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Africana:
The Encyclopedia of the
African and African American Experience
by Kwame Anthony Appiah (Editor) & Henry Gates (Editor)

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Hardcover - 2144 pages (November 1999)
Basic Civitas Books; ISBN: 0465000711;
Dimensions (in inches): 3.25 x 13.91 x 9.44

Table of Contents

Introduction: An Encyclopedia of The African Diaspora
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Charts, Maps, and Tables
Articles AFRICANA: The Encyclopedia of the African and
African American Experience
Featured Essays
Ancient African Civilizations
Kevin MacDonald
Civil Rights Movement Patricia Sullivan
Decolonization in Africa: An Interpretation
Frederick Cooper
Garrido, Juan: A Black Conquistador in Mexico Paul Gerhard
Harlem Renaissance
David Levering Lewis
Islam and Tradition
Lamin Sanneh
Latin America, Blacks and Indians in: An
Interpretation Peter Wade
Pan-Africanism and Afro-Latin America
Darien J. Davis
Photography, African American
Deborah Willis
Transatlantic Slave Trade Stephen Behrendt
W.E.B. Du Bois: An Interpretation
Cornel West
Women and the Black Baptist Church Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham
Select Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

Legendary scholar-activist W.E.B. Du Bois labored to complete an "Encyclopedia Africana" before his death in 1963. Just over 35 years later, two Harvard educators, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Ghanaian-born Kwame Anthony Appiah, have brought Du Bois' intellectual dream to life in Africana, the most complete and comprehensive record of the Pan-African diaspora compiled into one volume. With over two million words and 3,500 entries from more than 220 contributors, Appiah and Gates sought, as they put it, to "give a sense of the wide diversity of peoples, cultures, and traditions that we know about Africa in historical times, a feel for the environment in which that history was lived, and a broad outline of the contributions of people of African descent, especially in the Americas, but, more generally, around the world." To fulfill this aim, they consider biographical, political, artistic, economic, historical, and geographical data; a brief sampling of topics includes "Food in African-American Culture," "Creolized Musical Instruments of the Caribbean," and "Anthropology in Africa." The section on Africa fills about two thirds of the book, loaded with invaluable information--from the ethnic and colonial factors that contributed to violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Eritrea, and Sierra Leone to the educational, linguistic, and social advances in Tanzania, Gabon, and South Africa. The legacies of the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe are also presented in great detail. The encyclopedia also contains documented evidence of African-derived peoples in Asia, including the exploits of Malik Ambar, who arrived in India from Ethiopia as a result of the East Indian slave trade.

Turning to the Western Hemisphere, Africana skillfully and succinctly synopsizes the lives and achievements of a multitude of African Americans, from 18th-century inventor-astronomer Benjamin Banneker to late-20th-century heroes like Colin Powell, Tiger Woods, and astronaut Mae Jemison. You'll learn about the little-considered black presence in Canada; Africana also uncovers hidden pockets of black culture in surprising places like Chile, Paraguay, and Argentina (where the Negro population, we discover, was reduced by a process of miscegenation known as blanqueamiento, or whitening). The upper-crust veneer of the Argentine tango is peeled away, revealing the dance's roots in the rhythmic innovations of 19th-century Afro-Argentines. With all of the aforementioned headings and topics, however, it's the special essays that best detail the treasure chest of scholarship of Africana. Robin Kelley examines the volatile clash between "Malcolm X and the Black Bourgeoisie"; Thomas Skidmore deconstructs "Race and Class in Brazil" and the myth of "racial democracy"; Mahmood Mamdani, in "Ethnicity in Rwanda," brilliantly decodes the complex and maddening colonial manipulations that erupted in genocide and made the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups "more political than cultural identities ... one is power and the other is subject."

A splendidly packaged reference work that will adorn libraries and homes for years to come, Africana defines the black experience in the same sweeping way that the Encyclopedia Britannica defined Euro-American civilization. More importantly for young readers, the magnificent collection shows that Africans and the continent's descendants are a truly global people who have made tremendous contributions to human civilization. --Eugene Holley Jr.

The New York Times Book Review, John Thornton
...Africana will be a very useful tool, and may even set new standards and change attitudes about the African and African-American experience.

Jesse Jackson, Founder, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
"Africana 's very existence shows how far African Americans have come since W.E.B. Du Bois first dreamed of an Encyclopaedia Africana at the start of this century. It's great to have one volume that shines light on the rich truth of black life, which our society has too long left in the shadows."

Maya Angelou, Reynolds Professor of American Studies, Wake Forest University
"For more than two centuries, European and North American scholars have sought to encompass the knowledge and achievements of the West in encyclopedias in which black people have spent most of their time in the wings. Now, with Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, we have an encyclopedia where Africa and her descendents stand at center stage."

Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children's Defense Fund
"What a wonderful thing for the young people of this country to have, at last, within a single source, a chronicle of the history and achievements, the suffering and the triumphs, of African Americans and their cousins in Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the rest of the world."

Book Description
A landmark in reference publishing, Africana is an incomparable one-volume encyclopedia of the black world-a vital resource for families, students, and educators everywhere.

Inspired by the dream of the late African American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois and assisted by an eminent advisory board, Harvard scholars Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Kwame Anthony Appiah have created the first scholarly encyclopedia to take as its scope the entire history of Africa and the African Diaspora.

Beautifully designed and richly illustrated with over a thousand images-maps, tables, charts, photographs, hundreds of them in full color-this single-volume reference includes more than three thousand articles and over two million words. The interplay between text and illustration conveys the richness and sweep of the African and African American experience as no other publication before it. Certain to prove invaluable to anyone interested in black history and the influence of African culture on the world today, Africana is a unique testament to the remarkable legacy of a great and varied people.

With entries ranging from "affirmative action" to "zydeco," from each of the most prominent ethnic groups in Africa to each member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Africana brings the entire black world into sharp focus. Every concise, informative article is referenced to others with the aim of guiding the reader through such wide-ranging topics as the history of slavery; the civil rights movement; African-American literature, music, and art; ancient African civilizations; and the black experience in countries such as France, India, and Russia.

More than a book for library reference, Africana will give hours of reading pleasure through its longer, interpretive essays by such notable writers as Stanley Crouch, Gerald Early, Randall Kennedy, and Cornel West. These specially commissioned essays give the reader an engaging chronicle of the religion, arts, and cultural life of Africans and of black people in the Old World and the New.

About the Author
Kwame Anthony Appiah is Professor of Afro-American Studies and Philosophy at Harvard University, President of the Society for African Philosophy in North America, and a Board Member of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Humanities, Chairman of the Department of Afro-American Studies, and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University.

Customer Reviews

African Experience Finally Gets It's Place in the Sun!

Reviewer: meggyg  from San Francisco, California
     December 9, 1999

Upon opening this book, I realized I had stumbled on to the missing link in American History. Africana provides a glimpse of what traditional history books have been all to willing to ignore. As a person of Native American and European heritage, I have seen time and time again, the way American History Books have focused primarily on the accomplishments of Europeans, leaving out the rich history of all of her people of color. With it's amazing photographs and easily followed geographical references, Africana fills this gap, as it provides a much wider view of the true history of America. I hope someday that traditional American History Books will include this information in their pages and there will be no need for separated histories...but until that time, Africana is a book that every parent should buy for their child and every American should have in their home. The history that this book brings to the table of humanity, can help us heal and grow as a country... and a people.