African Dolls for Play and Magic

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

The dolls of Africa are both magical and ordinary objects: they
supposedly ensure the fertility of women who believe in them, while at
the same time, as in every other culture, they act as educational
playthings for children—in particular, to prepare young girls,
physically and emotionally, for their future roles as mothers and wives.
The difference between the dolls used for play and those used to make
magic is not always clear; one can become the other.

This outsize paperback is a gallery of the many dolls of Africa,
including those that are phallic symbols. Dolls originating in 74
different ethnic groups are illustrated in powerful black-and-white
photographs, with a bilingual English/French commentary identifying the
ethnic group to which each doll belongs, the materials of which it is
constructed, its size, and its purpose where known. The study intends to
demonstrate the universality of dolls and to provide a general view of
their role and value to African societies driven by and rooted in the
fertility cult.