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Into Africa: Intercultural Insights
by Yale Richmond and Phyllis Gestrin
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Publisher: Intercultural Press
Pub. Date: September 1998
ISBN-13: 9781877864575
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Nonfiction. Into Africa provides valuable intercultural insights for those who are interested in doing business or working with organizations in sub-Saharan Africa, for professors of African studies, for trainers and development assistance professionals, and for anyone else who wishes to learn more about this dynamic part of the world. The authors examine the significance of community, ethnicity, language, contemporary African society, doing business and establishing professional relationships. They follow this with an exploration of regional differences and then offer detailed guidelines for conducting workshops and training programs in Africa. Also included is a chapter called “Africans, Americans, and African Americans,” in which the authors examine issues which reflect the complex interrelationships involved. |
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Do They Hear You When You Cry
by: Fauziya Kassindja, Layli Miller Bashir,
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Publisher: Dell Publishing
Pub. Date: January 1999
ISBN-13: 9780385319942 |
| Nonfiction. For Fauziya Kassindja, an idyllic childhood in Togo, West Africa, sheltered from the tribal practices of polygamy and genital mutilation, ended with her beloved father's sudden death. Forced into an arranged marriage at age seventeen, Fauziya was told to prepare for kakia, the ritual also known as female genital mutilation. It is a ritual no woman can refuse. But Fauziya dared to try. This is her story—told in her own words—of fleeing Africa just hours before the ritual kakia was to take place, of seeking asylum in America only to be locked up in U.S. prisons, and of meeting Layli Miller Bashir, a law student who became Fauziya's friend and advocate during her horrifying sixteen months behind bars. Layli enlisted help from Karen Musalo, an expert in refugee law and acting director of the American University International Human Rights Clinic. In addition to devoting her own considerable efforts to the case, Musalo assembled a team to fight with her on Fauziya's behalf. Ultimately, in a landmark decision in immigration history, Fauziya Kassindja was granted asylum on June 13, 1996. |
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Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad
by Waris Dirie and Cathleen Miller
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Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Pub. Date: October 1999
ISBN-13: 9780688172374 |
| Nonfiction. Waris was born into a traditional Somali family, desert nomads who engaged in such ancient and antiquated customs as genital mutilation and arranged marriage. At twelve, she fled an arranged marriage and traveled alone across the dangerous Somali desert to Mogadishu -- the first leg of an emotional journey that would take her to London as a house servant, around the world as a fashion model, and eventually to America, where she would find peace in motherhood and humanitarian work for the U.N. Today, as Special Ambassador for the U.N., she travels the world speaking out against the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation, promoting women's reproductive rights, and educating people about the Africa she fled -- but still deeply loves. |
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Born in the Big Rains: A Memoir of Somalia and Survival
by Fadumo Korn
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Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Pub. Date: September 2006
ISBN-13: 9781558615311 |
| Nonfiction. This powerful memoir portrays the life-altering transformation of a feisty nomad girl who undergoes genital excision. Crippled with rheumatism as a result of the cutting, Fadumo Korn, who once freely roamed the deserts of her native Somalia, is sent to live with a wealthy uncle, brother to the Somali president. She enters a world of luxury underpinned with political instability and cruelty, but receives an invaluable education. Korn eventually moves to Germany for therapy and recounts her life there-her marriage, the birth of her son, and her involvement in the movement to end genital cutting-with warm and inspiring humor. |
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Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda
by Scott Peterson
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Publisher: Taylor & Francis, Inc.
Pub. Date: August 2001
ISBN-13: 9780415930635
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| Nonfiction. As a foreign correspondent, Scott Peterson witnessed firsthand Somalia's descent into war and its battle against US troops, the spiritual degeneration of Sudan's Holy War, and one of the most horrific events of the last half century: the genocide in Rwanda. In Me Against My Brother, he brings these events together for the first time to record a collapse that has had an impact far beyond African borders. In Somalia, Peterson tells of harrowing experiences of clan conflict, guns and starvation. In Rwanda, his first-person experience of the genocide and well-documented analysis provide rare insight into this human tragedy. Filled with the dust, sweat and powerful detail of real-life, Me Against My Brother graphically illustrates how preventive action and a better understanding of Africa-especially by the US-could have averted much suffering. |
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Into the House of the Ancestors: Inside the New Africa
by Karl Maier
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Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
Pub. Date: February 1999
ISBN-13: 9780471295839 |
| Nonfiction. Although many books have portrayed the problems of today's Africa, Maier takes a more hopeful view. His aim is not to sanitize the image of sub-Saharan Africa but to "celebrate the spirit" of ordinary people striving to better their world. Thus he describes trailblazers like a Ghanaian sociologist working to help the elderly, and he explains how Mozambique's once socialist government adapted to the spirit claims of traditional chiefs and healers. Taking issue with the widespread pessimistic view of "coming anarchy," he notes that a country like Sierra Leone has had democratic elections rather than descending into chaos. Yet Maier's sobering portrait of Rwanda acknowledges only a slim hope for peace and justice, and he laments the unrealized potential of behemoth Nigeria. (Publishers Weekly) |
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Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe
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Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Pub. Date: September 1994
ISBN-13: 9780385474542 |
| Nonfiction. The famed Nigerian novelist views literature as a medium that can help Africa regain a belief in itself to replace a posture of self-abasement instilled by its traumatic historical encounter with the West. Tributes to novelists Amos Tutuola and Kofi Awoonor, as well as discerning appraisals of writers such as V. S. Naipaul and James Baldwin, reflect his belief in the power of fiction to give us a ``handle on reality.'' Overall, these concise essays deliver a forceful commentary on Afro-American life and letters. Summing up Nigeria's recent sociopolitical history as ``a snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory,'' Achebe calls active participation in the political process a prerequisite for his country's, and Africa's, regeneration. (Publishers Weekly) |
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Arrow of God
by Chinua Achebe
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Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Pub. Date: January 1989
ISBN-13: 9780385014809 |
Nonfiction. Set in the Ibo heartland of eastern Nigeria, one of Africa's best-known writers describes the conflict between old and new in its most poignant aspect: the personal struggle between father and son. |
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Ake: The Years of Childhood
by Wole Soyinka
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Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Pub. Date: October 1989
ISBN-13: 9780679725404 |
| Nonfiction. Aké: The Years of Childhood is a memoir of stunning beauty, humor, and perception--a lyrical account of one boy's attempt to grasp the often irrational and hypocritical world of adults that equally repels and seduces him. Soyinka elevates brief anecdotes into history lessons, conversations into morality plays, memories into awakenings. Various cultures, religions, and languages mingled freely in the Aké of his youth, fostering endless contradictions and personalized hybrids, particularly when it comes to religion. --Shawn Carkonen for amazon.com |
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To My Children’s Children
by Sindiwe Magona
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Publisher: Interlink Publishing Group, Incorporated
Pub. Date: May 1994
ISBN-13: 9781566561631 |
| Nonfiction. This powerful and widely acclaimed autobiography of Sindiwe Magona's early years in South Africa, announced the arrival of a major new black writer. Here she gives an account of her eventful first 23 years and tells a candid, unself-pitying story of triumph and endurance in the face of hardships relentlessly reinforced by the apartheid system. |
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