Africa Books

The Douglas-Hamilton's tell a fascinating yet often heartbreaking tale of the struggle to save Africa's elephants from ivory poachers, corrupt officials, governments, and an explosive human population, with great style, objectivity, elegance and passion. This is an important book that should be made into a film, for it encapsulates the conservation story as a whole - why we must try to save the wilderness that remains for the future of the planet.

The Douglas-Hamiltons tell an amazing story of their work on the ground and flying across every African country hosting elephants, to document the status of and threats to the species. The story and writing style is captivating; a constantly exciting adventure, hard to put down. This is a beautiful and incredibly informative account of the slaughter of elephants that went on and on for 20 years while conservationists stood by, bickered, and asked for more information. Eye-opening, heart-breaking, but ultimately the efforts of this heroic couple were essential in bringing Africa's elephants into the 21st century. The description of the vast wild landscapes and flying across Africa are wonderful. This story will capture your imagination. Highly recommended.

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley was born in Tugbakeh, Liberia. She and her family moved to the USA in 1991, during the early years of Liberia's civil war. In Before the Palm Could Bloom, Wesley writes vividly of those war years, of life in the time before, and of a future full of both uncertainty and hope.

Wesley's picturesque poems of village life-and particularly her description of village life (before and after the war) in Tugbakeh: A Song-illustrate how much we have lost because of the chaos in our country. Child Soldier, one of the most powerful poems in the collection-and the one from which the book's title comes-is a moving piece about real children who played chilling roles in the destruction that ultimately left over 200,000 dead. Throughout her book, Wesley writes with the authority and sensitivity of a survivor who is already thinking about the healing that must follow the violence. But not all her poems are full of sorrow and longing. They Say and Monrovia Women are timeless and humorous poems of Liberian women's experiences and perceived behavior. Some, like Big Ma, pay tribute to people Wesley knew. Still others uplift the spirit with plans for repatriation of Liberians from the diaspora. In the upbeat poem One of These Days, Wesley describes the great rejoicing that will take place when all the refugees return to their homeland. Homecoming, one of the last poems, is a bit more poignant in its plea: I don't want to be a stranger / when I come home. / Yes, I'm a wanderer, / a woman. / But I don't want to be a stranger / in my hometown.

Before the Palm Could Bloom is a beautiful collection of poems that, together, presents a complex Liberia-a part we may never know again, a part we never want to relive, and much that we yearn to recreate for future generations.

In Wesley�s poem "Outside Child," a man hands his wife a child wrapped in a blanket; the child is his, he says, and the wife is angry. "Where is this child�s mother?" she asks. This Liberian woman has been a dutiful wife, and she has cared for her own children, and this product of her husband�s philandering should not be her concern. But even as she is furious at the man, the "outside" child at her breast has won her over. She will care for this baby, "This thing that will rob her of heart and mind."
So seemed Patricia Jabbeh Wesley�s poetry at first glance: poems from outside my world. There are enough African words peppering these poems to merit a glossary at the back of the book. What is this place in Africa to me? I wondered as I began to read. What is this war to me?��it is so far away. But as soon as I looked into the faces of these poems, I cared desperately, and I knew that this war, like all wars, belongs to all of us. Though I am from Wesley�s adopted Michigan, land of maples and hickories and cedars, I hold to my breast these poems of the fertile land where kola nut trees and breadfruit trees and palms grow.
As the husband stands before the wife, awaiting the verdict, weeping, she sees him as "a tree after lightning has struck." Throughout this book borne of war-torn Liberia, we read of trees and people felled and uprooted, trees and women offering fruit and crops, trees taking over cities. Children should be running into the woods to play and harvest the fruits, but instead we children march off to war. The Liberian civil war (1989-1996) was famous for its induction of child soldiers, and Wesley brings us the heartbreak of the mothers of those babes with guns and "adjustable ammunition."
The war was unbearable, but the women and men and children who have survived did bear it and continue to bear their losses. There was so much death, according to the poem "War Children," that the ground would no longer accept the dead:
There is no burial ground anymore
In their shallow graves the corpses
dance Liberia�s cradles empty.
These poems, however, are not tales of despair. The war-torn landscape is brightened by Wesley�s love of village tradition and her joy in remembering the liveliness of Monrovia, as well as her honesty in depicting the more ordinary, ongoing battles of the male-female domestic situation. If the war will just end, these poems seem to say, we will grieve for a long time, but eventually the land will forgive us, the trees will grow and bloom again: the mango, the banana, the breadfruit, the kola nut, and especially the palm, for then the palm wine can flow for the people of Liberia, and all those who left will come home and be welcomed at the doors of their old homes. They will rejoice, as Wesley describes in the first stanza of "One of These Days:"
One of these days
there will be rejoicing
all over the place.
There will be so much shouting,
so much wailing,
so much dancing.
There�s going to be
such dancing
as we�ve never seen before.
There�s going to be a day
like that, I say,
and there�s no one
who will be able to stop us.

