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Peter Godwin grew up in Rhodesia during the end of white rule. While his Rhodesians Never Die is a historical account of that time, Mukiwa is a more personal narrative--a testament to Africa and a memoir as seen through the eyes of a child becoming a young man amidst civil war. Spanning 1964-1982, from when Godwin was a boy of six in Rhodesia to when he returned to Zimbabwe as a journalist covering the bloody transition back to black rule, Godwin personalizes a difficult era in South African history with clarity, intelligence, humor, empathy, and sharp prose.
Book Description
Mukiwa opens with Peter Godwin, six years old, describing the murder of his neighbor by African guerillas in 1964, pre-war Rhodesia. Godwin's parents are liberal whites, his mother a government-employed doctor, his father an engineer. Through his innocent, young eyes, the story of the beginning of the end of white rule in Africa unfolds. The memoir follows Godwin's personal journey from the eve of war in Rhodesia to his experience fighting in the civil war that he detests to his adventures as a journalist in the new state of Zimbabwe, covering the bloody return to black rule. With each transition Godwin's voice develops, from that of a boy to a young man to an adult returning to his homeland. This poignant compelling memoir describes the savage struggle between blacks and whites as the British Colonial period comes to an end, set against the vividly painted background of the mysterious world of southern Africa.
Customer Reviews:
A sad and moving book.......2007-09-23
Peter Godwin certainly has a story to tell. It's a story of an idyllic, if unusual childhood, a disrupted but eventually immensely successful education, military service and then two careers, one in law, planned but aborted, and then one in journalism, discovered almost by default. Listed like this these elements might sound just a bit mundane, perhaps not the subject of memoir. When one adds, however, the location, Rhodesia becoming Zimbabwe, the result is a deeply moving, in places deeply sad, as well as quite disturbing account of a life lived thus far. Mukiwa, by the way, is Shona for white man.
The setting for Peter Godwin's early years was a middle class, professional and, crucially, liberal family living in eastern Rhodesia, close to the Mozambique border. I had relatives in that same area, near Umtali and Melsetter, and they used to do exactly what the Godwins did regularly which was to visit the Indian Ocean beaches near Beira. We used to get postcards from there every year, usually in the middle of our north of England winter. Envy wasn't the word...
Peter Godwin's mother was a doctor and this meant that his childhood was unusual in two respects. Not many youngsters in white households had liberal-minded parents and even fewer helped their mothers conduct post mortems. Unlike most mukiwa, Peter Godwin had black friends. He learned the local language and got to know the bush. He also grew up close to death and then lived alongside it during the years of the war of independence. He describes how the war simply took over everything and labels himself as a technician in its machinations. It's a telling phrase, admitting that he did not himself want to fight anyone. Like everyone else, he was caught up in the struggle, required to actively perpetrate the violence and that is what he did.
His education was disrupted. His family life was effectively destroyed. And how he managed to keep his sanity during the period I have no idea. He served most of the period in Matebeleland alongside other members of the Rhodesian armed forces and police who were not, to say the least, as liberal as he was. So in some ways he was already doubly a foreigner in that he was working in an area where he could not speak the language and was accompanied by fellow countrymen with whom he shared no beliefs or ideals. And yet he had to fight.
I have never served in a war and hope I never will. But my relatives from the same area as Peter Godwin were also called up into national service and also fought the war. I had not seen them for fifteen years or so when we met after they, along with many thousands of others, as recorded by Peter Godwin, had already fled south. But for them also memories of war were deep and resented scars. It was a bloody and dirty war where, if you were lucky, you could at most trust your closest colleagues. It was a vicious conflict at times and left everyone angry. No-one won. Everyone suffered.
Having eventually achieved the education he sought, Peter Godwin attempted to launch a legal career. But then, almost by default, he became a reporter. After independence, he learned of atrocities perpetrated by the Zambabwean army in the area where he had served during the war. He investigated. He reported. And then, on advice, he fled.
