Book Description

In a part of North Africa where, within miles, the backdrop can change dramatically from snow-blasted mountains to wind-scoured dunes live the Berber people of the Atlas Mountains. In the third book of her trilogy on African women, world-renowned photojournalist Margaret Courtney-Clarke examines the difficult lives and remarkable arts of Berber women. As modern times and modern warfare in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia have encroached on their centuries-old traditions, Berber women have begun to give up the old ways. Imazighen: The Vanishing Traditions of Berber Women is a record of a quickly disappearing way of life. As in her earlier books, Ndebele: The Art of an African Tribe and African Canvas: The Art of West African Women, Courtney-Clarke succeeds in capturing the spirit of the women by experiencing their world from season to season and by respecting their values and traditions. Through photographs, interviews, and observations, Courtney-Clarke documents the Berber women as they stoically carry water and firewood on their backs for miles of rocky terrain. And she records the beauty they have magically produced in their lives - through their spinning and weaving and their carefully coiled pottery - a metaphor for survival and creativity. Geraldine Brooks, award-winning journalist and an expert on life in the Middle East, accompanied Courtney-Clarke on her last trip to North Africa, and has written moving, thoughtful essays on the struggle of existence among the Berbers. With a glossary of Berber terms and a detailed map of the region, this book is not only a handsomely illustrated volume of the triumph of the arts of the Berber women, but a dramatic record of a people yielding to the pressures of the twentieth century.