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BOOK REVIEW                       ROACH/SPIGNER

of these incidents-which may be familiar to Canadian, but not necessarily to foreign, readers.

Some of the essays are written in a scholarly manner peppered with footnotes and these are, of course, not as easy to read as would be plainer language. All the essays, nevertheless, reveal Case's intellectual and emotional indignation at the institutional forms of racism in Canada as well as elsewhere in the world.

Where the book is weakest is in the author's failure to chart the way to a resolution of the problems he discusses. In a concluding paragraph, Case expresses the view that emphasis on socio-cultural identity and, correspondingly, on geopolitical identity appears to be the only realistic approach to the problems. Elsewhere, he states that individual problems are best answered with individual solutions, and no master plan is proposed for resolving racial and ethnocultural animosity on a societal level.

Such conclusions are not at all in keeping with the obviously anti-imperialist, if not anti-capitalist, treatment of the book's various themes.

Charles Roach

MAJOR CONTRIBUTION TO CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

CORNROWS. By Camille Yarbrough. Illustrated by Carole Byard. Coward. McCann & Geoghegan. New York. 42 pages. $7.95.

UNTIL RECENTLY, the black child has been severely short-changed on affirmative literature, but if the majority of black children could be exposed to literature as provocative and inspirational as Camille Yarbrough's Cornrows, their self-concepts would be richly elevated.

The importance of a positive self-concept in black children's literature cannot be overemphasized. Yarbrough eloquently weaves her tale through the gentle fingers of Mama and Great-Grammaw who tell the story of black tradition while braiding their children's hair into cornrow patterns of Africa. Sister and little brother MeToo delight in having their hair braided because, for them, it's storytelling time-a time to learn about the wealth of their heritage.

Sister says, "Mama and Great-Grammaw, they tell some se-ri-ous, dy-no-mite stories."

This particular afternoon, Mama and Great-Grammaw tell the story of cornrowed hair. First, Great-Grammaw explains how folks down South named the braids cornrows. Then, after everyone is quiet, she intones:

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