Showing posts with label africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label africa. Show all posts

Wind, Sand and Stars Review

Wind, Sand and Stars
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Antoine de Saint-Exupery was one of the most interesting figures of 20th century literature. He wrote The Little Prince, a children's book that sold 200,000 copies in the U.S. alone in one year several years ago, and was also the author of several novels and memoirs, all relating to flying, of which this is one. The author was MIA over his beloved France while flying for the Free French Air Force in 1944 (after having to argue to be allowed to fly in combat; he was considered a national treasure). It appears the site of the wreck was discovered in the water just off the Riviera a couple of years ago, though no one's certain.
Wind, Sand and Stars is a recounting of several episodes in Saint-Exupery's life as a pilot, told to illustrate his view of the world, and especially his opinions of what makes life worth living, and who we are or should be. He was a wonderfully insightful individual, and his prose and ideas are the sort of thing you'll carry with you for years. I would highly recommend this book.

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Out of Africa (Modern Library) Review

Out of Africa (Modern Library)
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Isak Dinesen, nee Karen Blixen, lived in East Africa for almost twenty years making a living as the proprietor of a coffee plantation. Out of Africa is a memoir of her experiences there. But the book is so much more.
The stories are interesting to be sure. They relate to the plantation or the people and events that one way or another impacted her life there. But it is Blixen's writing that I found so sublime. I have never read anything like it. The way Blixen turns a phrase is both lyrical and enchanting all at once - you become literally swept up in the words and imagery. It is obvilious that Blixen loved Africa - something about the continent got under her skin. In a similar fashion her words have gotten under mine. I have read Out of Africa several times; each time I marvel at the beautiful language she uses. Read this book and I am sure you will feel the same way.

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The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from The Tempest to Tarzan Review

The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from The Tempest to Tarzan
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An incredibly brilliant challenge to assumptions long held by clueless white males. The patriarchal agendas of eurocentrism are here interrogated by an awe-inspiring intelligence. This is an important book, one that is a must read for those of us on the front lines combatting stereotypes.

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Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic BookCheyfitz charts the course of American imperialism from the arrival of Europeans in a New World open for material and rhetorical cultivation to the violent foreign ventures of twentieth-century America in a Third World judged equally in need of cultural translation. Passionately and provocatively, he reads James Fenimore Cooper and Leslie Marmon Silko, Frederick Douglass, and Edgar Rice Burroughs within and against the imperial framework.At the center of the book is Shakespeare's "Tempest," at once transfiguring the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown and prefiguring much of American literature. In a new, final chapter, Cheyfitz reaches back to the representations of Native Americans produced by the English decades before the establishment of the Jamestown colony.


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Wangari's Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa Review

Wangari's Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa
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"The earth was naked. For me the mission was to try to cover it with green." - Wangari Maathai
Growing up in the shadow of Mount Kenya in Africa, Wangari is surrounded by an umbrella of green trees. The trees protect the birds, provide firewood to the women of the village and help keep the soil rich for the sweet potatoes, sugarcane and maize Wangari helps to harvest.
Wangari travels to America for school, but when she returns six years later, the trees are gone. No crops grow, the birds are gone and the women have to travel far distances to find firewood. On World Environment Day in 1977, Wangari plants nine seedlings in her backyard and begins the Green Belt Movement which, over the next 27 years, plants thirty million trees across Africa.
Wangari's Trees of Peace: a true story from Africa is the story of one woman's effort to return green to Africa. Told in Jeanette Winter's simple language and blocky, colorful illustrations, Wangari's Trees of Peace is wonderful means to introduce 3-to-7-year- olds to environmentalism, the interconnected nature of ecosystems and political activitism. It also introduces some difficult subjects that may make some children and parents uncomfortable: prejudice ("Women can't do this"), violence ("Wangari blocks their way, so they hit her with clubs") and imprisonment ("They call her a troublemaker and put her in jail").
While Winter's tale simplifies Wangari's story to a basic level, it carries within it an important message, that one person can make a difference. Wangari's simple act of planting a tree translates to an important environmental movement and Wangari receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. Children are innate idealists and it is never too early to foster their belief that they can achieve anything.
In keeping with the environmental nature of Wangari's Trees of Peace, the book is printed on 100 percent recycled paper with 50 percent post-consumer waste.
Armchair Interviews says: Book both educates and entertains.

