Download or read book She Would Be King written by Wayétu Moore and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel of exhilarating range, magical realism, and history—a dazzling retelling of Liberia’s formation Wayétu Moore’s powerful debut novel, She Would Be King, reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia’s early years through three unforgettable characters who share an uncommon bond. Gbessa, exiled from the West African village of Lai, is starved, bitten by a viper, and left for dead, but still she survives. June Dey, raised on a plantation in Virginia, hides his unusual strength until a confrontation with the overseer forces him to flee. Norman Aragon, the child of a white British colonizer and a Maroon slave from Jamaica, can fade from sight when the earth calls him. When the three meet in the settlement of Monrovia, their gifts help them salvage the tense relationship between the African American settlers and the indigenous tribes, as a new nation forms around them. Moore’s intermingling of history and magical realism finds voice not just in these three characters but also in the fleeting spirit of the wind, who embodies an ancient wisdom. “If she was not a woman,” the wind says of Gbessa, “she would be king.” In this vibrant story of the African diaspora, Moore, a talented storyteller and a daring writer, illuminates with radiant and exacting prose the tumultuous roots of a country inextricably bound to the United States. She Would Be King is a novel of profound depth set against a vast canvas and a transcendent debut from a major new author.

Download or read book Redemption Road written by Elma Shaw and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in Monrovia during the administration of Liberia's former president, Charles Taylor, this riveting debut is a story of recovery, atonement, and the continuing quest for peace and justice in a nation plagued by conflict and inequalities since its founding by freed American slaves. Life in post-war Liberia is not easy, and it is especially challenging for Bendu Lewis, a young woman who counsels traumatized survivors of Liberia's civil war while struggling with memories of her own war-time experiences. When the warlord who once held her in captivity suddenly shows up in town, she decides that for her own healing, and for the voiceless victims of the war, she must bring him to justice for his past atrocities. In her pursuit of Commander Cobra, Bendu finds much more than she bargained for, including the courage to finally confront and make amends for her own painful war-time secret.

Download or read book The Novels of Wilton Sankawulo written by Robert Brown and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2014-10-08 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first chapter of this monograph, Dr. Robert H. Brown tries to lay the groundwork by discussing some of the problems of writing in Liberia and prospects for Liberian writers. Then he lists in chronological order some of the works published by Liberian writers as evidential proof that there is a paucity of creative fiction in Liberia. In three subsequent chapters, he undertakes a critical study of Wilton Sankawulos The Rain and the Night, Sundown at Dawn: A Liberian Odyssey, and Birds Are Singing. The chapters situate Wilton Sankawulos creative fiction in its proper context, revealing the currents of indigenous Liberian thought that run through it and tracing the connections that link the novels to a new development in his thinking. Indeed, however dissimilar in titles, The Rain and the Night, Sundown at Dawn: A Liberian Odyssey, and Birds Are Singing, to some extent, share tone, setting, and ambience that characterize the current moment of Liberias history as a turning point. Despite their minor grammatical infelicities and stylistic ineptitude, the three novels are set to become classics in the canon of African literature.

Download or read book Land of My Fathers written by Vamba Sherif and published by HopeRoad Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2016-11-03 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proud Republic of Liberia was founded in the 19th century with the triumphant return of the freed slaves from America to Africa. Once back ‘home’, however, these AmericoLiberians had to integrate with the resident tribes – who did not want or welcome them. Against a background of French and British colonialists busily carving up Mother Africa, while local tribes were still unashamedly trading in slaves . . . the vulnerable newcomers felt trapped and out of place. Where men should have stood shoulder to shoulder, they turned on each other instead. THE LAND OF MY FATHERS plunges us into this world. But in the midst of turmoil, there is friendship. Edward Richard, a man born into slavery and a preacher by profession, is convinced that the future of Liberia lies in bringing peace amongst the tribes. His mission takes him to the far north, where he meets an extraordinary man, Halay. Edward’s new and dearest friend is ready to sacrifice his own life to protect his country; for the Liberians believe that with Halay’s death, no war will ever threaten their land. A century later, this belief is crushed when war engulfs the land, bearing away with it the descendants of both Edward and Halay.

