Winnie Mandela

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

When Winnie Mandela married Nelson Mandela, a founding leader of the African National Congress in 1958, she knew she had joined forces not only with a man, but with a struggle as well. Within a year she was arrested for resistance to apartheid; in 1964, Nelson was sentenced to life in prisona sentence he continues to serve. Readers waiting for the conventional happy ending will have to be satisfied with an inspiring life story instead. Gradually, Winnie develops into more than the wife of a persecuted, charismatic man, difficult as that role has been. Refusing to be cowed by police harassment, or 16 months of solitary confinement, or the peculiar and constant indignities of life as a ``banned'' person, Winnie has grown, according to Haskins, even ``more militant than her husband.'' Fully one-third of this sympathetic book concerns her unusual youth, which by itself is a fascinating account of cultural change and individual achievement. Readers with little previous knowledge of South Africa will find this a coherent and revealing introduction to the country. Ages 11-up. (May)

School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up This biography, like Milton Meltzer's for younger children (Viking, 1986), is based primarily on Winnie Mandela's autobiography, Part of My Soul Went With Him (Norton, 1985), and includes background material about the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Its greater length and direction to an older audience permit the inclusion of more details from South African political history that provide the context in which Winnie Mandela has become a national leader and international symbol of the struggle against racial oppression. Haskins skillfully interweaves Winnie Mandela's personal story with that of milestones in the black South African struggle for political freedom and human dignity to create a moving portrait of Mandela as an individual and the ``mother'' of the nation. Yet he is not overly idealistic and acknowledges that she is unlikely to live to see the struggle in which she has been engaged won. A section of a dozen black-and-white photographs depict members of the Mandela family in events described in the biography, and a one-page bibliography provides reliable sources for learning more about Winnie Mandela and South African political history. The map does not include all of the places mentioned in the text, and there is no glossary to identify important persons, political groups, laws, and institutions mentioned in the text. Nancy J. Schmidt, Indiana University Library, Bloomington