SOURCE: A review of Voices in the Whirlwind and Other Essays, in Notes and Queries, Vol. 22, No. 8, August, 1975, pp. 383-84.

In the following review, Rive offers qualified praise for Mphahlele's Voices in the Whirlwind and Other Essays.

The main essay in this collection, [Voices in the Whirlwind and Other Essays,] by the South African writer and academic in exile, Dr. Ezekiel Mphahlele, is “Voices in the Whirlwind”, which stretches over more than half the book and is concerned with the meaning and function of poetry born out of a situation of political controversy and conflict found in the world of the black poet today. The author is at present lecturing in English literature at the University of Denver, Colorado, so is therefore in a strategic position to view how both the black American and African poets seek to answer that question, and to what extent, if any, socio-economic...