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nytephoenyx's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
4.25
Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom takes readers from his early years in Mvezo through his twenty-seven year imprisonment and finally to his inauguration. This memoir focuses on the struggle to end apartheid, but does not discuss Mandela’s time in South Africa’s government so if you are looking for a complete picture of his life, you will need to supplement your reading. This memoir is interesting in a few different ways.
Despite your feelings about Mandela as a person, it must be acknowledged that the movement he led was incredible. Not only did the ANC manage to overthrow apartheid, he led South Africa to a democratic system in a time when more African countries were replacing their colonist yokes with dictatorships. South Africa is still in a lot of turmoil – racial inequalities and government corruption still reigns. But the steps he took are important, and it was fascinating to read about his journey.
Long Walk to Freedom is not a traditional memoir – instead, the narrative comes from two parts: first, Mandela’s “prison diary” describing his life up to his time in Robben’s Prison. Everything afterward has been converted from interviews between Mandela and journalist Richard Stengel, who ghostwrote Long Walk to Freedom. The flow of the memoir is fantastic and consistent – you really can’t tell the shift, and Stengel did an excellent job humanizing Mandela, combining the facts of his life on a grand scheme with the small pieces of daily life. One moment, he will be relaying information about early negotiations with the government and the next, an antidote about Mandela’s taste in wine. It’s all fascinating, but incredibly accessible, too.
While Long Walk to Freedom is quite a long memoir, I found it excellent and well worth reading, especially if you want to better understand the dismantling of apartheid from a primary source. This is not a piece of objective non-fiction. It’s a memoir, so it’s incredibly biased. That said, I really think it’s worth a read! Nelson Mandela is an important historical figure and a Nobel laureate and there’s no better source of information about an influential individual’s life then his memoir.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation, Death, Gun violence, Hate crime, Police brutality, Violence, and War
Moderate: Child death and Death of parent
Minor: Car accident and Medical content
heatherdavies's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
3.75
"The momentousness of an occasion is lost in the welter of a thousand details"
I knew absolutely nothing about Nelson Mandela prior to this book. It is clear that he was a polarizing individual that ultimately was fighting for the rights of his people and then all people of South Africa to come together.
The book itself reads as an autobiography detailing Mandela's life. And as with memoirs of this nature some parts are dry, overly wordy, and contains more lists of names of people you may not know with or without context to back you up. And just like the direct quote from the book that I began with, I feel the thousand details impacted the story of his life and made it unengaging at times.
That being said if you are interested in South African history, Black history, the reality of apartheid- then of course this book would be a wonderful read.
While I believe he was being mostly honest throughout - keep in mind this is someone narrating their life as they want you to see and perhaps missing details that would alter perception.
I knew absolutely nothing about Nelson Mandela prior to this book. It is clear that he was a polarizing individual that ultimately was fighting for the rights of his people and then all people of South Africa to come together.
The book itself reads as an autobiography detailing Mandela's life. And as with memoirs of this nature some parts are dry, overly wordy, and contains more lists of names of people you may not know with or without context to back you up. And just like the direct quote from the book that I began with, I feel the thousand details impacted the story of his life and made it unengaging at times.
That being said if you are interested in South African history, Black history, the reality of apartheid- then of course this book would be a wonderful read.
While I believe he was being mostly honest throughout - keep in mind this is someone narrating their life as they want you to see and perhaps missing details that would alter perception.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Car accident, Colonisation, Confinement, Death of parent, Death, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Mass/school shootings, Medical content, Murder, Police brutality, Racism, War, and Violence
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