Onward: A Photobiography of African-American Polar Explorer Matthew Henson (review)

The photobiography series has chronicled explorers from Ernest Shackleton (Kostyal's Trial by Ice, BCCB 12/99) to Edmund Hillary (Coburn's Triumph on Everest, BCCB 9/00), and now author Dolores Johnson takes its focus to Matthew Henson, the right-hand man of Robert Peary in exploring the Arctic and reaching the North Pole. The book traces Henson's life from his youth as the son of hard-working sharecroppers and his teenaged sea travels as a cabin boy to his fateful hiring by Robert Peary as manservant on Peary's 1887 South American journey. Hooked on the advantages and pleasures of exploring, Henson then rejoined Peary on subsequent trips to the Arctic, including the 1909 finding of the North Pole. Johnson puts Henson's unusual professional direction into historical context, intimating that the rigors of the Arctic were preferable to the burdens of urban racism, and she also demonstrates the substantive nature of Henson's contributions, which were devalued at the time and have subsequently been officially acknowledged. The examination of the expeditions' relationship (and often relations, with both Henson and Peary fathering children with Inuit women) with the locals is less textured, but the significance of the Inuit contribution to the exploration is nonetheless made clear. Maps and photographs, including images of the obligingly photogenic Henson, add visual impact; some captions tip into romanticism or become slightly confusing, but they often include helpful additional information as well. This will be an inviting story of exploration as well as a thought-provoking account of an unusual life. End matter includes a timeline, a bibliography and scanty list of non-book resources, endnotes, and an index.