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Excerpts from What Other People are Saying About

MY AFRICA

and its author Mbonu Ojike

Published by:
John Day Company

Represented by
W.B. GRAHAM & ASSOCIATES, Inc.
Fifty Five West 42nd Street
New York, 18, New York
Chickering 4-3997

The Literary Guild Review, March, 1946

Starting as an African "Life with Father" - and a very good one - this long and legible opus goes on to a general survey of Africa, missing no points. Covering pre-history, rights of women, art, languages, politics, resources, modern history, almost everything that anyone would want to know about a continent and a people with great potentialities, this book is the sort you'll want to dip into continuously. There's not a page that lacks interesting facts or anecdotes, not a chapter that's dull.

Orville Prescott, New York Times, February 19, 1946, closes his long review with the paragraph:

From such statements it can be seen that reading *My Africa* can leave an American reader a little breathless with astonishment. Where are the elephants? Mr. Ojike says he never saw one until he went to the London Zoo. Where are the cannibals? Mr. Ojike never knew any among his friends. But he has much to say about Nigerian labor unions, Nigerian trousered (white-collar) workers, Nigerian need of industrialization and American technical assistance. It isn't only in Harlem that there's a new world a'coming. . . .

From the Book Section, New York Herald Tribune, February 17th, article headed "An African Looks us Over."

In his effort to pack his volume with what he wants Americans to know he has thrown together memoirs of his own family and personal history, several polemic essays, a short African Who's Who, lists of African newspapers, of numerous museum treasures,

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African art, of strategic raw materials on the continent and a chronology of African history. In this era, when the Louis Adamics press for recognition of all the old countries whose seeds have grown in the New World, there should indeed be study of the continent whose color marks the largest single minority group in the United States. ...

Mr. Ojike writes well about words and thinks both Americans and Africans are "mentally and spiritually fascinated by the euphony of words". He is persuasive on the subject of simple rhythm and straightforwardness as the key to understanding of the continent he comes from and the dark peoples. "With us a public office is a social responsibility, not a privilege. ... An official must pursue a career other than government in order to make a living. He must till the soil and raise his own crops."

"To rate him as excellent is not being fair. There should be some sort of a superior class made particularly for him."

Robert G. Buzzard, President
Eastern Illinois State College

"I want you to know how cordially the Chicago Women's Club received Mr. Ojike - though how anyone could do anything else is more than I can understand. The more I think about him and his lectures - the more deeply I am stirred - to me he is the symbol of the Promised Land - the new world on the march - a modern miracle."

Alice L. Munnecke, Program Chairman
Chicago Woman's Club

"I am directed by the Trades Union Congress of Nigeria to convey to you the sincere and hearty thanks of the workers of Nigeria."

A.A. Adio-Moses,
SECRETARY-GENERAL
Lagos, Nigeria