This book is a wonderful collection of tales told by Tunisian women, translated into English. While it is folklore, it is not for children--some of the tales are quite risqué! Highly recommended--but for adults!

Fun and easy reading. Challenges stereotypes and cliches one may have about women in muslim societies. This is the tale of tales which explores the oral tradition of a society's women to pass on stories of one's culture. By the telling stories -often "dissed" as old wives tales - of women in non-traditional roles, or sometimes ordinary roles, these tales validated and placed a value on the lives of many women in a society which tended to devalue their existence. Read and see how important that part of your growing up may have been. I liked the book and challenge you to find a reason to dislike it.

Travelled for work to Benin and this book was great for my hobnobbing over the weekends. It is also very well written, my parents, who were not travelling with me, read it too, just because it was so much fun to read. There are also details as to who you can contact in a certain town for good guids, which I'm sure is useful. I did not make use of this and regret it. Only negative, though you cannot really expect this from a travel book, is that the historical chapter is somewhat incorrect and over-simplifying, but for that you would better get a history book. All in all, a great purchase for anyone going to Benin.

Thank you Stuart Butler for your candor, insights, and helpful information for traveling in Benin. It is a beautiful country with warm, wonderful people. Your book helped prepare me for what to expect, what to avoid, and how to enjoy Benin to its fullest. I also appreciate the folk lore stories and actual historic events you described. I would highly recommend this travel guide as it contains dependable and realistic information. I will definitely look forward to you sharing more of your travel adventures in future travel guides.

The world's full of literary journals. Why read this one? If you want to know about the world, it's all on National Geographic, Discovery Channel, and CNN, isn't it? What possibly can a literary journal add?

Don't look for the answer in the Table of Contents. Look for it in the Author Bios. To take only a few of the 28 contributors: Razi Abedi is from Pakistan, Vasilis Afxentiou from Greece, Arlene Ang from Manila, Anjana Basu Calcutta, Richard Czujko South Africa, Viktor Car and Miroslav Kirin from Croatia, Raymond Ramcharitar from Trinidad. Several are from India, there's a handful are Yanks, plus assorted hangers-on from places in the world with no fixed address, apparently they just respond to "Occupant."

Some of their characters leave a track, some make a mark, some luxuriate in unearned reward, some crumple under the stubbornness of systems, some sing, some cry. Yet when the last shovel of dirt is spaded or the pyre done to embers, their little bundles of personality have vanished along with their fleeting, private histories, blips on a scale whose magnitude they or we may never know, their meaning incomplete because our comprehension is incomplete. This instant, too, is a short story.

More than mere characters are in these stories. We are, in that part of ourselves which is all humans. First we are a dream, then we are not, then we are again ("Sister Hanh" by Ly Lan), only this time vaporous angels, the angels of the keys, angels in the sense of "Mon ange te précédera"-My angel will precede you-the ignored part of our own relevance going ahead of us into the so-called future (A Feast of Crows" by KC Chase), preceding, going ahead of us, furthering us ahead of our pace ("The Long Journey" by Vasanthi Victor; "Jesus Christ Lord of Hosts Discovers Southern California" by Holly Day), while events of the hour play themselves out as if seemingly important in our monkey-brain salad-bar humanity heads ("Parking Ticket" by Norma Kitson). The carnival barker calls on ("Singing in the Wind" by Keith Smith).

In these stories.

In some tales is the taste of cultures gone rancid ("The Ngong Hills" by Rasik Shah and "London Through the Magic Eye" by Raymond Ramchartiar), scallop-shaped memories in white light ("The Lost Village"-Lang Lo in Vietnam-by Le Van Thao), the wire through which happiness flows ("The Burden of Grace" by Vasilis Afxentiou), the sense of life's undoing preordained ("Curses and Poetry" by Anjana Basu and "Diary of a Street Kid" by Fanuel Jongwe), this or that character blocked by not knowing their true worth ("Dalit Literature" by Rezi Abedi and "Spectacles" by Anjana Basu), others a tarantella of quick cuts as the burning finger of the past reaches their heels ("Snapshots of Elsewhere" by Raymond Ramchartiar). The shape of a woman created out of the galaxies ("A Betting Man" by Vallath Nandakumar). The gelatin temple of turning deeds into a brand name (Winnie Mandela portrayed in David Herman's "The Lady and the Tiger"; "The Transformation of Sleepy Hollow" by Richard Czujko).

