Selected New Materials: January 2009
Click Here For Previous Months | Purchase Request
Africa’s World War: Congo, The Rwandan Genocide, and The Making of A Continental Catastrophe. Gerard Prunier. Africana Library: DT658.26 P78 2009
The Rwandan genocide sparked a horrific blood bath that swept across sub-Saharan Africa, ultimately leading to the deaths of some four million people. In this extraordinary history of the recent wars in Central Africa, Gerard Prunier offers a gripping account of how one grisly episode laid the ground work for a sweeping and disastrous upheaval. Prunier vividly describes the grisly aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, when some two million refugees--a third of Rwanda's population--fled to exile in Zaire in 1996. The new Rwandan regime then crossed into Zaire and attacked the refugees, slaughtering upwards of 400,000 people. The Rwandan forces then turned on Zaire's despotic President Mobutu and, with the help of a number of allied African countries, overthrew him. But as Prunier shows, the collapse of the Mobutu regime and the ascension of the corrupt and erratic Laurent-Desire Kabila created a power vacuum that drew Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and other African nations into an extended and chaotic war. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher. Leonard Harris and Charles Molesworth. Africana Library: E185.97 .L79 h37 2008
Alain L. Locke (1886-1954), in his famous 1925 anthology The New Negro, declared that the pulse of the Negro world has begun to beat in Harlem. Often called the father of the Harlem Renaissance, Locke had his finger directly on that pulse, promoting, influencing, and sparring with such figures as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Jacob Lawrence, Richmond Barth, William Grant Still, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Bunche, and John Dewey. The long-awaited first biography of this extraordinarily gifted philosopher and writer, Alain L. Locke narrates the untold story of his profound impact on twentieth-century America’s cultural and intellectual life. Leonard Harris and Charles Molesworth trace this story through Lockes Philadelphia upbringing; his undergraduate years at Harvard where William James helped spark his influential engagement with pragmatism and his tenure as the first African American Rhodes Scholar. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
China’s New Role in Africa and the South: A Search for a new Perspective. Dorothy-Grace Guerrero and Firoze Manji. Africana Library: DS779.27 .C45 2008
China's global expansion is much talked about, but usually from the viewpoint of the West. These essays provide diverse views on the threats and opportunities provided by China's rise as a significant global economic power and its aid, trade and investments in the global south. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Nubian Women of West Aswan, Negotiating Tradition and Change. Anne M. Jennings. Africana Library: DT159.6 .N83 J45 2009
In the decade-and-a-half since the first edition of this book was written, there have been dramatic changes both in the town of Aswan and among the devoutly Muslim Nubians of the village of West Aswan. Anne Jennings’s revised and updated ethnography reflects those changes and also incorporates new material from archaeological/historical research and new literature on the impact of tourism, the work of Muslim women in the informal sector, and the interdependence of male and female domains. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Harnessing the Trade Winds: The Story of the Centuries Old Indian Trade with East African Using The Monsoon Winds. Blanche Rocha D’Souza. Africana Library: DS450 .A354 D76 2008
Harnessing the Trade Winds is the outcome of a generation of research undertaken in Nairobi, Mombassa and Zanzibar in East Africa, and Mumbai and Goa in India. Of her work the author says: In all my research I found that Arab and particularly European, sources of information downplayed the importance of Indian trade in the Indian Ocean which goes back at least three thousand years BC. [The book] attempts to rekindle in the Indian Diaspora a justifiable pride in the achievements of its forebears in East Africa, and indeed other parts of the world. In East Africa they promoted the development of agriculture and industry and the globalization of trade stemming from their trading activities. Blanche D'Souza's book is a most direct statement on 'brown man's' transcripts over thousands of year’s trade, labor and migrations for settlements against a pervading backdrop of Arab, British and Portuguese rivalries in the Indian Ocean. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
In the Shadow of A Baobab. John Osborne. Africana Library: DT2904 .O73 2007
Legend has it that anyone who takes refuge in the shadow of a baobab is likely to be hooked by Africa and reclassified as a little bit mad. John Osborne has dedicated this book to the many bush happy people who have rested in its shade and been enslaved by the curious fascination of Africa, its ways, and its people. Just as the mighty baobab stands out, colorful in its twisted glory, a monument of interest and intrigue in the African bush, so do the lives of the eccentric misfits and nonconformists, who unlike the many ‘no face’ people of this world, are remembered and seldom forgotten. Seeing the funny side of life, John Osborne has recorded, with his easy entertaining style, encounters with the odd, unconventional and outright bizarre. He masterfully captures the humor, drama, tension, tragedy, intrigue, excitement and fear of Africa. (Book Cover)
