Reviews for Documents of the African Past

The average rating for Documents of the African Past based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-12-25 00:00:00 Michael Lerew i wish there was some more information provided about the translation/collection process for these stories. some of the stories have analytic commentaries strangely inserted into them. i was surprised by how central women are to basically every tale in this book, and it was nice to read tales wherein the sex hasn't been glossed over or taken out. overall, it was alright, particularly as an introduction, but not particularly scholarly. i wanted more translations and more information than the author gave. plus i think he wasted his introduction on defining (vaguely, as it turned out) what a "legend" is -and then ignoring his own definition- rather than defining what he actually did to gather and present the book.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-01-29 00:00:00 GIAMPAOLO ZANON At first I was getting into the articles in this collection, and I mean, they were fine. They gave me an insight into one set of viewpoints regarding race and ethnic identity in Puerto Rico. The kicker was the last article though; all others were written by academics. The last was written by a self-identified Taino. He critiqued the other articles and gave input as to how he feels, often in objection to the academics. Overall worth a read, but not the most fantastic book ever written. Sadly, not enough is written about this subject to compare to.