Radiance from the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art (Yale Pub'Ns in History of Art)

Rating:
Summary: Romanticizing Clitorectomy ?
Review: I understand that this book was written in the late seventies, but still, trying to rationalize one of the central rituals of the Mende culture, the forced, surgical removal of the clitoris of teen and pre-teen girls as a pre-requisite of their entering the adult community, is horrifying. Did the author perhaps get too much sun as she was doing her field work for her Ph.d from Yale in this community? How can she not condemn this aspect of female life in Sierra Leone's tribal communities, and seem to condone,or ignore, this most extraordinarily monstrous practice around which the whole society is organized. Perhaps the book is an interesting study of standards of feminine beauty in in a west african community, but to me, as a woman, I just couldn't get past the fact that this miserable ritual is at the heart of their society. The book is well written and full of interesting and exotic information, and is worth reading if only to raise your blood pressure, be you male or female, as to the sorry state of women in the world even in this, the year 2000.

Rating:
Summary: I am outsider looking in, but I accept difference
Review: If you are going to judge the actions of the people in this book with your own personal biases, I recommend you put the book down. Coming from the USA, immediate the thought of Genital Mutilation puts me in disgust, but I put it into perspective with the beautiful culture of the Mende. As in Western/developed societies where people do what is the norm, it is the same the world over, even though norms are different. From what I've learned, the general opinion used to be that African cultures had no aesthetics, because they do not completely mimic popular US trends, etc. The author made this book in an attempt to prove to the Western influenced societies that African cultures do have standards of beauty and acceptance.