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In Proverb Masters: Shaping the Civil Rights Movement, author Raymond Summerville explores how proverbs and proverbial language played a significant role in the long civil rights era. Proverbs have been used throughout history to share and disseminate brief, powerful statements of truth and philosophical insight. Oftentimes, these sayings have helped unite people in struggles for social justice, serving as rallying cries for just causes. During the civil rights era, proverbs allowed leaders to craft powerful and evocative messages. These statements needed to be made implicitly, as explicit messages were often met with retaliation and even violence.Looking at the autobiographies, biographies, speeches, diaries, letters, and critical texts of Charles W. Chesnutt, Ida B. Wells, A. Philip Randolph, Bob Dylan, Malcom X, Stokely Carmichael, and Septima Clark, the volume analyzes how these figures employed proverbs in support of social justice causes and in civil rights struggles. Summerville argues that these individuals generated enough print material embedded with proverbs and proverbial language that they should be considered proverb masters. With chapters dedicated to each figure, Summerville reveals their adept uses of this powerful linguistic tool.

From our earliest years we have heard proverbs, and many of them are repeated without much thought. Yes, ‘birds of a feather flock together'and ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder', but these sayings are so familiar that we are scarcely aware they are proverbs. It has been so for thousands of years, in every culture. It is only when someone like Max Cryer takes the time to look at them that we can see how these ‘pearls of wisdom'have played such a key role in the moral guidance of every society. Sometimes the wisdom is distinctly odd, sometimes it has become outdated, and sometimes it is simply contradictory. After all, do ‘many hands make light work'or do ‘too many cooks spoil the broth'? You can't really have it both ways. In ‘Preposterous Proverbs', Max Cryer looks at a vast array of proverbs from around the world. Proverbs on birth, food, women and love rub shoulders with others on money, animals, sin and death. He has chosen some of the most interesting and perplexing, and with his characteristic wry wit he analyses their meaning and truth. A great book to dip into, ‘Preposterous Proverbs'will take you from Greece (‘A thousand men cannot undress a naked man') and China (‘A dry finger cannot pick up salt') to Japan (‘Fools and scissors must be carefully handled') and India (‘A fat spouse is a quilt for the winter').

The book to bring together a fascinating compendium of witticisms on women-more than 15,000 sayings from around the globe and translated from more than 240 languages.

Cover title.

The first book to bring together a fascinating compendium of witticisms on women-more than 15,000 sayings from around the globe and translated from more than 240 languages.

All cultures have proverbs that capsulize subjects simply and effectively. Many of these are cross-cultural. For example, according to a Danish proverb,'The greater the fear, the nearer the danger,'while a Latin proverb says,'The less there is of fear, the less there is danger.'This work includes over 20,000 proverbs from more than 120 languages, nationalities and ethnic groups. The proverbs are arranged under 1,300 headings (e.g., accidents, divided loyalty, marriage, prosperity, shame), and each includes the nationality, group or language in which it originated. Comprehensive keyword and subject indexes allow access to the material in multiple ways.