The Color of a Lion's Eye: Memories of Africa

These twenty-four vignettes about a woman's sojourn as a Peace Corps worker in Malawi and Niger, Africa place the author among the best writers of contemporary travel literature. With heightened awareness of her surroundings, including a description of a period of drought and a poignant sketch about rain, Bonin records her experiences in Africa with a keen eye for description and human behavior in a style that reflects an expanding worldview. Vignettes range from "The New Hedonism, African Style" (a beauty parlor experience in Malawi) to unusual Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations in a foreign environment. She concludes her experiences with a sketch about the color of a lion's eye in Le Jardin Zoologique, an African zoo. The interconnected vignettes are reminiscent of the charming description and characterizations in essays of D. H. Lawrence's Mornings in Mexico.