Selected New Materials: June 2008
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The African Diaspora in the United States and Europe: The Ghanaian Experience. John A. Arthur. Africana Library: JV 9022.3 .A78 2008
Compared to migration from other continents, the voluntary migration of people of African ancestry to America is a recent phenomenon. However, migration from Africa has accelerated dramatically in the last two decades and the group termed by the popular media 'America's newest immigrants' now has a very strong African component. Despite this, existing literature tends to focus first on European migration and more recently on migration from Asia and Latin America. The experiences of new African immigrants living in America have yet to be systematically documented. This book focuses on the Ghanaian community in the US and Canada as a case study of the new African migration. Ghana ranks in the top five of African countries sending immigrants to the North America and the rapid increase in the number of Ghanaians lawfully admitted as permanent residents since 1980 offers an opportunity to investigate their immigrant journeys, the ways they seek membership in the larger society and how they express their individual and collective social identities. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Africa Doesn’t Matter: How The West Has Failed The Poorest Continent And What We Can Do About It. Giles Bolton. Africana Library: HC 800.Z9 P6238 2007
Aid worker Bolton disappoints in this well-intentioned guide to Africa's economic and political challenges. While the book is well organized and lucid, Bolton veers wildly from straightforward analysis to heavy-handed attempts at humor (Bolton compares Democratic Republic of Congo president Kabila to Sean P. Diddy Combs). Graver still, the author condescends to his readers when he debunks common myths that he believes readers might hold about Africa (Africa is overpopulated and they keep having too many children; Africa Has Many Dangerous Animals) and tests readers' patience with irrelevant asides (Dressing to Meet a Real Minister of Finance) and an occasionally preachy tone. When discussing possible solutions to Africa's problems, Bolton acknowledges that the weakest part of books like this... tends to be when they reach proposed solutions and proceeds to stumble similarly, offering tepid ways to make a difference (Write!; Sign petitions; Protest). The final product is an earnest book with high potential that ends up reading more like a dumped-down primer than a substantive introduction to the state of affairs in Africa. (Amazon.ca)
Culture and Customs of Senegal. Eric S. Ross. Africana Library: DT549.4 .R67 2008
Explore contemporary and traditional culture in Senegal, Africa's Land of Hospitality.
A blend of indigenous life in the rural countryside and metropolitan culture in urban centers, Senegal has been a small, yet prominent country on Africa's western coast. In this comprehensive study of contemporary Senegalese life, readers will learn how daily lifestyles are celebrated through both religious and secular customs. Students can investigate how Senegal's oral storytelling, Islamic roots, and French colonialism have shaped literature and media in today's society. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Darfur: African Genocide. John Xavier. Africana Library: DT159.6 .D27 X38 2008
Describes the influence of Darfur's geography and history on its current violence and discusses why the international community is involved. (books.google.com)
From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, Eight Edition. John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr. Africana Library: E185 .F83 2007
Since its original publication in 1947, From Slavery to Freedom has maintained its preeminence as the most authoritative history of African Americans. Surveying a vast human odyssey of more than a thousand years, Co-authors John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., vividly detail the journey of African Americans from their origin in the civilizations of Africa, through slavery in the Western Hemisphere, to the successful struggle for freedom in the West Indies, Latin America, and the United States. This seventh edition has been thoroughly revised to include expanded coverage of Africa, additional material on the situation of African Americans in the United States, and two new four-page color inserts. The authors discuss the history of blacks in the Caribbean and Latin America as it relates to the history of African Americans in the United States. Incorporating recent scholarship, chapters covering slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction have been rewritten. Material covering the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century has been expanded. The period between World War I and World War II (including the Harlem Renaissance) has also been extensively revised to reflect new scholarship and new interpretations (Bowker’s Books in Print)
An Introduction to African Philosophy. Lewis R. Gordon. Africana Library: B5305 .G 67, 2008
This undergraduate textbook offers the first comprehensive treatment of Africana philosophy, Covering Africa, Europe, North and South America and the Caribbean. It explores the challenges posed to our understanding of knowledge and freedom today, and the response to them which can be found within Africana philosophy.