Download or read book Another America The Story of Liberia and the Former Slaves Who Ruled It written by James Ciment and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2014-08-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first popular history of the former American slaves who founded, ruled, and lost Africa's first republic In 1820, a group of about eighty African Americans reversed the course of history and sailed back to Africa, to a place they would name after liberty itself. They went under the banner of the American Colonization Society, a white philanthropic organization with a dual agenda: to rid America of its blacks, and to convert Africans to Christianity. The settlers staked out a beachhead; their numbers grew as more boats arrived; and after breaking free from their white overseers, they founded Liberia—Africa's first black republic—in 1847. James Ciment's Another America is the first full account of this dramatic experiment. With empathy and a sharp eye for human foibles, Ciment reveals that the Americo-Liberians struggled to live up to their high ideals. They wrote a stirring Declaration of Independence but re-created the social order of antebellum Dixie, with themselves as the master caste. Building plantations, holding elegant soirees, and exploiting and even helping enslave the native Liberians, the persecuted became the persecutors—until a lowly native sergeant murdered their president in 1980, ending 133 years of Americo rule. The rich cast of characters in Another America rivals that of any novel. We encounter Marcus Garvey, who coaxed his followers toward Liberia in the 1920s, and the rubber king Harvey Firestone, who built his empire on the backs of native Liberians. Among the Americoes themselves, we meet the brilliant intellectual Edward Blyden, one of the first black nationalists; the Baltimore-born explorer Benjamin Anderson, seeking a legendary city of gold in the Liberian hinterland; and President William Tubman, a descendant of Georgia slaves, whose economic policies brought Cadillacs to the streets of Monrovia, the Liberian capital. And then there are the natives, men like Joseph Samson, who was adopted by a prominent Americo family and later presided over the execution of his foster father during the 1980 coup. In making Liberia, the Americoes transplanted the virtues and vices of their country of birth. The inspiring and troubled history they created is, to a remarkable degree, the mirror image of our own.

Download or read book Charles Taylor and Liberia written by Colin M. Waugh and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2011-10-13 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Campaigner, insurgent, fugitive, rebel commander, commodity kingpin, elected president, exile and finally prisoner, Charles Taylor sought to lead his country to change but instead ignited a conflict which destroyed Liberia in over a decade of violence, greed and personal ambition. Taylor's takeover threw much of the neigbouring region into turmoil, until he was finally brought to face justice in The Hague for his role in Sierra Leone's civil war. In this remarkable and eye-opening book, Colin Waugh draws on a variety of sources, testimonies and original interviews - including with Taylor himself - to recount the story of what really happened during these turbulent years. In doing so, he examines both the life of Charles Taylor, as well as the often self-interested efforts of the international community to first save Liberia from disaster, then, having failed to do so, to bring to justice the man it deems most to blame for its disintegration.

Download or read book Murder in the Cassava Patch written by Bai T. Moore and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Status of Literature in Liberia written by and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book You Cannot Unsneeze a Sneeze and Other Tales from Liberia written by Esther Warner Dendel and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of 40 Liberian folk stories gleaned by Dendel while she lived in Liberia with her husband between 1941 and 1944. The stories are recounted here as they were told; in pidgin English, the one language common to the various peoples who told the stories. Includes a glossary. No index. Annot

Download or read book The Darling written by Russell Banks and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-07-23 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “After many years of believing that I never dream of anything, I dreamed of Africa.” Over a decade after leaving her three sons behind in Liberia, Hannah Musgrave realizes she has to leave her farm in the Adirondacks and find out what has happened to them and the chimpanzees for whom she created a sanctuary. The Darling is the story of her return to the wreckage of west Africa and the story of her past, from her middle-class American upbringing to her years in the Weather Underground. It is also one of the most powerful novels of the decade, an unforgettable tale of growth and loss, and an unstinting exploration of some of the most troubling issues of our time: terrorism, race, and the contact between the first world and the third. Hannah Musgrave, the narrator of The Darling, tells us she first travelled to Africa in the mid-1970s, to escape prosecution for her radical political activities with the Weathermen. Arriving in Liberia to work in a medical research lab, Hannah – also known by her alias, Dawn Carrington – meets Woodrow Sundiata, an official in the ministry of public health, and they fall immediately in love. Courting with Woodrow, an intelligent, ambitious man, means encountering his other life in his ancestral village of Fuama – a life that could scarcely be more different from Hannah’s affluent childhood as the daughter of a bestselling pediatrician. Hannah and Woodrow start a family, but she feels herself to be somehow estranged from her life in Liberia and curiously detached from her husband and three sons. Still in search of herself as her children grow older, Hannah develops a closer and closer bond with the chimpanzees at the lab, whom she calls “dreamers.” During the early 1980s, Liberian society grows more unstable, until an illiterate soldier named Samuel Doe brutally overthrows and assassinates the president. Hannah’s courageous intervention with Doe leads to Woodrow’s release from detention, but at a price: she must return to the US, leaving her family behind. Hannah feels that her dreamers will feel her absence more deeply than her family will. In the US Hannah briefly reconnects with her parents after years of estrangement before returning to her friends from her underground years. One of them, Zack Procter, is involved with a plan to spring Charles Taylor – an attractive Liberian politician – from jail, and Hannah involves herself with the plot, genuinely believing that Taylor will bring social democracy to west Africa. Hannah gets permission to return to her family in the mid-1980s, and decides that this time things will be different: she will take charge of her home life, ousting Woodrow’s young cousin Jeanette, and she will build a sanctuary for her chimpanzees. But Charles Taylor has also returned, and his slow and bloody rebellion against Doe leads, eventually, to a night of horrific violence in which Woodrow is murdered and Hannah’s teenaged children disappear. Amidst chaos and almost unbelievable bloodshed, Hannah has time only to move her dreamers to Boniface Island before facing the heartrending decision to escape Liberia, leaving her children behind. More than ten years will pass before she can return to discover their fate, and understand her own.

