Africa

**Human Rights**
Woods, Donald. //Biko.// Subjected to 22 hours of interrogation, torture and beating by South African police on Sept. 6, 1977, Steve Biko died 6 days later. Donald Woods, Biko's close friend and a leading white South African newspaper editor, exposed the murder helping to ignite the black revolution.
 * Non-fiction**

Mathabane, Mark. //Kaffir Boy.// Recreates the author's boyhood experiences in South Africa.

//McCord, Margaret. The Calling of Katie Makanya.// A biography of Katie Makanya who was born at the height of Colonialism in South Africa in 1873, who worked as an interpreter for Dr. James McCord, a white doctor who had come to treat the Zulus, and who died at the age of 83 with apartheid firmly in place.

Fugard, Athol. //Blood Knot and Other Plays.// Presents 3 plays by South African playwright Athol Fugard, in which he explores close family relationships strained under by the harshest of economic and political conditions.
 * Drama**

Fugard, Athol. //My Children! My Africa!// An impatient black youth, his "old-fashioned," teacher, and a young white woman learn from each other about the human trauma that lies at the heart of South Africa's system of apartheid in 1984.

Fugard, Athol. //Statements : Sizwe Bansi is Dead ; The Island.// Presents 3 plays written in the early 1970s by South African dramatist Athol Fugard in which he explores life under the laws of apartheid.

Soyinka, Wole. //Death and the King's Horseman.// 1975 drama about Elesin, the chief horseman of the king of a Nigerian village who loses the respect of the villagers when he fails to take steps to follow his dead ruler into the afterlife.

Brink, André Philippus. //A Dry White Season.// In his quest for truth into the suicide of a black friend, a white schoolteacher finds officially condoned murder in Johannesburg, South Africa.
 * Fiction**

Courtenay, Bryce. //The Power of One.// The story of Peekay, an English boy living in South Africa during World War II who learns about prejudice and slavery through friendship.

Gien, Pamela. //The Syringa Tree : A Novel.// Young Elizabeth Grace, the privileged daughter of a part-Jewish doctor and his wife in South Africa in the 1960s, learns firsthand about the cruelties of apartheid when her beloved Xhosa nanny, Salamina, is forced to carry permission papers to enter white areas, and must hide her newborn baby from authorities.

Gordimer, Nadine. //The Lying Days.// Helen Shaw is the daughter of white middle-class parents in a small gold-mining town in South Africa. As Helen comes of age, so does her awareness grow of the African life around her. Her involvement, as a bohemian student, with young Africans leads her into complex relationships of emotion and action in a culture of dissension.

Paton, Alan. //Cry, the Beloved Country : A Story of Comfort in Desolation.// In search of missing family members, Zulu priest Stephen Kumalo leaves his South African village to traverse city of Johannesburg in the 1940s. With his sister turned prostitute, his brother turned labor protestor and his son, Absalom, arrested for the murder of a white man, Kumalo must grapple with how to bring his family back from the brink of destruction.

Naidoo, Beverley. //Out of Bounds : Seven Stories of Conflict and Hope.// - Seven stories, spanning the time period from 1948 to 2000, chronicle the experiences of young people from different races and ethnic groups as they try to cope with the restrictions placed on their lives by South Africa's apartheid laws.
 * Short Stories**

**Child Soldiers**
Beah, Ishmael. //A Long Way Gone : Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.// - In the more than fifty violent conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them." Ishmael Beah, now 26 years old, tells a story: at the age of 12, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By 13, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.
 * Non-fiction**

Iweala, Uzodinma. //Beasts of No Nation : A Novel.// Agu, a young boy in an unnamed West African nation, is discovered by guerrilla fighters after his mother and sister escape and his father is brutally murdered. He is then forced into becoming a soldier at the mercy of a treacherous terrorist leader.
 * Fiction**

Stratton, Allan. //Chanda's Wars.// Chandra Kabelo, a teenaged African girl, must save her younger siblings after they are kidnapped and forced to serve as child soldiers in General Mandiki's rebel army.

**Genocide**
Ilibagiza, Immaculée//. Left to Tell : Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust.// The true story of Immaculée Ilibagiza who endured the murder of her family as a result of genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and how she was able to later forgive those who had killed them.
 * Non-fiction**

Keane, Fergal. //Season of Blood.// Story of the author's journey into Rwanda in 1994 as part of a BBC team recording a documentary on the country's genocidal war, recalling the horrors of the conflict that resulted in the murder of up to one million Tutsis by the Hutus in only 100 days.

Combres, Elisabeth. //Broken Memory : A Novel of Rwanda.// Five-year-old Emma witnesses the brutal murder of her mother during the 1994 genocide massacres in Rwanda and seeks shelter with an aging Hutu woman; but years later when war ends, Emma's fears continue to haunt her as she finds the courage to begin her healing.
 * Fiction**

Jansen, Hanna. //Over a Thousand Hills I Walk with You.// Political troubles unleashed a torrent of violence upon the Tutsi ethnic group. Jeanne's family, all Tutsis, fled their home and tried desperately to reach safety. They--along with nearly 1 million others--did not survive. The only survivor of her family's massacre, Jeanne witnessed unspeakable acts. But through courage, wits, and sheer force of will, she survived.

Stratton, Allan.//Chanda's Secrets.// Chandra struggles with the deaths of those around her and the shame of being molested as she continues her education and cares for her siblings and friend Esther, amidst the poverty and AIDs epidemic that plague her African homeland.

Stassen, Jean-Philippe. //Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda.// A graphic novel that describes the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994 through the eyes of a boy named Deogratias, a Hutu, who is in love with Benigne, a Tutsi.

**Human Trafficking / Slavery**
Haskins, James. //Bound for America: The Forced Migration of Africans to the New World.// Discusses the European enslavement of Africans, including their capture, branding, conditions on slave ships, shipboard mutinies, and arrival in the Americas.
 * Non-fiction**

Lester, Julius. To Be a Slave. A compilation, selected from various sources and arranged chronologically, of the reminiscences of slaves and ex-slaves about their experiences from the leaving of Africa through the Civil War and into the early 20th century.

Fiction
Herbstein, Manu. //Brave Music of a Distant Drum.// Ama, a blind old slave woman, summons her son to write down her story so that her offspring can know their history, and though Ama's story is violent, it is also one **of** hope, courage, determination, and love.

Pate, Alexs. //Amistad.// A novelization of the film "Amistad," a fact-based story of the 1839 mutiny on board a Spanish slave ship,which resulted in a trial before the Supreme Court during which former American president John Quincy Adams argued in favor of freedom for the slaves.

**Refugees**
Marlowe, Jen. //Darfur Diaries : Stories of Survival.// In 2003, the Sudanese Liberation Army in Darfur took up arms against the Sudanese government. The government answered the rebellion with mass murder, rape and the wholesale destruction of villages, resulting in one of the world's largest humanitarian and political crises. Up to 2 million people were displaced; 400,000 people killed. In October and November, 2004, after watching woefully inadequate media coverage on the crisis in Darfur, a team of 3 independent filmmakers trekked to Darfurian refugee camps in eastern Chad and crept across the border into Darfur.
 * Non-fiction**

Dau, John. //Lost Boy, Lost Girl : Escaping Civil War in Sudan.// John Bul Dau and his wife, Martha, describe the hardships they experienced, including violence, famine, and war, while growing up in the Sudan and explain how they escaped the region to start a new life.

Deng, Benson. //They Poured Fire on us from the Sky : The True Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan.// Presents the stories of three young men who as children in the late 1980s were forced from their homes by war in the Sudan and traveled, along with thousands of other boys, nearly one thousand miles in search of refuge, surviving hunger, illness, and human and animal predators.

Akinti, Peter. //Forest Gate.// Teenagers James and Meina live in harsh conditions in a London community made up of Somalian refugees and recount the tragedies from the pasts while they seek out a new home. Includes a guide for reading groups and an essay by the author.
 * Fiction**

Akpan, Uwem. //Say You're One of Them.// A collection of short stories that celebrate the resilience and wisdom of children in third world countries. "My Parents' Bedroom" is a Rwandan girl's account of her family's struggles to maintain a facade of normalcy amid unspeakable acts. In "Fat­tening for Gabon ," a brother and sister cope with their uncle's attempt to sell them into slavery. "Luxurious Hearses" creates a microcosm of Africa within a busload of refugees and introduces us to a Muslim boy who summons his faith to bear a treacherous ride through Nigeria. "What Language Is That?" reveals the emotional toll of the Christian-Muslim conflict in Ethiopia through the eyes of childhood friends. Every story is a testament to the wisdom and resilience of children, even in the face of the most agonizing situations our planet can offer.

Coates, Jan L. //A Hare in the Elephant's Trunk.// Jacob Deng's young life is forever changed one night in 1987 when soldiers from the north invade his small village in Southern Sudan and, as he struggles to survive and escape the cycle of violence, he tries to remember his mother and her belief in the importance of education.

Cooney, Caroline. //Diamonds in the Shadow.// The Finches sponsor an African refugee family of 4, all of whom have been scarred by the horrors of civil war, and who inadvertently put their benefactors in harm's way.

Naido, Beverley. //The Other Side of Truth.// Smuggled out of Nigeria after their mother's murder, Sade and her younger brother are abandoned in London when their uncle fails to meet them at the airport and they are fearful of their new surroundings and of what may have happened to their journalist father back in Nigeria.

**Women's Rights**
Barnes, Virginia Lee. //Aman : The Story of a Somali Girl.// This is an intimate look at the girlhood of a 20th-century Somali. At eight, Aman was circumcised; at 13,she was married to an older man who attempted to deflower her with a knife. By 17 she had been raped, been divorced twice, borne two children, and lost one. Repeatedly, she ran from a culture that she both respected yet found too restrictive.
 * Non-fiction**

Dirie, Waris and Cathleen Miller. //Desert// // Flower : The Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad.// Supermodel Waris Dirie tells the story of her life, describing how she escaped from an arranged marriage at the age of thirteen and embarked upon a two-hundred-mile journey across the desert of Somalia in an adventure that eventually led her into a modeling career.

Nthunya, Mpho 'M'atsepo. //Singing Away the Hunger : The Autobiography of an African Woman.// A South African woman, tells about her life, providing a picture of conditions in the country over the years, and revealing the experiences of women who are bound by African traditions.

Dangarembga, Tsitsi. //Nervous Conditions.// Tambu, an adolescent girl living in colonial Rhodesia during the 1960s, tries to overcome her station in the patriarchal society of Zimbabwe and her allotted role as a woman by attending the missionary school run by her wealthy, British-educated uncle.
 * Fiction**

Emecheta, Buchi. //The Joys of Motherhood.// Nnu Ego, a hard-working, optimistic Ibo woman, remains fiercely determined to save her children from the devastation of war, the erosion of village life, and the breakdown of tradition.

Maraire, J. Nozipo Nkosana. //Zenzele : A Letter for My Daughter.// In an extraordinary novel--written as a letter from a Zimbabwean mother to her daughter, a student at Harvard--Maraire transforms the lessons of life into a lyrical narrative about love, war, separation, and the very meaning of being a woman.

Walker, Alice. //Possessing the Secret of Joy//. After submitting to the ritual genital mutilation her people practice, Tashi makes her way in the world, mourning the loss of sexual pleasure.

Williams, Michael. //Now is the Time for Running.// When soldiers attack a small village in Zimbabwe, Deo goes on the run with Innocent, his older, mentally disabled brother, carrying little but a leather soccer ball filled with money, and after facing prejudice, poverty, and tragedy, it is in soccer that Deo finds renewed hope.

Williams-Garcia, Rita. //No Laughter Here.// In Queens, New York, ten-year-old Akilah is determined to find out why her closest friend, Victoria, is silent and withdrawn after returning from a trip to her homeland, Nigeria.

**Environment**
Maathai, Wangari. //Unbowed : A Memoir.// From the first African woman--and the first environmentalist--to win the Noble Peace Prize comes her powerfully inspiring memoir. Founder of the Green Belt Movement Maathai recounts the obstacles and motivations that have guided her to lead a singularly uncommon life.
 * Non-fiction**

Fiction
Forester, C.S. //The African Queen.// Allnut and Rose, a disreputable Cockney and an English spinster missionary, wend their way down a river in Central Africa in a rickety, asthmatic steam launch, and are gradually joined together in a mission of retaliation against the Germans.

Watson, Christie. //Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away.// After her parents separate, Blessing's mother moves with her and her brother Ezikiel to live in a village in the Niger Delta, where Blessing gradually adjusts, but Ezikiel soon leads a dangerous life as a boy soldier. Also explores the damage done to the environment and to the people by the powerful international oil industry in league with the corrupt government.

**Imperialism**
McCord, Margaret. //The Calling of Katie Makanya : A Memoir of South Africa.// A biography of Katie Makanya who was born at the height of Colonialism in South Africa in 1873, who worked as an interpreter for Dr. James McCord, a white doctor who had come to treat the Zulus, and who died at the age of 83 with apartheid firmly in place.
 * Non-fiction**

Achebe, Chinua. //Things Fall Apart.// Set in an Ibo village in Nigeria, the novel recreates pre-Christian tribal life and shows how the coming of the white man led to the breaking up of the old ways.
 * Fiction**

Achebe, Chinua. //A Man of the People.// Foreshadows the Nigerian coups of 1966 and shows the color and vivacity as well as the violence and corruption of a society making its own way between the two worlds.

(Post Colonialism) Coetzee, J.M. //Waiting for the Barbarians.// A moving portrait of human anguish and nobility emerges in this tale of a civil servant who defies authority to follow the dictates of his own conscience in a remote outpost of a vastly oppressive empire.

Conrad, Joseph. //Heart of Darkness.// - Presents the classic novel by nineteenth-century British author Joseph Conrad about Marlow, an adventurer and seaman and his physical and psychological journey into Africa where he witnesses the brutality of the natives by white traders.

Kingsolver, Barbara. //The Poisonwood Bible.// In 1959, Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist, takes his 4 young daughters, his wife, and his mission to the Belgian Congo -- a place, he is sure, where he can save needy souls. But the seeds they plant bloom in tragic ways within this complex culture. Set against one of the most dramatic political events of the 20th century -- the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium and its devastating consequences that chronicles the disintegration of family and a nation.

Ngugi, James. //Devil on the Cross.// This remarkable and symbolic novel centers around Wariinga's tragedy and uses it to tell a story of contemporary Kenya faced with the "satan of capitalism." The novel was written secretly in prison on the only available material -- lavatory paper. It was discovered when almost complete.

Naipaul, V. S. //A Bend in the River.// In an African country that has suffered revolution and civil war and that is headed by a man of almost insane energy and crudity, one restless, reflective, and isolated villager and his friends uneasily submit to the tide of events.