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Living in Hope and History: Notes from Our Century Review

Living in Hope and History: Notes from Our Century
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A compilation of essays by Ms. Gordimer not to be overlooked by those of us "burnt out" on societal issues...or even personal issues. A heartfull of optimism and honesty that I found refreshing. I read this while walking my daily treadmills at the gym after my daily treadmills at my job. Often feeling weary of life's struggles, I choose to look at others's woes for distraction (usually the newspaper). Reading her thoughts and essays I couldn't help but be inspired not only by her optimism and honesty and her unflagging belief and value in people, but also her analytic mind. She's obviously not afraid to think deeply about peoples and is not afraid to "get personal". I read the book late last year and will probably pick it up again or another of hers. I quit my 19 years of successful employment in the private sector and am now considering non-profit work, thanks to Ms. Gordimer and others like her.

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Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora Review

Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora
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Stephanie Smallwood has written a book entitled "Saltwater Slavery" that aims, as she says, to provide a linear analysis of the commodification process that transformed Africans into slaves. Her focus is on enslavement in the Gold Coast and trans-Atlantic trade during the 17th and early 18th centuries.
The book is broken into three sections - Capture and enslavement in the Gold Coast, transformation from human to commodity, and the African Diaspora in America. The first section is necessarily short and merely sets the tone for Smallwood's argument - that the enslavement process was a matter of commodifying humans into marketable objects.
The second section, the commodification of these people into objects, is well researched and eminently readable. Smallwood is especially powerful when evoking images of the horrors that individuals underwent during the process.
The third section, the African Diaspora, is also short and to the point, but does not benefit Smallwood's argument as much as the first two sections do.
Overall, this is a good book, but has some minor flaws - first, the Diaspora section is (as previously mentioned) a little weak, and the fact that Smallwood focuses on the Trans-Atlantic Commerce between the Gold Coast and the British Caribbean leaves something to be desired, since both Virginia & South Carolina were important colonies that had slaves during this period, but are largely omitted from the work.

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They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan Review

They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan
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In a land where family life was everything and the most fearsome thing was a prowling hyena or lion, fire suddenly exploded from the sky. THEY POURED FIRE ON US FROM THE SKY is the vivid description of the war in southern Sudan as seen through the eyes of three little boys, Benson, Benjamin and Alephonsion - who suddenly became homeless orphans and were forced to trek across Sudan to Kenya and Ethiopia without food or water. No longer having a father to frighten away the animals or a mother to prepare food, these five-year-old boys had to figure out how to survive. In addition to the horrors brought on by nature in the form of heat, no water, no food, hunting animals, biting snakes and insects, they soon discovered that people were not very nice to boys traveling alone. Frequently their food, clothing and blankets were taken from them or they were beaten and driven away. Even their own soldiers mistreated them and they found that after surviving so much and traveling so far, they were not exactly welcome in Kenya or Ethiopia. But survive they did to come to the United States to begin life anew.
This gut-wrenching book is a real page-turner and I found myself unable to put it down, even when the stories brought tears and indescribable anger. It was a real eye-opener to read of United Nations aid gone astray as locals took the best for themselves and left the refugees starving. There were, of course, the good people who helped the refugees with food and transportation and even lost their jobs because of it. If you never believed that war could change ordinary people into selfish monsters, then this is the book for you. The book is well written, flows well, and the transitions are so smooth that sometimes I found myself going back to the beginning of the chapter to see which lost boy was telling this particular portion of the story. There were amusing sections such as when the boys were preparing to go the US and they were attempting to learn about flushing toilets. One of them didn't remember what the book instructions said and managed to flood the restroom at the airport terminal. The things we take for granted get a new life when viewed through these boys' eyes. I recommend this book for everyone in America.
Reviewed by alice Holman
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers


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