A Woman's Odyssey Into Africa

March 30, 1992
More about the author than about Africa, this unusual memoir tells of a woman who regenerates herself in midlife through three yearlong solo backpacking trips. Though the narrative is disorganized and the writing sometimes cliched, the story is often absorbing because the author is so intrepid. A burnt-out English teacher in a ``nightmare'' New York City high school, Lightfoot-Klein, with her children grown, her marriage disintegrating and her lingering health problems resolved, decided at 51 to trek through Africa. While in Sudan, she learned of the barbaric but widespread African custom of female genital excision; obsessed with the story and proud to meet the challenge of life in Sudan, she returned to work on her first book, Prisoners of Ritual: An Odyssey into Female Circumcision in Africa . She intersperses chapters on her background, including a particularly warped family and an invented Native American grandfather, with African adventures both inspiring and cautionary: dealing with the bureaucracy, finding lodgings at police stations, having sexual escapades, eating raw camel's liver and being raped if this happened to author; if not, stet on the beach in Kenya.

March 1, 1992
Lightfoot-Klein, an educator and family counselor, has written a readable story about her three-year solo backpacking trek into remote parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Like many Victorian women travelers before her, Lightfoot-Klein takes a midlife flight from her unfulfilled life into a world of adventure. Her explorations of her own nature and responses to danger and hardship stand in vivid contrast to her stultified childhood and marriage. She illustrates how one ordinary middle-aged woman can become extraordinary through determination and curiosity. This story of one woman's efforts to understand herself through trial-by-ordeal travel is engrossing and at times inspiring. The book is part travel, but more a women's studies book. Recommended for public libraries and mental health collections.-- Susan Fifer Canby, National Geographic Soc. Lib., Washington, D.C.

Copyright 1992 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 1992
After many years as a high school teacher in New York, the author traveled throughout Africa and was provided with the rich reserves of knowledge upon which she based "Prisoners of Ritual," a study of genital excision in young African girls (primarily in Islamic Sudan). Her latest book is a further account of self-discovery. An excellent storyteller who offers extraordinary images of Africa, Hanny Lightfoot-Klein triumphs when recounting her own experiences in addition to traveling: fleeing Germany as a child, for instance, or facing parental rejection, physical challenges, and a disappointing marriage. The name given to her in Sudan, "El Shadida fee" ("The Strong Woman Is Here"), is thoroughly appropriate for this inspiring, courageous woman undaunted by life's difficulties. The distinct message here for women readers is one of personal empowerment. ((Reviewed Apr. 15, 1992))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1992, American Library Association.)