But he did eventually return to all of the areas he knew and the last part of the book is a moving and deeply sad account of how little he recognised in the places he loved as a child. But within this, there is a moment of hope as he meets a former freedom fighter and, with humour and new friendship, the two of them realise that they had not only been enemies, but had actually been two commanders trying to kill one another on opposite sides of the same skirmish.
But in the end, Peter Godwin is changed man, and his home and homeland, at least as he had experienced them, were no more. War had changed everything and everyone. No-one won.
disappointing.......2007-08-13
it is a somehow disappointing book, sometimes superficial, never really "deep". Some stories in the book are nice to read, but I regret having bought the book.
Mukiwa is Background for Today's Headlines on CNN.......2007-07-10
Easily one of the best books on Zimbabwe along with his second book "When a Crocodile Eats the Sun" I've read. I was in Northern Africa in the late 70's but never made it south and the books gave me a varicious trip without the danger. Godwin writes so well that you are living his story with him. And, today, July 9,2007, when I read CNN's article about the runaway inflation and Mugabe blaming factory owners, and business for the disaster he's made of the country I couldn't help but wonder if the author's mother was still alive and living in Zimbabwe. It was more than a memoir because it gave me a feeling of connection to a country I've never been to or had very much interest in.
You should read these TWO books!.......2007-03-30
Peter Godwin has written much, but "Mukiwa: A White Boy In Africa" and its follow-up, "When A Crocodile Eats The Sun," must surely be the volumes of which he is most proud. For anyone with even a passing interest in Africa and/or the present problems in Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, they are 'must-reads,' preferably in chronological order - Mukiwa (1996 and later paperbacks) first, and then Crocodile (2005 and 2007).
I confess straight away that my own knowledge of Africa is limited, but I have interested myself in the continent's affairs for as long as I can remember and I also nurtured enormous sympathy for Rhodesia, for its people, and for former Prime Minister Ian Smith.
Peter Godwin has little apparent sympathy for Smith and, for that and other reasons that are clear in his books, he can be looked upon as a liberal. Therefore, his two books are all the more potent for their description of 'the reversal of progress, the shocking decline, the descent into darkness' (Crocodile 2007, page 314) under the tyrannical and murderous regime of Robert Mugabe. These beautifully and movingly written but appallingly tragic books, based on first-hand experience and knowledge and Godwin's own family's declining circumstances, should be compulsory study for all liberals.
I was born before the Second World War. Therefore, I was around when Hitler's 'Third Reich' was crushed. I always hoped, but I never thought I would live long enough to see the collapse of Communism in 1989. I still hope that I live long enough to see Mugabe go and for the name of Ian Smith to be honoured again in Rhodesia!
Zimbabwe.......2007-03-25
Peter Godwin has written a harming story of a white boy growing up under the loving, nurturing hands of native blacks (Shona) in Zimbabwe. He confirms impressions that I have had of that kind people after a couple of work experiences I had as a physician in a remote hospital there. If you want to understand more about the culture and events that led to unfortunate state of Zimbabwe today, read Mukiwa.
Average customer rating:
- Terrific Book, and Dr. Naison is a Wonderful Person
- Mike Stalzer FCRH 2002
- Doesn't even deserve a title
- Making Sense of Our Lives
- White Boy -- Heterodoxy at its Best
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White Boy: A Memoir
Mark D. Naison
Manufacturer: Temple University Press
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Book Description
How does a Jewish boy who spent the bulk of his childhood on the basketball courts of Brooklyn wind up teaching in one of the city's pioneering black studies departments? Naison's odyssey begins as Brooklyn public schools respond to a new wave of Black migrants and Caribbean immigrants, and established residents flee to virtually all-white parts of the city or suburbs. Already alienated by his parent's stance on race issues and their ambitions for him, he has started on a separate ideological path by the time he enters Columbia College. Once he embarks on a long-term interracial relationship, becomes a member of SDS, focuses his historical work on black activists, and organizes community groups in the Bronx, his immersion in the radical politics of the 1960s has emerged as the center of his life. Determined to keep his ties to the Black community, even when the New Left splits along racial lines, Naison joined the fledgling African American studies program at Fordham, remarkable then as now for its commitment to interracial education.
