Memoirs: Africa

"When Robyn Scott 's parents decide to uproot their young family from New Zealand and move to a converted cowshed in rural Botswana, life for six-year-old Robyn changed forever. In this wild and new landscape excitement can be found around every corner, and with each misadventure she and her family learn more about the quirks, charms, and challenges of living in one of Africa's most remarkable and beautiful countries as it stands on the brink of an epidemic. When AIDS rears its head, the Scotts witness the early appearances of a disease that will devastate this peaceful and prosperous country." - Penguin.com

“This memoir of an Egyptian Jewish family’s gradual ruin is told without melodrama by its youngest survivor.” (The New Yorker )

"Walking Through Fire is the second volume of Nawal El Saadawi’s autobiography, the story of her extraordinary adult life. We read of her work as a rural doctor, her attempts to set up women's organizations and to publish magazines and exile after her name appeared on a death list." (Amazon)

"[Dinesen] gives a true account of her life on her plantation in Kenya. She tells with classic simplicity of the ways of the country and the natives: of the beauty of the Ngong Hills and coffee trees in blossom: of her guests, from the Prince of Wales to Knudsen, the old charcoal burner, who visited her: of primitive festivals: of big game that were her near neighbors--lions, rhinos, elephants, zebras, buffaloes." (Publisher)

A compelling and unique autobiography by an African woman with little formal education, less privilege, and almost no experience of books or writing. Mpho's is a voice almost never heard in literature or history, a voice from within the struggle of "ordinary" African women to negotiate a world which incorporates ancient pastoral ways and the congestion, brutality, and racist violence of city life. It is also the voice of a born storyteller who has a subject worthy of her gifts--a story for all the world to hear.

"Among Cooper's aims in becoming a journalist were to reveal the atrocities committed in her native country. With amazing forthrightness, she has done so, delivering an eloquent, if painful, history of the African migratory experience." (Ms. Magazine)

"Searing war-torn memories from a visionary African peacekeeper and women’s-rights activist….Gbowee stands responsible for what began as a tireless vocal demonstration and soon escalated to a standoff on the Presidential Mansion steps demanding peace. This course of action facilitated the war’s end in 2003 and the election of Africa’s first female president...." (Kirkus)

"Korn's remarkable memoir traces her steps from her childhood as part of a nomadic tribe in Somalia, to her position as a spokesperson against FGM--female genital mutilation. She herself was circumcised." (Booklist)

"In this powerful account of growing up black in South Africa, a young writer makes us feel intensely the horrors of apartheid." (Publishers Weekly)

Albert Luthuli is one of South Africa’s most admired political leaders, comparable in moral stature and international acclaim to Nelson Mandela. In 1960, Dr Luthuli was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the first South African ever. Grandson of a Chief, he was a school teacher before he in turn became Chief and eventually president of the ANC. In Let my people go he tells his own story, which is also the story of the ANC, from the Defiance Campaign, the drawing up of the Freedom Charter and the Treason Trial to the Alexandra bus boycott and the 1959 potato boycott up to the tragedies of Sharpeville, Langa and Nyanga. (David Krut Publishing)

"The famously taciturn South African president reveals much of himself in Long Walk to Freedom. A good deal of this autobiography was written secretly while Mandela was imprisoned." (Amazon)

"The Sandra Laing case made international news as an example of South Africa's apartheid at its nuttiest, when, in 1966, the nine-year-old Laing, who was significantly darker than her white-skinned parents, was reclassified as Coloured and expelled from the white school she was attending." (Publishers Weekly)

"Writing with BBC correspondent Lewis (Slave), Bashir, a physician and refugee living in London, offers a vivid personal portrait of life in the Darfur region of Sudan before the catastrophe." (Publishers Weekly)

"Raised by Sudan's Dinka tribe, the Deng brothers and their cousin Benjamin were all under the age of seven when they left their homes after terrifying attacks on their villages during the Sudanese civil war. In 2001, the three were relocated to the U.S. from Kenya's Kakuma refugee camp as part of an international refugee relief program." (Publishers Weekly)

"Daoud, a Zaghawa tribesman in northern Darfur, fled his village, which was under attack by Sudanese militiamen, in 2003. Daoud fought back in his efforts as a translator to help document the carnage in his native land." (Booklist)

"Fauziya Kassindja describes her upbringing in a small Western Africa village as "part modern, part traditional, and Muslim throughout." Her Muslim father did not force his daughters to wear veils and encouraged their individualism. Most importantly, Kassindja's father instilled in her a distrust and fear of female circumcision, a controversial procedure still performed in many parts of the world." (Amazon)

"Set against the backdrop of the Rhodesian civil war, St. John's memoir of growing up on a farm and game preserve in the 1970s deftly conjures up the smells and sounds of the African bush and the era's climate of unashamed racism and feverish patriotism." (Publishers Weekly)

"The book opens with Meldrum's 2003 expulsion from the country that had become Zimbabwe; he'd butted heads with Mugabe's regime for 20-plus years, during which time he wrote a spate of articles exposing various facets of the president's murderous, corrupt regime." (Publishers Weekly)

"In this exquisitely written, deeply moving account of the death of a father played out against the backdrop of the collapse of the southern African nation of Zimbabwe, seasoned journalist Godwin has produced a memoir that effortlessly manages to be almost unbearably personal while simultaneously laying bare the cruel regime of longstanding president Robert Mugabe." (Publishers Weekly)

"Princess is her name, not her title. Yet Zulu brings almost regal strength, hope, and a sense of responsibility to this memoir. Born in Kabwe, Zambia, Zulu had little more than a ninth-grade education, learning more on Africa's diverse streets. She tells of the toll AIDS took on her life, ripping away her parents before it came for her. With astounding perspective, Zulu happily claims her HIV-positive diagnosis as God's mission." (Publishers Weekly)