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We Do Not Have Borders
Brief Summary
We Do Not Have Borders: Greater Somalia and the Predicaments of Belonging in Kenya.
Though often associated with foreigners and refugees, many Somalis have lived in Kenya for generations, in many cases since long before the founding of the country.
Despite their long residency, foreign and state officials and Kenyan citizens often perceive the Somali population to be a dangerous and alien presence in the country, and charges of civil and human rights abuses have mounted against them in recent years.
In We Do Not Have Borders, Keren Weitzberg examines the historical factors that led to this state of affairs. In the process, she challenges many of the most fundamental analytical categories, such as "tribe,” "race,” and "nation,” that have traditionally shaped African historiography.
Her interest in the ways in which Somali representations of the past and the present inform one another places her research at the intersection of the disciplines of history, political science, and anthropology.
Given tragic events in Kenya and the controversy surrounding al-Shabaab, We Do Not Have Borders has enormous historical and contemporary significance, and provides unique inroads into debates over globalization, African sovereignty, the resurgence of religion, and the multiple meanings of being African.
ISBN:9780821422595
Author:Keren Weitzberg
The Fate of Sudan The Origins and Con...
Brief Summary
The Fate of Sudan: The Origins and Consequences of a Flawed Peace Process.
In 2005, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) ended one of Africa's most devastating civil wars and set the stage for the partition of Sudan, Africa's largest country. One of the most important peace agreements in African history, it has had decisive consequences for the entire Horn of Africa.
Yet to date there has been little rigorous analysis as to why the parties signed the CPA, what strategies they adopted having signed the agreement, and the political consequences of state partition actually are.
In The Fate of Sudan, John Young argues forcefully that the birth of the independent state of Southern Sudan and the threat of further dismemberment of a rump northern Sudan are due to the failure of the approaches and ideologies of the main Sudanese parties, as well as a deeply flawed US-backed peace process that excludes civil society and rebel groups.
Written by an insider directly involved in the Sudanese election and referendum processes, and featuring a wealth of first-hand evidence, this is a crucial examination of a topic of intense political and media interest.
ISBN:9781780323251
Author:John Young
Little Leaders Bold Women in Black Hi...
Brief Summary
Featuring forty trailblazing black women in American history, Little Leaders educates and inspires as it relates true stories of breaking boundaries and achieving beyond expectations.
Illuminating text paired with irresistible illustrations bring to life both iconic and lesser-known female figures of Black history such as abolitionist Sojourner Truth, pilot Bessie Coleman, chemist Alice Ball, politician Shirley Chisholm, mathematician Katherine Johnson, poet Maya Angelou, and filmmaker Julie Dash. Among these biographies, readers will find heroes, role models, and everyday women who did extraordinary things - bold women whose actions and beliefs contributed to making the world better for generations of girls and women to come.
Whether they were putting pen to paper, soaring through the air or speaking up for the rights of others, the women profiled in these pages were all taking a stand against a world that didn't always accept them. The leaders in this book may be little, but they all did something big and amazing, inspiring generations to come.
ISBN:9781478999508
Author:Vashti Harrison
Sons Against Fathers
Brief Summary
Andrew entangles himself, at different periods of his life, with three women- Monica, Juliana and Anita. Each of whom has a child with him and each wants him for a husband to the exclusion of the other.
None of the children knows Andrew has any other child with any other woman elsewhere. Andrew gets married to Juliana, the mother of Esther his only daughter.
Anita, Samson’s mother, immigrates to Uganda during Samson’s infancy, where Samson, who has no idea is a Kenyan, grows up excels in studies in Uganda and gets a scholarship to Massachusetts institute of technology where Esther too goes after her own scholarship from Kenya. The two fall in, love, Esther conceives and the two plan to wed, unknown to their parents.
Juliana dies in Kenya, Andrew reaches out to Anita in Uganda their love is rekindled and they too plan to wed unknown to their children.