This memoir offers more than a participant's account of the New Left's racial dynamics; it eloquently speaks to the ways in which political commitments emerge from and are infused with the personal choices we all make.
Customer Reviews:
Terrific Book, and Dr. Naison is a Wonderful Person.......2006-06-26
I loved the book -- I read it when it was first published because Dr. Naison was my professor of African-American studies in 1971 at Fordham. He was a terrific professor and the texts in the course were seminal -- I still have many of them to this day on my bookshelf. Anyway, back to this book -- one of the reasons I read it when I found out it was a memoir was to see if I was in it and, in a way, I was. You see, I transferred to another university after my freshman year at Fordham, and in my sophomore year, I got a phone call from Dr. Naison in the hall phone in my dormitory -- I'll never forget it -- he called me to ask me for a date, and this is referenced in White Boy -- not me, specifically, but that he dated a variety of women after his break-up from his long-term lover. I don't remember how long we saw each other -- I don't think it was a very long time -- but I was so flattered and intimidated because I was only 19 and he was 28 at the time, and he was my professor, and he had this marvelous book-filled apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, every aspiring intellectual's dream, and I was that aspiring intellectual. So it didn't work at that time because I was just too young, but for all his fierce leftist radicalism, I discovered that emotionally, he was a sweet, loving, kind and generous man, and his wife is very lucky.
Mike Stalzer FCRH 2002.......2003-01-31
This is wonderful memoir. Much like in his classes at Fordham, Dr. Naison really brings history alive, reminding us that it is more than what you read about in the typical history book, it is about the people that lived it. He gives his life a powerful, emotional, and thoughful voice. For any current and future Fordham University students, I would highly recommend his classes and this book. For everyone else, buy it and see what you missed out when you decided to attend a different school!
Doesn't even deserve a title.......2003-01-26
Just a bunch of racist tripe.
Making Sense of Our Lives.......2002-09-04
Though it deals with his own personal and unique journey, Naison's book helps us all make sense of what our lives have been like since the 60s. The media would like us to believe that those of us who believe in equality, social justice, a real end to racism, and an alternative to corporate capitalism run amock have all disappeared. My personal experience is just the opposite -- our views haven't changed, and indeed, have become more solidified by events of the last decade.
Whether the passion of the 60s will ever reappear in a new guise is impossible to predict. If if does, I feel privileged in knowing that Mark (and so many of my other friends) will be there, if not on the barricades, at least in providing lunch!
White Boy -- Heterodoxy at its Best.......2002-06-05
Naison's gritty narrative takes readers on an odyssey from the multiracial streets of Crown Heights in Brooklyn, New York, where the author spent his wonder years in the 1950s to the vibrant intellectual and activist culture of Fordham University's Black Studies department in the 1990s. In the process, readers learn of the trials and joys this "white boy" faced living a life -- as an activist, lover and teacher -- that transgressed the racial mores of his day. "White Boy," presents an alternative to the standard understanding of "whiteness," which mandates that it be the political and cultural antithesis of "blackness." Naison's book presents a more hopeful picture. Being white and spending 30 years teaching African American studies was not a problem for Naison, or his colleagues at Fordham. He writes, "because we were willing to listen to many voices, and to see race from multiple vantage points, our department provided an intellectual outlet for students of many backgrounds grappling with their racial and cultural identities (...) (W)e created an environment where fighting racism, and exploring the meaning of racial differences, became a moral and political imperative and the center of a vibrant intellectual community" (224-225). Naison's memoir presents an often neglected story in the history of whiteness in America, one where racial difference can help bring different people together instead of constantly keeping them apart.
And just as Naison's life transgressed racial norms, his book defies standards as well. People are reading "White Boy" in places you would never think to see a book published by an academic press: beaches, subways, transit workers' locker rooms, parish offices. Simply put, this in no ordinary memoir.
