Book Review: Dreams of My Ancestors
by L.E.Chavous
Hardcover Unavailable for Sale from AALBC
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Publication Date: Jan 01, 2013
List Price: Unavailable
Format: Hardcover, 56 pages
Classification: Nonfiction
ISBN13: 9780983033226
Imprint: EOTO Publishing www.eotobooks.com
Publisher: EOTO Publishing www.eotobooks.com
Parent Company: EOTO Publishing www.eotobooks.com
Read a Description of Dreams of My Ancestors
Book Reviewed by Kam Williams
“Approximately 455,000 African men, women, girls and boys were the original ancestors of the estimated 40 million African-American people in the USA today. In this book, we take a look at who they were and what their lives were like before they came to the Americas.”
—Excerpted from the Introduction (page 1)
Most African-Americans can, at best, trace their lineage back to the end
of slavery. For, prior to Emancipation, blacks were merely considered
property to be bred, bought and sold at the whim of their white owners.
Consequently, African-Americans know precious little about their
ancestry, between the inability to construct their family trees and the
omission of Black History from the average public school curriculum. In
recent years, however, a couple of
PBS-TV series hosted by Dr. Henry Louis
Gates focusing on celebrities tracing their roots has ignited popular
interest in undertaking similar searches.
Now, L.E. Chavous has
written Dreams of My Ancestors, an engaging, educational tool ostensibly
designed to pique the interest of impressionable, African-American young
minds in their heritage. The author has structured his
delightfully-illustrated opus in novel fashion, namely, as if it were a talk
between a father and a son.
The dad starts by explaining how
Africans came to first arrive at these shores and why so much of their
connection to the motherland was lost over the intervening centuries. He
goes on to employ a map to point out where on the continent those
forefathers came from and to show how, with the help of DNA testing, it is
now possible to identify one’s “long-lost cousins.”
The bulk of the
text, however, is devoted to an informative lecture about African culture
during which the son learns about food, jewelry, folktales, ethnic groups
and elsewhat. The book also features a menu of native dishes, such as
cassava, jollof rice, fufu and peppery stew, and even includes a glossary
explaining the meaning of obscure terms like junkamoo (a festive
celebration) and djembe (drum).
An admirable intro to African
traditions carefully crafted to enlighten school age black kids.
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