African Books

	From Jhelum to Tana Penguin Books India Review: This is the story of Kirparam and his family's 19th Century journey from Karachi to the shores of Africa where workers were needed for a railway line being constructed by the British. Surviving a storm at sea, marauding lions and the plague the family goes on to preside over a successful trading empire that provides employment and prosperity to the second generation amid the upheavals of the second world war, racial segregation, and the end of colonialism. Generations later this author, Kirparam's great-grad daughter, sets out to uncover the tale of her ancestors. Soaked in nostalgia for a bygone era, this remarkable tale recounts a Punjabi family’s adaptation to a new nation and new ways of seeing the world. In many ways, it illustrates how migration shaped multi-cultural societies in the twentieth century, creating today’s globalized world. more>> RELATED: Publisher's Web site

	Unchaining Patriarchy Through Schoolbooks Feminist Press In this column Kenyan writer Maurice Aluda talks about the use of texts to challenge students to consider issues affecting women in Africa. In Coming to Birth, Marjorie Macgoye suggests a redefinition of motherhood as not only a mark of fertility and life, but also as a source of feminist power in our society. more>>				Autobiography of Hope for the Women Michigan State University Press Review: This is the autobiography of one of Kenya’s foremost public figures, Muthoni Likimani. Muthoni is most notable for establishing Noni’s Publicity, one of the first indigenously owned public relations firms in Africa. The narrative emphasises the author’s overriding concerns throughout her life with gender and race equality, human rights, religious faith and politics. more>>

	Mediators and African Conflicts This penetrating study of successful mediation in a half-dozen violent conflicts across the African continent focuses on an often neglected dimension of mediation and the motivations of the parties in conflict—and of the mediators themselves—in initiating the mediation option. The "problem" of many journalistic accounts and scholarly analyses of conflict mediation is that they detail the mediation process in full swing but have largely neglected the crucial phase of mediators' entry into the destructive and disturbing mass violence in Burundi, Rwanda, the Congo, Sudan, West Africa, and the border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea. This collaboration of renowned scholars and a practitioner in conflict management and African politics seeks to draw wide-ranging and timely conclusions on the early stages of mediation from six case studies. IRIN Five West African soldiers - representing the former ECOWAS mission - are now part of the UN mission. RELATED: Peace Africa Publisher's Web site African Studies Quarterly				New Book Focuses on Archaeology in Africa A multi authored introduction to African archaeology, challenging mis - conceptions and claims about Africa's past and teaching students how to evaluate these claims. The authors explore the preoccupations and assumptions that have framed research and assess the quality and reliability of evidence and chart emerging research directions. more>>
					Memoirs of a Zambian Freedom Fighter Alexander Grey Zulu is one of the longest serving political leaders in independent Zambia. Since his retirement in the 1990s he has remained quiet and often refused to comment on burning issues whenever the media has pressed him to do so, that is, until now. more>>
					Islam, Hip Hop and the Gods of New York OneWorld Publications Sensationalized and reviled as the Hell’s Angels of Black America, the Five Percenters began as a cluster of outcasts from the Nation of Islam in the 1960s. The Five Percenters’ history has since been charged with drama, spanning the war between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, a prison revolt, urban conflict, and now count high-profile hip-hop stars among their adherents. more>>

	Tanzania Down the Road to Neo-Liberalism more>>