Makeba: My Story

With freelance writer Hall, the well-known South African singer tells the story of her life from 1932 onward in the present tense. Daughter of a Xhosa father and a Swazi mother, she experienced many of the injustices of apartheid. Sponsored by Harry Belafonte (""Big Brother'') and introduced to America on the Ed Sullivan and Steve Allen television shows, she became famous as a concert and recording artist almost overnight and sang for President Kennedy and Emperor Haile Selassie. But the South African government invalidated her passport and she has never been able to return home. Here are both joyful and painful accounts of her four marriages, her daughter's mental breakdown, her career as Guinean ambassador to the U.N. General Assembly and her recent return to America on Paul Simon's Graceland. Makeba shows herself to be an indomitable woman who has ``hope, determination, and song.'' Photos not seen by PW. Literary Guild alternate. (January 26)