Everything is real, their reality, even the phantasmagoric. Like the paintings of California Realist James Doolin, the "realism" in these stories is skewed in a way that what is seems always lunging forward at an angle, anything but static. A good story tells us of time; what it brings us to know within is untouched by time. These accounts are real, yes, close to the surface of here and now, but also deeper for their absence of self-interjection, the contrived just-so light and just-so exoticism of the TV Special. Nothing artificial, nothing fake, nothing held back. What you feel is not the author's work, it is your own feelings responding to the facts they set forth.

About half are fiction-or rather, reality with the clothes of character on-the rest non-fiction. Some are cryptic enough to be short-shorts. Most have a certain fabulistic air about them; all you have to do is change the humans to animals and you have Apulius' Golden Ass or Mr. Toad and friends. The usual baggage of reviewer lingo hovers uneasily near these pages. The stories are lives, not stories; circumstances, not contexts. In the lives on these pages, Levi-Strauss, F.R. Leavis, postmodernism, and semiotics are self-indulgent caricatures. When we know where fear comes from, we transect it. That's when the stairway appears before us.

This "Gowanus" anthology is an outstanding volume of third world writing. Reading many of the essays, short stories, and poetry was more than a joy, because you get the flavor of other places, a sense of the people, and new perspectives about what's happening in "real time" around the world. To be sure, a lot of these writers are unsung, but clearly enormously talented. This volume deserves nationwide exposure, and many of the writers here could make a lot of noise, if they are "discovered." I recommend this one! It's an exciting, turn-the-pages read.

This book is a wonderful description of how the Seichelles were 50 years ago. It tells the ultimate (real) adventure of a man who had the strenght to change completely his life, and decided to live remote somewhere in the Indian Ocean. This is a story which will carry You in a world apart, and that it will not be any more. It makes you think of what and how much we have lost in our day after day rat race.
Read and escape for a while. Buy as many copies as You can and make it read to your children before it is too late for them.

This book is an absolute blinder. For any body like myself who is interested in diving or travel it will enthraul, for anybody else just the mere excitement of the story and the histerical situations a bunch of half naked Sechelian men and one very confused westerner can get into will keep you on the edge of your seat throughout. You may be interested to know that "Beyond The Reefs" is infact a double book, also containing my favourite of his "Sharks For Sale". Some of the things in here like being puled along side a hooked 30 foot female great white have to be read to be believed. As I said this book is fantastic and if youv'e ever read something like the beach then this is sure if only superficialy to appeal. ORDER A COPY NOW! INFACT ORDER TWO OR THREE!

First, some disclosure - Tilley was the professor to introduce me to St. Augustine's work in a seminar at the University of Dayton, for which I am eternally grateful. So, naturally, I shall be a bit biased in her favor.

Having said that, this work is excellent on many levels. First, Tilley shows a exceptional knowledge of the Donatist heresy, both in terms of facts and also for the "feel" of Donatist piety. She presents very well the style of thinking and types of discourse that the Donatists used, and why it makes sense for them to have done so. Second, Tilley approaches the Donatists in an intellectually fair manner. On the one hand, she is not joining in the (oft-times polemical) attacks in the style of the orthodox writers, and on the other hand does not present the Donatist heresy as a group that can do no wrong (and thereby avoids the adulation given by some scholars to any movement with the word "heresy" attached to it). Third, by presenting the context (in history and culture) within which the Donatists existed, one comes away with a very helpful understanding of how Donatism fit into its time and place.

All in all, an excellent work. Anyone interested in St. Augustine, patristic-era church history, or heresy should have this book on his/her shelf.

I was impressed by Tilley's careful recovery of the tenets of Donatism from the polemics of its adversaries (including great Augustine). Donatism was a fourth century church which developed in Roman North Africa around Carthage in the aftermath of the Diocletian persecutions, watered by the blood of confessors of the faith, embarrassingly simultaneous with Constantine's legitimizing the more accommodating Latin church developing in the eastern Imperium. Carefully, by analyzing the polemics which contain the remnants of Donatist thought, Tilley reveals a strong Church which had not taken the establishment turn of the "Latin" church, and indeed stood against it even through the Vandal invasions, until it disappeared with the coming of Islam.

