Wonders of the African World - Softcover

Gates Jr., Henry Louis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375709487 ISBN 13: 9780375709487

Publisher: Knopf, 2001

Synopsis

The Companion Volume to the PBS Television Series

Wonders of the African World is an exuberant, visually stunning journey across Africa and through the history of its glorious but forgotten civilizations.

Traveling by camel, by dhow, by Land Cruiser, and on foot, the renowned scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., takes us to twelve countries in search of Africa's magnificent past, the now neglected civilizations that in their day were as grand and sophisticated as any on the face of the earth. From Nubia's ancient empire, which for a time ruled Egypt and centuries before had established the earliest known African city, to the fabled town of Timbuktu, where during the medieval period there thrived a center of scholars that rivaled any in Europe and where books were as prized as gold, to Ethiopia's Christian kingdom, where the Lost Ark of the Covenant is said to reside under perpetual vigil, Gates reveals an Africa little known to Westerners. And as he shows us the achievements that exploiters of the continent have ignored or denied for centuries, he introduces us as well to the fascinating variety of modern-day Africans, many of whom are descended from the great peoples who built Africa's most formidable cultures, including the Asante, the Swahili, the Tuareg, and the Shona.

As Gates's compelling narrative shows, the continent's past continues to be felt in the lives of many Africans today. And in America for the descendants of those brought here as slaves, that past has been a controversial inheritance, passionately embraced by some, fiercely rejected by others. For this reason, Gates's deeply personal account of discovery is charged throughout by a question posed by Countee Cullen in his 1925 poem "Heritage" and perennially asked by African Americans: What is Africa to me? Finally, though, it is the wisdom of this book that the legacy of Africa, no less than that of Greece or Rome, belongs to all the world's civilized peoples.

Illustrated with spectacular full-page photographs specially commissioned from the internationally acclaimed Lynn Davis, Wonders of the African World is Africa as we have never known or seen it before.

With 66 photographs by Lynn Davis, 132 illustrations in black-and-white and full color, and 7 full-color maps

About this title

Review:

In the 1920s, Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen asked, "What is Africa to me?" Wonders of the African World, a stunning African travelogue by Harvard's Henry Louis Gates Jr. (arguably America's most public and prolific black intellectual), takes up that question for a new generation. A beautifully illustrated, literary companion to a PBS documentary series, Wonders traces Gates's 10-month sojourn through the African motherland, from the haunting pyramids of the Egyptian/Nubian empire in Sudan and the ancient Christian heritage of Ethiopia to the lost city of Timbuktu and the fabled University of Sankore. Erudite scholar that he is, Gates uses his trip to investigate the promise and perils of contemporary Africa, considering, among other issues, the unifying potential of the Swahili language and black complicity in the slave trade. Gates also takes aim at the Enlightenment, the subsequent colonialist occupations by European nations, and the worst aspects of Afrocentrism. Ultimately, he reveals an unbreakable, albeit ill-defined, relationship between Afro-Americans and Africans: "I have learned that I am neither Fon nor Beninian, Asante nor Ghanian, Swahili nor Kenyan, Nubian or Sudanese," Gates writes. Though not a member of any one of these great peoples in particular, I am, as a descendant of a West African slave and of ex-slaves, the product of a truly Pan-African new world culture forged out of the crucible of slavery." --Eugene Holley Jr.

From the Back Cover:

The renowned scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., takes us on an exuberant journey -- by boat, by Land Cruiser, by camel -- across Africa and through the history of its glorious but forgotten civilizations. From the sublime pyramids of Nubia's ancient empire, to Timbuktu's fabled library and university, to the ruins of Ethiopia's magnificent Christian kingdom (where the lost Ark of the Covenant is said to reside), Gates shows us an Africa virtually unknown to Westerners, and even many Africans. His deeply personal account of discovery is charged throughout by the question posed seventy-five years ago by Countee Cullen and perennially asked by African Americans: "What is Africa to me?"

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0375709487
• ISBN 13: 9780375709487
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288