When the secret of the relationship among the characters pops out and neither man wants to leave his woman nor woman her man, the battle sons against fathers starts in earnest.
From cultural standpoints in rural Kenya, charismatic Christian’s retreats in Uganda, romantic liaisons in the USA, advocate. Client altercations in legal chambers and courtroom battles in Nairobi. The author weaves an unforgettable story which keeps the reader turning page after page to see who, between the son and the father is the victor as each man clings to his woman and woman to her man.
ISBN:9789966096098
Author:Leo Masore Nyangau
Longthroat Memoirs Soups Sex and Nige...
Brief Summary
One of the most enduring myths on the Nigerian Femme Fatale - mammy-water, 'winch' or husband-snatcher - has to do with the cooking of fish stew ... A woman can do what she likes with a man When She knows how to satisfy his appetite for food.
"Long throat Memoirs presents a sumptuous menu of essays about Nigerian food, lovingly presented by the nation's top epicurean writer. As well as a mouth-watering appraisal of the cultural politics and erotic’s of Nigerian cuisine, it is therefore a series of love letters to the Nigerian palate. From innovations in soup, fish as aphrodisiac and the powerful seductions of the yam, Long Throat Memoirs examines the complexities, the peculiarities, the meticulousness, and the tactility of Nigerian food.
Nigeria has a strong culture of oral storytelling, myth of creation, of imaginative traversing of worlds. Long Throat Memoirs collates some of those stories into at irresistible soup-pot, overexpressed in the flawless love language of appetite and nourishment. A sensuous testament on why, when and how Nigerians eat the food they love to eat; this book is a welcome addition to the global dining table of ideas.
ISBN:9781911115267
Author:Yemisi Aribisala
Arrows of rain
Brief Summary
An exposition of the raw side of human emotions as explored through one man's tormented life's experiences.
It seeks to expose the fallacies of the human condition while remaining real in its depiction of universal problems inflicted on postcolonial Africa.
ISBN:9780435906573
Author:Okey Ndibe
The Girl Who Saw Lions
Brief Summary
"BE STRONG MY ABELA." Orphaned by AIDS in Africa, Abela has a long journey ahead.
When Abela’s mother dies of Aids in their African village, she is left to face the lions of the world. Lions like her Uncle Thomas who has plans to sell her in Europe. Lions like his bitter white wife, whom he abandons with Abela. Abela is forced to stay indoors in a sunless London apartment, cooking and cleaning, and hopelessly dreaming of her African homeland.
Meanwhile, in a London suburb, Rosa is distraught when her mother tells her she wants to adopt a child. Rosa doesn’t want a sister or brother. Things were so good, why did they have to change?
Berlie Doherty tells parallel stories, each separate and compelling in their own right, but stories that eventually tangle together bringing a message of hope and what it means to be a family.
ISBN:9781596433779
Author:Berlie Doherty
Wrestling with the Devil A Prison Memoir
Brief Summary
Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s powerful prison memoir begins half an hour before his release on 12 December 1978. A year earlier, he recalls, armed police arrived at his home and took him to Kenya’s Kamiti Maximum Security Prison.
There, Ngugi lives in a block alongside other political prisoners, but he refuses to give in to the humiliation. He decides to write a novel in secret, on toilet paper – it is a book that will become his classic, Devil on the Cross.
Wrestling with the Devil is Ngugi’s unforgettable account of the drama and challenges of living under twenty-four-hour surveillance. He captures not only the pain caused by his isolation from his family, but also the spirit of defiance and the imaginative endeavors that allowed him to survive.
ISBN:9781784702243
Author:Ngugi wa Thiongo
The House of Hunger
Brief Summary
Marechera made an immediate impact with the publication of The House of Hunger. The novella and nine short stories, most of them set in Zimbabwe, symbolize both home and country as the 'house of hunger', the place of madness and violence and despair.