Book Description
Tommy Webber is nine years old when his father, a founding minister of the East Harlem Protestant Parish, moves the family of six from a spacious apartment in an ivy-covered Gothic-style seminary on New York City's Upper West Side to a small one in a massive public- housing project on East 102nd Street. But it isn't the size of the apartment, the architecture of the building, or the unfamiliar streets that make the new surroundings feel so strange. While Tommy's old neighborhood was overwhelmingly middle class and white, El Barrio is poor and predominantly black and Puerto Rican. In Washington Houses, a complex of over 1,500 apartments, the Webbers are now one of only a small handful of white familes.
Set during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Flying over 96th Street: Memoir of an East Harlem White Boy is the story of one boy's struggle with race, poverty, and identity in a city -- and a country -- grappling with the same issues. Tommy's classmates at the exclusive Collegiate School for Boys, which he attends on scholarship, dare not venture above the city's Mason-Dixon Line of 96th Street into the unknown territory of muggers, gangs, and junkies. Tommy, however, slowly makes new friends on the local basketball courts and at church, and discovers a different East Harlem, one where an exuberant human spirit hides within the oppressive projects and drab tenements, fighting to break through the cracked sidewalks. Webber interweaves the nation's growing Civil Rights movement -- from watching on television the forced integration of Little Rock's Central High School to participating in the famous 1963 March on Washington -- with the subtler, more immediate changes he observes in the lives of his friends and neighbors.
In simple yet compelling prose, lit by the candor and innocence of childhood, Webber brings to life his East Harlem: children playing under gushing fire hydrants; the piraguas man and his pushcart of rainbow-colored icies; Fourth of July barbecues on rooftops; heated games of 5-2 on the public school courts; streets teeming with ugliness, anger, and despair, but also alive with color, community, and hope.
Customer Reviews:
Most Moving Memoir.......2004-12-22
Flying over 96th Street is the most moving memoir I have ever read. It tells the story of a white young boy growing up in Spanish Harlem durnig the 50s and early 60s and how he and his new black and Puerto Rican friends grow to appreciate, help, teach, and love each other. It is a totally absorbing account of coming of age and should be read by every high school student in america.
Moving, Empathetic Memoir .......2004-10-13
Webber's portrait of New York in the 1950s and 60s is full of vivid description. He captures the sounds and smells of his neighborhood and, more importantly, draws his characters with an empathetic brush. Yet the book is not just an elegy to a time past. Dr Webber deals deftly and incisevely with class, race and prejudice, while never preaching or teaching. Every page is full of delights. It is a deeply touching book that will rank as one of the great New York City memoirs.
Meaningful lessons on coming of age, race, identity and love.......2004-10-05
Flying over 96th Street encourages the reader to examine race and relationships. It challenges the reader to look beyond the color of one's skin and examine what happens when you allow yourself to trust and love others who neither look like you or who at first glance seem so different.
A must read for those yearning to explore their relationship with others - and a exceptional message for young people - encouraging them to reach beyond their small circle, embrace and take the risk to love others who "appear" so different.
A Great (and important) Story.......2004-09-26
Flying Over 96th Street is a great read. Tom Webber tells his story in with humor and remarkable powers of observation. As a New Yorker, I loved the details of "El Bario".. But you don't have to be a New Yorker to get into the experience of this young guy who goes "beyond the looking glass" of the white middle class world into another reality-- where HE is the minority...
Even though race and class is rarely (if ever) being discussed nationally, it is a core issue of who we are as Americans. And for those of us who talk about it, it is often just that-- talk. Kudos to the generations of the Webber family who put their neighborhood where their mouth is...
Much to learn from this story.......2004-09-24
An amazing book about a white boy growing up in East Harlem --with his family the only white family in the projects where they live. Vivid and touching, personal and curiously global, like The Color of Water, you get an insider's view of a biracial community and feel powerfully the great strengths and the huge challenges facing this community and white/black relations. I highly recommend to anyone interested in New York, in race relations and in human relationships.
