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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A revival of the essentials of spiritual living, 13 Dec 2000
By A Customer
As an African who grew up in Africa (albeit living in Europe)immensed in African mythology and folklore, I find THE HERO WITH AN AFRICAN FACE, a true revival of the exploration of the links that humans have with the supreme god-head. Clyde Ford, weaves through African heroes and heroines, producing a tapestry of both physical and spiritual meanings behind their battles and truimphs, and how that relates to our own journeys through life.What I found very uplifting was accompanying Mr. Ford, whose ancestors where uprooted from their roots, through his personal existential journey, but this time from a different perspective, ie. coveyed by an African vessel. Something that Africans today can identify with. The stories also had a very impacting insight into our history, from the African belief of a supreme being, in collaboration with other gods, creating the universe and all that lives in it, and how the latter relates daily to the former. I have even began to relate some of the stories and my one experiences in Africa to my young ones. Yet again, we discover that before the Greeks and other civilisations, there was an African civilisation that influenced other civilisation, and which had and still has a strong mythological culture, that the world today has tried to kill off. Present-day religious practices, such as monotheism, have an African origin, thousands of years old before the biblical Moses. As the inspirational, late Cheihk Anta Diop says, it is left for us Africans to re-write our history, and right the wrongs that the west has perpetrated for 600 years. A very lively, well-written and spiritually benefitial book.
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