Marechera describes a world in which tenderness has long given way to the tactics of survival, and he does so in a style at once explosive and loaded with angry humor.
ISBN:9780435895983
Author:Dambudzo Marechera
The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemanti...
Brief Summary
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After
A riveting story of dislocation, survival, and the power of stories to break or save us.
Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were "thunder." In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years wandering through seven African countries, searching for safety--perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive.
When Clemantine was twelve, she and her sister were granted asylum in the United States, where she embarked on another journey--to excavate her past and, after years of being made to feel less than human, claim her individuality.
Raw, urgent, and bracingly original, The Girl Who Smiled Beads captures the true costs and aftershocks of war: what is forever destroyed; what can be repaired; the fragility of memory; the disorientation that comes of other people seeing you only as broken--thinking you need, and want, to be saved.
But it is about more than the brutality of war. It is about owning your experiences, about the life we create: intricately detailed, painful, beautiful, a work in progress.
Defining Moments in Black History
Brief Summary
The Most Defining Moments in Black History According to Dick Gregory.
With his trademark acerbic wit, incisive humor, and infectious paranoia, one of our foremost comedians and most politically engaged civil rights activists looks back at 100 key events from the complicated history of black America.
A friend of luminaries including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Medgar Evers, and the forebear of today’s popular black comics, including Larry Wilmore, W. Kamau Bell, Damon Young, and Trevor Noah, Dick Gregory has been a provocative and incisive cultural force for more than fifty years.
As an entertainer, he has always kept it indisputably real about race issues in America, fearlessly lacing laughter with hard truths. As a leading activist against injustice, he marched at Selma during the Civil Rights movement, organized student rallies to protest the Vietnam War; sat in at rallies for Native American and feminist rights; fought apartheid in South Africa; and participated in hunger strikes in support of Black Lives Matter.
In this collection of thoughtful, provocative essays, Gregory charts the complex and often obscured history of the African American experience. In his unapologetically candid voice, he moves from African ancestry and surviving the Middle Passage to the creation of the Jheri Curl, the enjoyment of bacon and everything pig, the headline-making shootings of black men, and the Black Lives Matter movement.
A captivating journey through time, The Most Defining Moments in Black History According to Dick Gregory explores historical movements such as The Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance, as well as cultural touchstones such as Sidney Poitier winning the Best Actor Oscar for Lilies in the Field and Billie Holiday releasing Strange Fruit.
An engaging look at black life that offers insightful commentary on the intricate history of the African American people, The Most Defining Moments in Black History According to Dick Gregory is an essential, no-holds-bar history lesson that will provoke, enlighten, and entertain.
ISBN:9780062448729
Author:Dick Gregory
Jungfrau and other short stories
Brief Summary
The Caine Prize for African Writing is Africa’s leading literary prize and is awarded to a short story by an African writer published in English, whether in Africa or elsewhere.
Each year the winning story and shortlisted entries are collected and published in one volume. This year’s winner is Mary Watson for Jungfrau.
The Caine Prize is a springboard for some of the best talent in African writing. Previous winners include Leila Aboulela, whose second novel was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2006, and Helon Habila and Segun Afolabi, whose novels are published by Penguin and Random House, respectively.
ISBN:9781904456629
Author:Mary Watson
The Palm Wine Drinkard
Brief Summary
When Amos Tutuola's first novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, appeared in 1952, it aroused exceptional worldwide interest. Drawing on the West African (Nigeria) Yoruba oral folktale tradition, Tutuola described the odyssey of a devoted palm-wine drinker through a nightmare of fantastic adventure.
Since then, The Palm-Wine Drinkard has been translated into more than 15 languages and has come to be regarded as a masterwork of one of Africa's most influential writers.
ISBN:9780571049967
Author:Amos Tutuola
The Devil That Danced on the Water by...
The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest.
