Publisher's Synopsis
"This is a beautiful and beautifully written book. … Boone writes in ways that reveal her evident devotion to Mende culture."-John Picton, African Affairs
"A major contribution to our ethnographic understanding of Mende culture, and to understanding the way concepts of women's bodies encode cultural messages about gender relations."-E. Frances White, Women's Review of Books
"A respectful approach to [the mysteries of the Sande], by an art historian who has tiptoed where anthropologists feared to tread. Radiance from the Waters deserves to be read. … It provides something more interesting than esoteric knowledge: an extended meditation on notions of beauty and decorum and the way in which these can be translated simultaneously into art and … advancement for women."-John Ryle, London Review of Books
"The first text to illuminate the power of the feminine aesthetic in West African art."-Ms.