In this undergraduate textbook Lewis R. Gordon offers the first comprehensive treatment of Africana philosophy, beginning with the emergence of an Africana (i.e. African diasporic) consciousness in the Afro-Arabic world of the Middle Ages. He argues that much of modern thought emerged out of early conflicts between Islam and Christianity that culminated in the expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula, and from the subsequent expansion of racism, enslavement, and colonialism which in their turn stimulated reflections on reason, liberation, and the meaning of being human. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Into The Devil’s Den: How an FBI Informant Got inside the Aryan Nations and a Special Agent Got Him out Alive. Dave Hall and Tym Burkey. Africana Library: E184 .A1 H2132 2008
In 1996, the Aryan Nations was considered to be the most dangerous white supremacist group in the United States. This brutally violent neo-Nazi organization dreamed of carving an isolated homeland out of the American northwest - a dream they would finance by robbery, intimidation, and murder. For years, the FBI had sought to infiltrate the Aryan Nations, only to be thwarted by the group's extreme paranoia of new members. (intothedevilsden.com)
Mandela! Struggle & Triumph. David Turnley. Africana Library: DT 1974 .T87 2008
Nelson Mandela, an icon of the international struggle for freedom and equality, whose importance rivals that of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, turns ninety in July 2008. Mandela spent twenty-seven years in prison for his opposition to the apartheid regime of his native South Africa. Released in 1990, he pursued a policy of reconciliation, steering his nation into the ranks of the world’s multi-racial democracies. He was elected president of South Africa in 1994. Photographer David Turnley covered Mandela and South Africa for the world’s press, beginning in the 1980s. He witnessed the turbulence of the last violent years of apartheid, was there when Mandela was released from prison, campaigned with him during the presidential election, and sought out the significant people and places of his life. In Mandela: Struggle and Triumph, he tells in words and photographs the dramatic and emotional story of the most powerful movement for civil rights since the American civil rights movement, through the eyes of its legendary leader. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
(Re) Writing Osun: Osun in the politics of Gender, Race, and Sexuality from Colonization to Creolization. Jessica M. Alarcon. Africana Library: BL2480 .Y6 A43 2008
Known to practitioners and scholars as the Yoruba goddess of sweet (waters), sensuality, fertility and delight, Osun is a deity of great controversy. Nigerians see her as an astute, responsible mother of many children, yet across the ocean in the New World she has become a promiscuous, fun-loving deity who abandons her children and gives them to Yemaya to raise. Alarcón’s research analyzes the diverse representations of Osun (as a metaphor for women) found in trans-national Yoruba literature, specifically the verses of Odu Ifa (divination poetry) and Apataki (stories/legends), and examines the roles gender, race and sexuality have played in cultural interpretations of Osun and therefore on the journey of women throughout the Diaspora. (Re)Writing Osun challenges us to move beyond the remnants of limited colonial interpretations of African spiritual practices and begin the process of (re)writing Osun’s narrative. Book includes color photographs! (Amazon.com)
Race Relations in the United States, 1940-1960. Thomas J. Davis. Africana Library: E184 .A1 D284 2008
The 1940s and 1950s were decades of far-reaching change and mobilization in the United States. White culture strove to make nonwhites invisible with segregation and discrimination as Southern blacks continued the Great Migration north and the government brought in Mexican labor via the Bracero Program to take up labor slack while U.S. troops were overseas. The rise of the civil rights movement and Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down segregation in schools 1954, were some results. This volume is the content-rich source in a desirable decade-by-decade organization to help students and general readers understand the crucial race relations of the war years into the Cold War. Race Relations in the United States, 1940-1960 provides comprehensive reference coverage of the key events, influential voices, race relations by group, legislation, media influences, cultural output, and theories of inter-group interactions. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
The Translator: A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur. Daoud Hari. Africana Library: DT159.6 .D27 H38 2008
If God must break your leg He will at least teach you to limp so it is said in Africa. This book is my poor limpinga modest account that cannot tell every story that deserves telling. I have seen and heard many things in Darfur that have broken my heart. I bring the stories to you because I know most people want others to have good lives and, when they understand the situation, they will do what they can to bend the world back toward kindness. This is when human beings, I believe, are most admirable. The young life of Daoud Hari, who his friends call him David, has been one of bravery and mesmerizing adventure. As a translator and the guide of choice to media, the US Embassy, and the United Nations, Hari became a vital link to the outside world, a living witness to the brutal genocide underway in Darfur. Most of the reporting on the great tragedies of our day has been written by journalists, and after-the-fact. Rarely, in a conflict of this magnitude, has there been an eyewitness voice to the events as they are still happening. Daoud Hari is that voice. The Translator is a suspenseful, harrowing and deeply moving memoir of how one person can make a difference in the world an on-the-ground account of one of the biggest stories of our time. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Voice of the People. Okiya Omtatah Okoiti. Africana Library: PR9381.9 .O47 V65 2007