Download or read book The Dung Beetles of Liberia written by Daniel V. Meier Jr. and published by BQB Publishing. This book was released on 2019-09-01 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberia’s oligarchy: The beginning of the end. 2019 Grand Prize Winner - Red City Review Based on the remarkable true account of a young American who landed in Liberia in 1961. *****The story weaves drama, dark comedy, and romance throughout a rich tapestry of narration - The San Francisco Book Review KEN VERRIER IS NOT HAPPY, NOR AT PEACE. He is experiencing the turbulence of Ishmael and the guilt of his brother's death. His sudden decision to drop out of college and del with his demons shocks his family, his friends, and especially his girlfriend, soon to have been his fiancee. His destination: Liberia - The richest country in Africa both in monetary wealth and in natural resources. NOTHING COULD HAVE PREPARED HIM FOR THE EXPERIENCES HE WAS ABOUT TO LIVE THORUGH. Ken quickly realizes that he has arrived in a place where he understands very little of what is considered normal, where the dignity of life has little meaning, and where he can trust no one. Flying into the interior bush as a transport piolot, Ken learns quickly. He witnesses, first-hand, the disparate lives of the Liberian "Country People? and the "Congo People" also known as Americo-Liberians. These descendants of President Monroe's American Colonization Policy that sent freed slaves back to Africa in the 1800's have set up a strict hierarchical society not unlike the antebellum South. Author Dan Meier describes Ken's many escapades, spanning from horrifying to whimical, with engaging and fast-moving narrative that ultimately describes a society upon which the wealthy are feeding and in which the poor are being buried. It's a novel that will stay with you long after the last word has been read.

Download or read book Madame President written by Helene Cooper and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BEST BOOKS of 2017 SELECTION by * THE WASHINGTON POST * NEW YORK POST * The harrowing, but triumphant story of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, leader of the Liberian women’s movement, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and the first democratically elected female president in African history. When Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won the 2005 Liberian presidential election, she demolished a barrier few thought possible, obliterating centuries of patriarchal rule to become the first female elected head of state in Africa’s history. Madame President is the inspiring, often heartbreaking story of Sirleaf’s evolution from an ordinary Liberian mother of four boys to international banking executive, from a victim of domestic violence to a political icon, from a post-war president to a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author Helene Cooper deftly weaves Sirleaf’s personal story into the larger narrative of the coming of age of Liberian women. The highs and lows of Sirleaf’s life are filled with indelible images; from imprisonment in a jail cell for standing up to Liberia’s military government to addressing the United States Congress, from reeling under the onslaught of the Ebola pandemic to signing a deal with Hillary Clinton when she was still Secretary of State that enshrined American support for Liberia’s future. Sirleaf’s personality shines throughout this riveting biography. Ultimately, Madame President is the story of Liberia’s greatest daughter, and the universal lessons we can all learn from this “Oracle” of African women.

Download or read book Dream Country written by Shannon Gibney and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The heartbreaking story of five generations of young people from a single African-and-American family pursuing an elusive dream of freedom. "Gut wrenching and incredible.”— Sabaa Tahir #1 New York Times bestselling author of An Ember in the Ashes "This novel is a remarkable achievement."—Kelly Barnhill, New York Times bestselling author and Newbery medalist "Beautifully epic."—Ibi Zoboi, author American Street and National Book Award finalist Dream Country begins in suburban Minneapolis at the moment when seventeen-year-old Kollie Flomo begins to crack under the strain of his life as a Liberian refugee. He's exhausted by being at once too black and not black enough for his African American peers and worn down by the expectations of his own Liberian family and community. When his frustration finally spills into violence and his parents send him back to Monrovia to reform school, the story shifts. Like Kollie, readers travel back to Liberia, but also back in time, to the early twentieth century and the point of view of Togar Somah, an eighteen-year-old indigenous Liberian on the run from government militias that would force him to work the plantations of the Congo people, descendants of the African American slaves who colonized Liberia almost a century earlier. When Togar's section draws to a shocking close, the novel jumps again, back to America in 1827, to the children of Yasmine Wright, who leave a Virginia plantation with their mother for Liberia, where they're promised freedom and a chance at self-determination by the American Colonization Society. The Wrights begin their section by fleeing the whip and by its close, they are then the ones who wield it. With each new section, the novel uncovers fresh hope and resonating heartbreak, all based on historical fact. In Dream Country, Shannon Gibney spins a riveting tale of the nightmarish spiral of death and exile connecting America and Africa, and of how one determined young dreamer tries to break free and gain control of her destiny.

Download or read book Guanya Pau Story of an African Princess written by Joseph Jeffrey Walters and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guanya Pau: Story of an African Princess by Joseph Walters Jeffrey, first published in 1891, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.

Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 1516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress. Cataloging Policy and Support Office and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 1924 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress. Office for Subject Cataloging Policy and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 1352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: