Observer Review
Jamaica Observer Review (November 8, 2009):
Wise counsel
Title: Lifelines: The Black Book of Proverbs by Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne McCalla Sobers.
New York: Broadway Books, 2009. 227 pages.
Reviewed by: Mary Hanna
PULL QUOTE: The life-cycle presentation is an astute way of handling such material and the book lends itself to browsing. This is a clever and meaningful compilation and respect is due the authors for their years of patience in putting together such a detailed collection.
Hodari and Sobers have collected proverbs from the African world and its Diaspora and compiled them in this jewel of a book with a short and laudatory foreword by Archbishop M Desmond Tutu who says:
They have created for us a gathering of the elders to offer us wise counsel. They have retained for us a precious strand of the African story in this distillation of African wit and wisdom.
***
The proverbs are organised according to themes, grouped under life-cycle events: Birth, Childhood, Adolescence, Initiation, and Rites of Passage, Love, Marriage, and Intimacy, Challenge, Ethics and Values, Elderhood, and Death and Afterlife. For example, in the Love, Marriage, and Intimacy category, there are proverbs grouped under the themes of friendship, women and men, sex, and home. Under Friendship we find “Good friend better than pocket money” (Belize and Jamaica) and under Women and Men, “Bread without sauce and a home without a wife are meaningless” (Africa). Each cycle is preceded by a vignette by the authors that show how events in their own lives led to greater understanding of proverbs or vice versa, how proverbs led her to greater understanding of life. These vignettes are delightful and tell heartfelt stories, usually of family or friends at crucial moments. They add spice to the mix. Sobers writes:
Everyone – family, friends, farm employees, villagers, and strangers – called my grandmother “Miss Annie”. She attended church, sang in the choir, played the church organ, and taught Sunday school all her life. However, her God was not locked into Sunday worship and did not confine himself to a place above the skies. Her God and his agents, her ancestors, were with her day and night all seven days of the week, because “he who makes calculations without God will calculate forever” (Ethiopia).
The authors share the English language and so have included only those proverbs available in English. Translations of African proverbs are European and so may be nuanced differently to the original content, but they read intriguingly and do not seem to have a problem of authenticity. For example, under Equality and Equity we find “When the sun rises, it rises for everyone” (Namibia, Cuba) and “No Matter how powerful a man, he cannot make rain fall on his farm alone” (Africa). The themes and vignettes offer a way to find and savour the numerous proverbs and to point a way to their meaning. Some are offered in creole, pidgin, or patois. Sobers hails from Jamaica and there are many offerings from this source. Professor Mervyn Morris has been of great help to the authors, opening his library to them to help with sourcing sayings. The authors acknowledge him warmly in their list of gratitude.
The authors collected proverbs for a combined total of ten decades. They are pleased to be able to offer them in written form and to preserve them in this handbook with graceful illustrations. They feel that proverbs provide a lifeline, not just to the wisdom of the elders but in a more immediate sense, as expressed in this Nigerian saying: “A proverb is the horse of conversation: when the conversation lags, a proverb revives it”.
This compilation is a treat to read or simply browse through for the great majority of the proverbs quoted are pithy and wise, addressing specific issues and harnessed to an African sensibility. In Rwanda and Burundi they say “When the occasion arises, there is a proverb to suit it” and that is the spirit of the themes in this book. Under Fear we find: “The lion’s power lies in our fear of him” (Nigeria) and “He who is bitten by a snake fears a lizard” (Uganda). Under Strength: “The strong do not need clubs” (Senegal), under Power: “If the bird can scream, it cannot be caught by the wild beast” (Ghana), under Quarrels and Conflict: “Stop quarrel before fight come” (Jamaica).
This collection is restricted to those proverbs sourced to Africa and her Diaspora and so excludes proverbs associated with Afrikaans, British, French, or Portuguese settlers in Africa. Also, the authors favour proverbs that are self-evident in their meanings, which offer “lifelines” (ready help in rough times). As such, the book has an affinity to the Psalms, only the proverbs, as shown, are short and pithy. Sobers and Hodari are very careful to be accurate at all times and to present their material in a pleasing manner with clarity and ease of reference as priorities.
The life-cycle presentation is an astute way of handling such material and the book lends itself to browsing. This is a clever and meaningful compilation and respect is due the authors for their years of patience in putting together such a detailed collection.
Yvonne McCalla Sobers is a Jamaican who writes fiction and non-fiction. She lives in Kingston and has also lived in Ghana which helped her identify proverbs she learnt as a child. Sobers is a graduate of the University of the West Indies. She has taught English and history for much of her career and written the cookbook Delicious Jamaica! Vegetarian Cuisine.
Askhari Johnson Hodari is a Black Studies student who received degrees from Spelman College and Howard University. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama, though she travels frequently to countries in Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean. She is the author of The African Book of Names.
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