Book Description
This very moving memoir tells the story of a dramatic adolescence: Sixteen-year-old Keith Fleming's life is literally saved when his young uncle Ed, the writer Edmund White, impulsively agrees to "adopt" him.
Installed in the maid's room of his uncle's busy apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side where the phone never stops ringing, Keith soon finds himself transformed as Uncle Ed whirls into action--arranging treatment for Keith's disfiguring acne; enrolling him in prep school despite huge gaps in Keith's academic record caused by time spent in mental hospitals and a hippie "free school"; and instructing his nephew in a worldly view of life and love (an early assignment: reading Lolita and Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son).
Five months later Uncle Ed, who is both strapped for cash as well as completely caught up in the beehive of social and sexual activity of 1970s gay Manhattan, must decide if he can afford to "adopt" another child-Keith's fourteen-year-old Mexican girlfriend, the beautiful Laura, who has just run away from her convent school.
Though Keith's new life in New York forms the heart of the story, this powerful, entertaining memoir begins by tracing how young Keith evolves from being a member of a seemingly ordinary suburban family into a teen so miserably defiant that he is put in the hands of a tyrannical psychiatrist. Here, on a locked adolescent psychiatric ward, Keith meets the bewitching Laura. The two teens begin a passionate love affair--only to be separated and placed in different hospitals.
By turns lyrical, funny, and poignant, and always informed by touching candor, The Boy with the Thorn in His Side is full of fascinating characters and unexpected twists-at once an odyssey into the extremes of the American 1970s, a universal tale of star-crossed teenage love, and an account of a deeply sensitive young person's struggle to find his place in the world. It marks the debut of a poised and compelling writer.
Keith Fleming had been a pretty ordinary Midwestern kid--Little League, Boy Scouts--but the year he turns twelve, his family is torn apart by divorce when he learns that his mother and his Uncle Ed are both gay. By the time Keith is fifteen he has become disfigured by severe acne and is so wild that his father and stepmother place him in a draconian adolescent mental institution. Here he meets Laura, a pretty Mexican girl with whom he begins a passionate love affair.
Keith's mother finally demands his release after a series of hospitalizations and sends him off to live with his uncle, Edmund White, in New York. Keith is soon transformed by his young uncle: He is sent to a dermatologist, to Barneys "Boy's Town" for new clothes, and to prep school. He receives a broad cultural education from Uncle Ed at home--all this despite Ed's being poor as well as completely caught up in the beehive of social and sexual activity of 1970s gay Manhattan.
In the tradition of This Boy's Life and Girl, Interrupted, The Boy with a Thorn in His Side is a beautifully rendered saga of a deeply sensitive and alienated teen struggling to find his place in the world-and at the same time a very modern tale of teenage love and a young person's touching and complicated bond with an unlikely hero.
Customer Reviews:
Uncle Mame?.......2003-12-03
Keith Fleming is a pretty good storyteller. He really makes you picture the times, places and characters in his life. Especially strong is the evil Doctor at the hospital and his wonderful uncle in New York City. (Edmund White) These characters and moments really stand out.
However most of this book just rambles about and then ends with no purpose whatsoever. At the end I wondered "why did he write it" and "why did I read it?". I would not recommend this book because it just meanders and ends with no explanation. I need more of a story arc even from a biography.
The other thing that puzzled me was why he would paint such a wonderful loving tribute to his uncle and then ruin it by mentioning an offhand sexual advance by his uncle. It seemed out of place never explored his feelings behind it or why it was even mentioned. It was kind of unsavory without a reason for it.
Keith needed a good editor on this book and some guidance.
Bravo!.......2001-08-09
This is one of the many memoirs / autobiographies, relating to the ubiquitous stories of 'troubled youth'. Flemmings emotional maturity and consistently strong writing has aloud him to tell the story of a turbulent adolescence akin to "Girl Interrupted", "Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius", etc. I was not drawn to this novel for Ed White, but rather found it in the bookstore Biography section by chance. I have seen criticisms of Flemming's dupe on the public as advertising this to be a memoir of Ed White, but it this really the case? At face value, this is a remarkable memoir of a troubled journey through adolescence devoid of all "poor me" sentiments that the other above-mentioned memoirs seem to convey. I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone - it is a gem!