Praised as "a shining example of what autobiography can be: harrowing, illuminating and thoughtful” (USA Today), Aminatta Forna’s intensely personal history is a passionate and vivid account of an idyllic childhood which became the stuff of nightmare. As a child she witnessed the upheavals of post-colonial Africa, danger, flight, the bitterness or exile in Britain and the terrible consequences of her dissident father’s stand against tyranny.
Mohamed Forna was a man of unimpeachable integrity and enchanting charisma. As Sierra Leone faced its future as a fledgling democracy, he was a new star in the political firmament, a man who had been one of the first black students to come to Britain after the war. He stole the heart of Aminatta’s mother to the dismay of her Presbyterian parents and returned with her to Sierra Leone.
But as Aminatta Forna shows with compelling clarity, the old Africa was torn apart by new ways of western parliamentary democracy, which gave birth only to dictatorships and corruption of hitherto undreamed-of magnitude. It was not long before Mohamed Forna languished in jail as a prisoner of conscience, and worse to follow.
Aminatta’s search for the truth that shaped both her childhood and the nation’s destiny began among the country’s elite and took her into the heart of rebel territory. Determined to break the silence surrounding her father’s fate, she ultimately uncovered a conspiracy that penetrated the highest reaches of government and forced the nation’s politicians and judiciary to confront their guilt.
The Devil that Danced on the Water is a book of pain and anger and sorrow, written with tremendous dignity and beautiful precision: a remarkable, and important, story of Africa.
Binti The Night Masquerade
Brief Summary
The concluding part of the highly-acclaimed science fiction trilogy that began with Nnedi Okorafor's Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning BINTI.
Binti has returned to her home planet, believing that the violence of the Meduse has been left behind. Unfortunately, although her people are peaceful on the whole, the same cannot be said for the Khoush, who fan the flames of their ancient rivalry with the Meduse.
Far from her village when the conflicts start, Binti hurries home, but anger and resentment has already claimed the lives of many close to her.
Once again it is up to Binti, and her intriguing new friend Mwinyi, to intervene--though the elders of her people do not entirely trust her motives--and try to prevent a war that could wipe out her people, once and for all.
Don't miss this essential concluding volume in the Binti trilogy.
ISBN:9780765393135
Author:Nnedi Okorafor
Radio Congo Signals of Hope from Afri...
Brief Summary
While poring over dust-caked pamphlets in the library, Ben Rawlence stumbles upon the photo of a lost city of colonial Congo--a glistening, modern metropolis built by huge tin mines and European capitalists. Today, that city, Manono, sits beyond the infamous "Triangle of Death,” in an area rarely reached by outsiders since war turned the country’s rivers to blood.
In this compelling debut, Rawlence sets out to gather the news from this ghost town in one of the most dangerous places in the world. Ignoring the advice of locals, reporters, and mercenaries, he travels by foot, motorbike, and canoe, taking his time and meeting the people who are rebuilding their homes with hope, faith, and nervous instinct.
We meet Benjamin, the kindly father of the most terrifying Mai Mai warlord; Leya, who happily gives up a good job in Zambia to return to her razed town; Colonel Ibrahim, a guerrilla turned army officer; the Lebanese cousins Mohammed and Mohammed, who oversee the remains of Manono’s great mine; the priest Jean-Baptiste, who explains the conjoined prices of beer and normality; and the talk-show host Mama Christine, who dispenses counsel and courage in equal measure.
From the "blood cheese” of Goma to the decaying city of Manono, Rawlence shares the real story of Congo during and after the war, and finds not just a lost city but the seeds of a peaceful future.
ISBN:9781851689651
Author:Ben Rawlence
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me An...
Brief Summary
Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck–impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her friends and coworkers with the sentence "Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I’ll shut up about it?”
