Customer Reviews

Kwanzaa!: Africa Lives in a New World Festival (Library of African American Arts and Culture)

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"Kwanzaa! Africa Lives in a New World Festival," by Sule Greg C. Wilson, is an informative book about the African-American celebration of the title. The text is supplemented by a wealth of photographs. The book covers African-American history, the Swahili language, the origin of Kwanzaa, the 7 principles of Kwanzaa, and the items used in the Kwanzaa ceremony. The book includes a number of useful features: a glossary, a list of Web sites, a bibliography, and an index.

The book is, however, hurt by an often uncritically naive slant. At times the author seems to treat African culture as an artificial monolith, using phrases like "According to African principles..." or "African culture teaches us...." Casually referring to "Ebonics" glosses over a complex and controversial linguistic issue. And the book's presentation of the slave era is unbalanced; the author discusses "the Europeans" as if they were a monolithically evil group. In the end, these questionable authorial choices damage the book's credibility.

This is a busy, overly colorful book that tries to cover way too much information in such a format. It covers aspects of African history, slavery, the UNIA, African Americans in the 1960s, as well as the creation, language, symbolism, and tools of the Kwanzaa celebration. African words in the text are in bold, colored print to draw attention to them. Towards the end of the book, however, this becomes a distraction because nearly the whole page is filled with these bold, colored words. Other aspects, such as the use of the term "U.S. Africans," "Ebonics," and "outroduction," make the book seem naïve or just silly. It is hard to tell what grade level the author is aiming for with this book because it is above younger elementary students and seems to talk down to older ones. Perhaps this book could be used with 4th and 5th graders to talk about diversity, but I think its uses will be limited.

The author also includes references to his great-great grandparents along with a photo of himself which further serves to give the book less credibility.