In “Voice of the People”, Nasirumbi incurs the wrath and hostility of the powers-that -be for engaging in a crusade to save Simbi Forest. Led by Boss, the political leadership would stop at nothing to achieve its heinous goals. But it has to contend with the integrity and moral forthrightness of Nasirumbi, who unshakeable resolve ends up being a nightmare to Boss and his sycophants. (www.eastafricanpublishers.com/newbooks)
T. Thomas Fortune, the Afro American Agitator. Shawn Leigh Alexander. Africana Library:E185 .6 .F 675 2008
Born into slavery, T. Thomas Fortune was known as the dean of African American journalism by the time of his death in the early twentieth century. The editorship of three prominent black newspapers, the "New York Globe, New York Freeman, "and" New York Age provided Fortune with a platform to speak against racism and injustice. For nearly five decades his was one of the most powerful voices in the press. Contemporaries such as Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington considered him an equal, if not a superior, in social and political thought. Today's histories often pass over his writings, in part because they are so voluminous and have rarely been reprinted. Shawn Leigh Alexander's anthology will go a long way toward rectifying that situation, demonstrating the breadth of Fortune's contribution to black political thought at a key period in American history. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
What Would Martin Say? Clarence B. Jones and Joel Engle. Africana Library: E185.97 .K5 J577 2008
On April 4, 1968, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, depriving the world of one of the greatest moral authorities of the twentieth century. He was thirty-nine. King had achieved so much at such a young age that it is hard to believe that he has been gone longer than the brief time he spent on this earth. He spoke out not only on segregation and racism against African Americans, but about many other issues of the day, from police brutality and labor strikes to the Vietnam War. Given the current state of the world, we would all benefit from hearing Martin's voice, if only he were alive today. If anyone would have insight into what Martin would say, it would be Clarence B. Jones, King's personal lawyer and one of his closest principal advisers and confidants. Jones--now seventy-seven, has chosen the occasion of this somber anniversary to break his silence--removing the mythic distance of forty years' time to reveal the flesh-and-blood man he knew as his friend, Martin. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Darfur Now: Six Stories, One Hope. Burbank, CA: Distributed by Warner Home Video, 2007. 1 videodisc (98 min.). Africana Library: Videodisc 373
Follows the story of six people who are determined to end the sufferings in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur. The six - an American activist, an international prosecutor, a Sudanese rebel, a sheikh, a leader of the World Food Program and an internationally known actor - demonstrate the power of how one individual can create extraordinary changes.
From Swastika to Jim Crow. New York, N.Y.: Distributed by the Cinema Guild, Inc., 2007. 1 videodisc (57 min.). Africana Library: Videodisc 370
Before and during World War II Jewish scholars who escaped Nazi Germany and immigrated to the U.S. were confronted with anti-Semitism at major universities and a public distrust of foreigners. A surprising number secured teaching positions at historically African American colleges in the South. In many cases they formed lasting relationships with their students and had an important impact on the communities in which they lived. This is a story of two cultures, each sharing a burden of oppression, brought together by the tragic circumstances of war. Participants: Narrator, Luc Sante, John Hope Franklin, Ismar Schorsch, Jim McWilliams, Joyce Ladner, Gabrielle Edgcomb, John Herz, John Biggers, Ernst Manasse, Gabriel Manasse, Carla Borden, Eugene Eaves, William Jackson, Ronald Rasmussen, Lore Rasmussen.
Hotel Rwanda. United States: Metro Goldwyn Mayer Home Entertainment, 2005. 1 videodisc (approx. 122 min.). Africana Library: Videodisc 374
The deeply moving true story of a five-star-hotel manager who used his wits and words to save more than 1,200 lives during the 1994 Rwandan conflict. Participants: Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Joaquin Phoenix, Desmond Dube, David O’Hara, Cara Seymour, Fana Mokoena, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Tony Kgoroge, Mosa Kaiser.
Stealing A. Nation. Oley, PA: Bullfrog Films, 2005. 1 videodisc (56 min.). Africana Library: Videodisc, 371
This is about the plight of the people of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, who were secretly expelled from their homeland by the British government, to make way for an American military base. Participants: Robin Mardemootoo, Cassam Uteem, Richard Gifford, David Stoddart.
Zanzibar Soccer Queens. Cardiff: Iris Films UK, 2007. 1 videodisc (87 min.). Africana Library: Videodisc 372
A provocative and timely portrait of Women Fighters, a team of Zanzibar women playing soccer, and defining new roles and identities for themselves, in a predominantly Muslim society.