Gets to the heart.......2001-04-08
I was going to buy this book as an anniversary present, but caught myself reading bits and pieces, until I had finished the whole thing. This is a well-written book that is very engaging. You laugh, cry, and wince as Fleming tells his story, and you close the book absolutely exhausted thinking about everything that happened within a relatively short time span. I recommend it for years to come.
A backseat rider's view of Edmund White.......2001-01-12
"Just who is Keith Fleming and why is he tryng to slay me" might be a good subtitle for this short memoir. Frankly I bought the book because of my great admiration for Edmund White (the Uncle Ed of Keith's minor autobiography) and in the end all reasons for liking the book reflect back to that initial response. Yes, this is the life of an unfortunate, acneiform teenage product of yet another dysfunctional family unit whose saving grace is his finding solace with his brilliant writer uncle in New York. Keith Fleming writes well, has some pages when his prose actually begins to sing, but aside from his "growing up" experience with Edmund White, his story - full of despair and cruel circumstances -hardly registers as a precis for a book. But all criticism aside, Fleming does give us more insights into the person of Edmund White and it is refreshing to read passages that demonstrate White's warmth and humanity and caring that often his books fail to suggest. Far from being just a flamboyant social surface person, White, as drawn by his nephew, has more than a modicum of compassion for family, for adolescence, for the sticks and stones that make us falter as we mature. So, I think this young writer bears watching. Maybe next time his misery will not be too much with us.......
Wonderful!.......2001-01-07
I found this memoir of Mr. Fleming's youth fascinating. It was extremely well written, vividly descriptive of his family and experiences with mother, father, psychiatrist, fellow patients, and finally, his loving uncle who rescued him from an ununderstanding world. I do not regard it as a "gay" book, but a moving description of a young man's journey through his youth, schooling, family, hospitalizations, love relationships. Anyone interested in young people especially, should find this as interesting as I did. I do recommend it.
Book Description
Joe, George, and Richard Youngblood, three white brothers growing up in the rural South during the Great Depression, live in a world of paradoxes: love and hate; doubt and faith; and sadness and humor.
In his poignant memoir I Must Remember This: A Southern White Boy's Memories of the Great Depression, Jim Crow, and World War II, author George Youngblood shares stories about everything from the brothers' first awareness of death, sex, and race to the truth about Santa Claus. They smoke rabbit tobacco, tremble at ghost and snake stories, watch haircuts for excitement, get baptized, and gawk at locomotives and alligators.
Hard times draw the Youngblood family closer to their father's black farm workers. With one family in particular they form a symbiotic relationship in the hostile world of poverty, disease, and segregation. I Must Remember This is Youngblood's family story as they hope, work, and laugh with little cause-and succeed with basic honesty, respect, and an astounding sense of humor.
Customer Reviews:
Southern Memories.......2007-03-08
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was well written with love and humor. George is an excellent author. My mother's family is from this area of South Carolina and it was just like the stories I grew up hearing. A trip back "home to Carolina" for all of us!
Love And Remembrance.......2006-10-19
George Thomas Youngblood, the author of this memoir, was born in 1929 in rural South Carolina, later become a Ph.D. chemist, and is now writing his "must remember" stories. Stories of a vanishing world--the old South, segregation, the Great Depression, and World War II. The book is not a formal autobiography, but a collection of charming vignettes, covering a forty-four year period from 1932 to 1976.
And they are charming. Stories about snakes and fish and neighbors, about running a rural general store, about the innocence of childhood, about Mama's cooking, about the black neighbors who were as close as family to this white family, about the bonds of family love, about haircuts and ghost stories--well, about almost everything seen through the eyes of a wide-eyed, trusting child and his brothers.
