facts. Now I'm ready for some good 'ol debatin'!

Another thing worth mentioning is that for each article there are regional references: African, African-American, South American, etc. and at the end of each article are references to other relevant readings in the book. When "The Century" was released last year, I was waiting for a "Black Century" so to speak. I had NO CLUE that this Encyclopedia was on the way! The photographs dispel myths of what "Black" looks like. The essays are captivating. The intro is interresting reading. It parallels DuBois' struggle to bring this book about in his day and Gates' efforts to do the same in our day!

I only wish that, if this is not an exact replica of the Encarta Africana CD-ROM in book form, it comes out on CD-ROM so that I can read it away from home & share it with others.

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A TRUE WONDER AMONG REFERENCE BOOKS!!!, November 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (Hardcover)

I recently purchased this massive volume as a gift to myself for a recent job promotion. It is wonderful. The African Diaspora is well represented in this volume. I am using this beautiful book as a valuable resource for an upcoming article I am working on for my graduate courses dealing with African and African-American writers. Although the price of this book is expensive, once you buy it and add it to your collection, price becomes irrelevant. Any student and/or lover of Africa should have this book in their home library.