Perhaps you want to know what Mindy thinks makes a great best friend (someone who will fill your prescription in the middle of the night), or what makes a great guy (one who is aware of all elderly people in any room at any time and acts accordingly), or what is the perfect amount of fame (so famous you can never get convicted of murder in a court of law), or how to maintain a trim figure (you will not find that information in these pages). If so, you’ve come to the right book, mostly!
In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, with several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls. Mindy Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door—not so much literally anywhere in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or Sri Lanka.
ISBN:9780307886262
Author:Mindy Kaling
Why Not Me
Brief Summary
From the author of the beloved New York Times bestselling book Is Everyone Hanging out without me? And the creator and star of The Mindy Project comes a collection of essays that are as hilarious and insightful as they are deeply personal.
In Why Not Me?, Kaling shares her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life, whether it's falling in love at work, seeking new friendships in lonely places, attempting to be the first person in history to lose weight without any behavior modification whatsoever, or most important, believing that you have a place in Hollywood when you're constantly reminded that no one looks like you.
In "How to Look Spectacular: A Starlet's Confessions", Kaling gives her tongue-in-cheek secrets for surefire on-camera beauty, ("Your natural hair color may be appropriate for your skin tone, but this isn't the land of appropriate-this is Hollywood, baby.
Out here, a dark-skinned woman s traditional hair color is honey blonde.")”Player" tells the story of Kaling being seduced and dumped by a female friend in L.A. ("I had been replaced by a younger model. And now they had matching bangs.") In "Unlikely Leading Lady", she muses on America's fixation with the weight of actresses, ("Most women we see onscreen are either so thin that they're walking clavicles or so huge that their only scenes involve them breaking furniture.") And in "Soup Snakes", Kaling spills some secrets on her relationship with her ex-boyfriend and close friend, B.J. Novak ("I will freely admit: my relationship with B.J. Novak is weird as hell.")
Mindy turns the anxieties, the glamour, and the celebrations of her second coming-of-age into a laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays that anyone who's ever been at a turning point in their life or career can relate to. And those who've never been at a turning point can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper.
ISBN:9780804138161
Author:Mindy Kaling
Edge of Chaos Why Democracy Is Failin...
From an internationally acclaimed economist, a provocative call to jump-start economic growth by aggressively overhauling liberal democracy.
Edge of Chaos: Why Democracy Is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth and How to Fix It.
Around the world, people who are angry at stagnant wages and growing inequality have rebelled against established governments and turned to political extremes. Liberal democracy, history's greatest engine of growth, now struggles to overcome unprecedented economic headwinds--from aging populations to scarce resources to unsustainable debt burdens. Hobbled by short-term thinking and ideological dogma, democracies risk falling prey to nationalism and protectionism that will deliver declining living standards.
In Edge of Chaos, Dambisa Moyo shows why economic growth is essential to global stability, and why liberal democracies are failing to produce it today. Rather than turning away from democracy, she argues, we must fundamentally reform it. Edge of Chaos presents a radical blueprint for change in order to galvanize growth and ensure the survival of democracy in the twenty-first century.
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
Brief Summary
Fifteen years old and blazing with the hope of a better life, Hattie Shepherd fled the horror of the American South on a dawn train bound for Philadelphia.
Hattie’s is a tale of strength, of resilience and heartbreak that spans six decades. Her American dream is shattered time and again: a husband who lies and cheats and nine children raised in a cramped little house that was only ever supposed to be temporary.
She keeps the children alive with sheer will and not an ounce of the affection they crave. She knows they don’t think her a kind woman ? but how could they understand that all the love she had was used up in feeding them and clothing them.
How do you prepare your children for a world you know is cruel?
The lives of this unforgettable family form a searing portrait of twentieth century America. From the revivalist tents of Alabama to Vietnam, to the black middle-class enclave in the heart of the city, to a filthy bar in the ghetto, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is an extraordinary, distinctive novel about the guilt, sacrifice, responsibility and heartbreak that are an intrinsic part of ferocious love.
ISBN:9780099558705
Author:Ayana Mathis