Author Youngblood is a talented writer, with an easy, natural style and a refreshing sense of humor. There is some unevenness among the numerous anecdotes, long and short, that make up this collection, but overall I found them refreshing and engaging. After reading one, I'd reflect, bask in its glow, and turn to the next one. What ties them all together is the bond of love that sustained the family through all their ups and downs. A love that is palpable in the stories. The collection describes a vanishing world that will soon be forgotten. You must remember these things while you can. I recommend this book highly. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.
Average customer rating:
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Bush Boy to Bug Man
T. C. R. White
Manufacturer: Athena Press Publishing Company
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- Personal and touching
- Jabo's Boy-Now His Manchild
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Jabo's Boy - Now His Manchild
Eugene E. White
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“I was born in the midst of the farm environment in the black idiom. The back-wooded country of St. Luke, on Rt. 1, Ozan in southwest Arkansas. As a child, in this environment, I was exposed to many realistic experiences and expressions that have not been forgotten; the singing, praying and shouting, the infinite love and strength that I felt among my people— my Race. Hunting rabbits, gathering pecans, mending fences for the cattle and, of course, picking cotton and hauling hay. I recall the smell of hay mown in July, and hearing the sounds of deep tone bells of the black church for a funeral, or simply gathering for Sunday school or regular service. These memories could have very well been forgotten in time but such memories have been the motivation behind my `art' as in the painting entitled, Evolution of the Blues.”
Customer Reviews:
Personal and touching.......2004-10-03
This author has written a very personal and touching account of his young years. It's an eye opener to that part of our history from someone who lived it.
Jabo's Boy-Now His Manchild.......2004-09-22
I think that this author did a great job in telling his life's story in so few pages. His recall as a child rerally impressed me.
Obviously, the connection that he had formed with his parents and the people in his environement reached the depth of his soul as far as the love that he felt from those in his environment as a youngster.
The author's paintings expressed so much feeling until one could reach out and touch them; they appeared alive within the pages.
I plan to give the books as gifts. Eugene definitely has a story that can be shared!
Book Description
"The Journeying Boy" is a beautifully crafted travelogue, a charming history of Wales, and a nostalgic look back at one man's varied and interesting life. Jon Manchip White returns to his native Wales for the first time in twenty years and discovers that time has wrought immense change to this unusual and mysterious little country in the United Kingdom.
While touring the country, White recounts his childhood in Cardiff, where his fore bears had lived since Norman times, spawning an entertaining crew of rich men and ne'er-do-wells, shipowners, sea captains, buccaneers, and murderers.
From Cardiff, White travels to the coal country of Glamorgan and the Black Mountains, introducing an amazing panoply of odd Welsh characters, past and present: from kings and queens, poets and writers, to warriors, coal miners, and seamen. At the heart of the story in the singular and tragic nature of the Welash race--their language, their religion, their passion for music and literature, their love of life, and their obsession with death.
Customer Reviews:
Journeying, Albeit Vicariously, with Professor White.......2000-01-10
Professor White writes from the perspective of a man who, at his chronological prime, embarks on a period of introspection common to most everyone who reaches that station in life.
As he rediscovers his Welsh roots, weaving legends and history among rich descriptions of Wales' people and scenery, Professor White draws readers into his idyllic native land. Professor White describes for readers the struggles he and his family faced during several generations in Wales. However, he does not focus on maudlin reminiscences or weigh the book down with potentially snobbish personal details. Rather, Professor White takes readers by the hand and invites them to join him from the first tenuous moments after he arrives in Cardiff until the end of his trip when he emerges as a different man, one who has stitched together several rent pieces of his soul.
Professor White's style is extremely easy to read, and his descriptions of people and places make them literally come alive. The magnificent detail, coupled with an astounding ability to weave together the perfect words in his descriptions, give Professor White's prose incredible impact.
The book's title, taken from a segment of Thomas Hardy's poem, Midnight on the Great Western, aptly describes Professor White's physical and spiritual journey on this short, but seminal trip.
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