My sister and I read this book in preparation for a four month trip to africa, of which two months was spent on bikes. This book was the single most useful, common-sense guide we read in all of our preparation - both for biking, and just generally getting by in Africa. Really - read this!

This is the best handy-dandy guide to tour preparation that I have ever read (and I have probably read most of them). It is written with a wealth of experience behind the pearls of wisdom and that experience comes shining through on each section.

Concentrating on Africa, Mozer has outlined all of the things that have to be considered when preparing oneself and one's bicycle for a trip to a foreign country. In addition to covering the general prep, visas, inoculations, currency, etc., the author outlines how much one can benefit from experiencing the country on its terms rather than yours. I think he sums it up perfectly, with respect to Africa, when he says "...the essential difference between western and African culture is that Africans are concerned with the form of life and westerns dwell on the content."

Mozer uses a perfect blend of sensible advice and anecdotes in this easy to read manual. Whether or not you are planning an African tour, I think this manual is worth a read.

This book is a must for those who want an account of Black History in North America and the Caribbean. It really provides a foundation for you to view the Caribbean in different light and to understand why we are now where we are today. It is both informative and disturbing. This should be part of the National Curriculum in so many countries. The account Mr Segal gives on each Island is rewarding. I has a 'sense' of what I saw when I went to Martinique and the book provides firm facts which have enabled me to reflect on my journey and forthcoming journeys. If only more people from Europe and within the Islands read a book like this!!

Ronald Segal's book "The Black Diaspora" is an excellent historical and cultural account of African descendents living outside of Africa. This book is so smoothly written that it is impossible not to enjoy and learn a great deal from its pages. The format and flow are so well put together that Segal's many topics of discussion are beautifully linked with easy transitions. I loved this book and learned a huge amount about the black diaspora despite having read many, many other books on this same topic.

This is without a doubt the most logical of undercurrents, yet the most hidden aspect of slavery, surely obscured from history, and from the view of most white women. Few stop to think about it, and fewer still want to see the evidences of this reality. Yet, it may well be the essential part of slavery that women need to see because it is consistent with the reality that forms the emotionally charged fear that led to civil rights failures - the fear of retribution by the guilt and shame of men over the centuries of domination that could be the only possible reason for such heightened resistance to economic freedom. The passion not only to protect private stock, but also the possibility that their own women would be subject to such abuses is the only logical explanation of the fear that could have driven the giving of freedom and payment of minimal wages. The economics alone are insufficient to withstand scrutiny of reasons to perpetuate slavery sufficient to sustain a civil war.

I think the title is deceptive. When one sees "Black Women/White Men," one would think of a collaboration. In fact, if black women are mentioned first, one would think that they are leading the dynamic. However, none of this could possibly be said about the legalized rape of enslaved African-descent women. The subtitle is more appropriate; this could have just been called, "The Sexual Exploitation of Female Slaves."

Then again, that assumes that the author had this as a main theme. This book barely covers that theme at all. This book was about the oppression of African slaves, period, one aspect of which is legalized rape. Because sugar cane cultivation involves heavy lifting and uses of dangerous weapons, the slave trade in the Caribbean was highly gendered, and gendered toward men. So naturally, the author talks more of the abuse against slave men, reiterating the silliness of the book's title.

I was expecting this book to talk about the Sally Hemings and Thomas Jeffersons of the Caribbean and I imagine that most readers would imagine the same. However, that history was quickly summarized in one page in the middle of this book. I really think the author gave this book its deceptive title, dare I say it, in order to appear like he's discussing a "sexy" issue.

When I think about colonialism, I usually think of it as solely a British, French, and Spanish phenomenon. So I was intrigued to be reminded that the Danish had empiric aspirations as well. However, this book stated that the Danish were never heavily involved in settling the islands discussed. The Danish West Indies became the American Virgin Islands, so this is Black American history and should be recognized as such, especially for those interested in African-American history like myself.

The book is riddled with spelling errors. I am not sure if that arose due to the author's use of English as a second language or the limited resources of the press that printed this book. The author quotes ad nauseam to limited historians and hisotrical figures. Now, to his credit, maybe little has been written about these islands and their histories. Still, after awhile, it feels like the reader is getting a skewed and strikingly incomplete examination of the topic. The author compares the Danish Caribbean situation to its French counterpart in Saint Domigue (aka Haiti). However, he barely mentions anything about the islands' Spanish-speaking neighbors. Surely this is due to a lack of understanding of Spanish on the author's part. With Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic all in this same area, it seems like a major fallacy to exclude them in a comparative analysis.

I am glad this book exists. However, it is second-rate and I predict that it will disappoint many as I was.