BOOK REVIEW

Title: South African Art Now
Author: Sue Williamson
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 320
Price: $65.00

In this inspiring compilation of South African artwork, Sue Williamson does indeed bring it all closer. South African Art Now unveils the passion, struggle, and artistic cultural emergence of South Africa over the past four decades. Through in-depth essays and stunning photographs, South African Art Now documents the compelling work of nearly 100 South African artists working in every medium from painting, sculpture, traditional craft making, and video to cutting-edge performance art.

Beginning with the dark years of apartheid, which saw the rise of resistant art, to the long-awaited achievement of democracy and freedom in 1994, and up to the present-day struggles for reconciliation, South African Art Now showcases more than 500 full-color works from some of the art world's most well-known names, including Marlene Dumas, William Kentridge, and Gerald Sekoto, as well as up-and-coming art stars, such as Robin Rhode, Nicholas Hlobo, and Mustafa Maluka.

Nobel laureate and South Africa-based Nadine Gordimer contributes a moving foreword, and leading art critics, including Okwui Enwezor and RoseLee Goldberg, offer insightful essays that place the works included into a truly international context.

Author Sue Williamson is herself recognized as one of South Africa's leading artists, and she has artwork in the collections of internationally acclaimed museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Museum of African Art in Washington D.C. A vehement activist during the apartheid era - an experience that informs her writing today - she is founding editor of www.artthrob.ca.za, and she is considered one of South Africa's most influential art critics and editors.

South African art is quickly emerging as an exciting, dynamic scene that is receiving the attention of international museums, auctions, art fairs, and collectors and curators alike. Beautifully designed and a stimulating read, South African Art Now is perfect for anyone interested in the pulse of the contemporary art world.

Title:  LIFELINES - The Black Book of Proverbs
Author:Askhari Johnson Hodari & Yvonne McCalla Sobers
Publisher:Random House
Pages:256
Price: $19:99

Inspired by the biblical Book of Proverbs,this is a wondrously illustrated collection of aphorisms, witticisms, and sayings from Africa and the African Diaspora that will entrance, entertain, and enlighten readers of all ages.

Authors Askhari and Yvonne share a passion for proverbs. Short snappy sayings surround their lives. During their upbringings, they both learned, "proverbs are daughters of experience" (Sierra Leone). Thus, Lifelines draws inspiration from the authors' experience and proverb gathering during their wide travels and particularly in their home communities on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Readers experiencing new births, weddings, career changes, death and other rites of passage will find truth in the saying, "When the occasion arises, there is a proverb to suit it"(Rwanda).

Indeed, Lifelines offers wisdom for every stage of our lives. Here are some samples from this unique offering: Birth and Parenting: "When a yam does not grow well, do not blame the yam; it is the soil." (Ghana); Marriage: "Getting married is nothing: it is assuming the responsibility of marriage that counts." (Haiti); Money Problems: "The poor person does not experience poverty all the time." (Ghana) Peace and War: "To engage in conflict, one does not bring a knife that cuts but a needle that sews." (Kiswahili).

Unlike other proverb collections, Lifelines is uniquely arranged by life cycle themes from birth to death and speaks to the tragedy and triumph in between. Intuitive illustrations introduce each section along with unforgettable vignettes showing how African proverbs comfort, inspire, and instruct during different phases of life.

Lifelines is a gift for the young and the old, mothers, fathers, daughters and sons especially as we rapidly approach the family holidays of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hannukkah and New Year. Its wide reach - from Nairobi to New Orleans and from birth to death - coupled with its small trim size make it the perfect companion for a christening or a baptism; a wedding or an anniversary party; the joyous celebration of birthdays or the quiet sadness of funerals.

Lifelines sharpens understanding of how traditions, civilization, and spirit survive and thrive, despite centuries of loss of freedom, family, identity, language, land, and wealth. No wonder, no less a personality like Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu penned the foreword.

Title: My Fathers' Daughter: A Story of Family and Belonging
Author: Hannah Pool
Publisher: Free Press
Pages: 256
Price: $25.00

What happens when a very westernized black woman goes to Africa for the first time to meet a family she never knew existed? Adopted from birth from an Eritrean orphanage into a British family, Hannah Pool did not give much thought to Africa in her daily life as a beautiful, independent, cosmopolitan thirty-year-old journalist in London. But when she receives a letter carrying the news that birth father is still alive, she decides to make a trip back to Eritrea, eventually reaching the tiny village hut in which her mother died giving birth to her. My Fathers' Daughter: A story of Family and

Belonging, is Hannah Pool's story of that journey, and a new way of seeing Africa.

"Unlike the rest of my birth family, I have never gone truly hungry, I have never prayed for rain, and I have never been displaced by war," writes Pool. "Looking at the facts, if anyone should be relieved to have been adopted it should be me. My adoption has meant that I escaped terrible hardships and the likelihood of early death. Even I know that a motherless child does not last long in the villages. Had I not been placed in that orphanage, assuming I made it past infancy, I would have had a normal Eritrean peasant life - complete with a stint on the front doing my national service, an arranged marriage, and children in my teens. 

"But I still wish none of it happened. I still wish I had never been adopted, and, most importantly, I still want to know, Why? Why me? And now, here I am, on one side of a door, with only people who can answer that question on the other...."

A story about race and indentity, My Fathers' Daughter  is much about an adopted child facing up to the challenge of tracing her biological family as it is about her search for African roots. Originally published in England, this heart-rending tale is beautifully honest, Pool gives us a front row view of how identity is built up, but also how it is dismantled. It is simply engrossing. The The Sunday Times of London said "The sentiment is never pity, rather awe - at the depth of Hannah's  experience, her courage in confronting it and her success in making sense of it all."

Hannah Pool was born in Eritrea in 1974 and grew up in Manchester, England. Best known for her column, "The New Black" in The Guardian, she is currently a feature writer at The Guardian newspaper.