I Was Told to Come Alone by Souad Mekhennet

October 28, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — Kindle edition. Henry Holt and Co, 2017. 368 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad”, Mekhennet’s memoir begins with a recounting of her childhood in Morocco. Born in Germany, Mekhennet was sent to live with her grandmother in Morocco while her mother and father worked as a cook and cleaner, respectively, in Germany. Her exposure to the language and to her family’s history as Muslims in North Africa may have set her apart from […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Africa, Book Club, Europe, France, Germany, Middle East, Nonfiction, ReadDiverse, Religion • Tags: Souad Mekhennet

Under the Tripoli Sky by Kamal Ben Hameda

July 8, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the French by Adriana Hunter. Peirene Press, 2014. Originally published 2011. 128 pgs. Purchased.i In the 1960s, a young boy named Hadachinou moves between the public streets of Tripoli and the private spaces inhabited by his mother, her best friend, and other women of his acquaintance. His age and size means he isn’t viewed as a threat in Libya’s patriarchal society, allowing him to blend in and go unnoticed in female spaces. It also […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Africa, Feminism, Fiction, French, Peirene Press, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Adriana Hunter, Kamal Ben Hameda

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

March 8, 2017 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Knopf, 2016. 320 pgs. Library copy. Gyasi’s novel opens with the story of Effia, a young girl living a small village along the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) with a father who adores her and a mother whose good graces Effia is excluded from. On the cusp of womanhood, Effia is desperate to marry the future chief of her village, Abeeku, and is told she will as soon as she has her period. Her mother, Baaba, convinces Effia […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Africa, Fiction, ReadDiverse • Tags: Yaa Gyasi

Kenya by R. Mugo Gatheru

February 12, 2017 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. McFarland, 2005. 236 pgs. Library copy. Long time readers of this blog will know that the continent of Africa is poorly represented in my reading selections. In fact, a quick perusal of the category shows that the majority of the books I’ve read set in one of the 54 African countries have largely focused on the genocide in Rwanda or the economic development of the continent as a whole. Since I’ll be traveling to Kenya later this […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Africa, Nonfiction, ReadDiverse • Tags: R. Mugo Gatheru

Aya by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie

February 26, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from the French by Helge Dascher. Drawn and Quarterly, 2007. 105 pgs. Library copy. Nineteen-year-old Aya lives in working-class city of Yopougon (also known as Yop City) of the Ivory Coast in 1978. Aya’s father works for Solibra, a beer company, and is determined to establish a match between the young son of his boss and his daughter. As a studious young woman determined to become a doctor, Aya is neither interested in this match nor in the cousin of one […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Africa, Comics, Fiction, French, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Clément Oubrerie, Marguerite Abouet

The Bone Woman by Clea Koff

December 11, 2015 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Random House, 2005. Originally published 2001. 304 pgs. PaperBackSwap. In order to prosecute perpetrators for genocide and crimes against humanity, bodies must be exhumed and their condition as well as the mass graves they are found in must be documented. It is not enough to say people of particular ethnic or religious groups have disappeared and are presumed dead as perpetrators can claim these missing individuals were casualties of war or are undocumented refugees in neighboring lands. […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Africa, Balkans, Europe, Genocide, Nonfiction • Tags: Clea Koff

Roots by Alex Haley

January 5, 2015 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Avery Brooks. BBC Audio, 2007. Originally published 1976. 30 hours, 7 minutes. Library copy. Subtitled “The Saga of an American Family”, Haley’s book begins in the eighteenth century with the story of Kunta Kinte, a young African male of the Mandinka people captured from present-day Gambia and sold into slavery in 1767. The story progresses through the lives of seven generations of Kunta Kinte’s descendants and is largely based upon the stories passed down to […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Africa, Audiobook, Chunkster, Classics, Classics Club, Fiction, North America, Pulitzer Prize, United States • Tags: Alex Haley, Avery Brooks

Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff

November 19, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — audiobook. Read by Robin Miles. Little, Brown & Company, 2010. Originally published 2006. 14 hours, 21 minutes. Library copy. The last queen of Egypt has been re-imagined in history as a seductress by the likes of William Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and Elizabeth Taylor. Yet Schiff presents a woman who ruled an empire during a life that spanned fewer than forty years, who continued a family history of incestual marriages and assassination, and who had a relationship with the two […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Africa, Audiobook, Nonfiction • Tags: Robin Miles, Stacy Schiff

The Child Catchers by Kathryn Joyce

November 12, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. PublicAffairs, 2013. 352 pgs. Library copy. Entangled in the political juggernaut of reproductive rights, adoption is championed as a “win-win” compromise to a woman’s right to choice — abortion opponents “win” as the woman has not had an abortion, pregnant women “win” because they do not have to raise the fetus in question, and couples struggling with infertility “win” because they can finally become parents. Yet adoption is also entangled with serious moral and ethical dilemmas — as suggested […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Adoption, Africa, Asia, Europe, Nonfiction, North America, South America, United States • Tags: Kathryn Joyce

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

September 25, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Sunil Malhotra. Random House Audio, 2009. 23 hours, 44 minutes. Library copy. Orphaned at birth by the death of their mother, an Indian Carmelite nun, and the subsequent disappearance of their father, a British surgeon, Marion and Shiva Stone grow up at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, during the overthrow of the emperor. Raised by an Indian obstetrician and an Indian general surgeon along with the Mother Superior of the […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Africa, Audiobook, Chunkster, Fiction, New England, North America, United States • Tags: Abraham Verghese, Sunil Malhotra

The Myth of Continents by Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen

July 14, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. University of California Press, 1997. 344 pgs. Borrowed. Subtitled “A Critique of Metageography”, Lewis and Wigen offer a critique of the way we divide the world – East versus West, First World versus Third World, the seven (or eight depending on who you ask) continents. Going beyond the argument that holding the “West” above the “East” or assigning countries into rank is racist and paternalistic, Lewis and Wigen argue that topographically the continents of the world do […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Africa, Asia, Cartography, Europe, Middle East, Nonfiction, Oceania, South America • Tags: Kären E. Wigen, Martin W. Lewis

Liberation Square by Ashraf Khalil

May 31, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. St. Martin’s Press, 2011. 324 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “Inside the Egyptian Revolution and the Rebirth of a Nation”, Khalil provides his first-person insights into the 2011 Egyptian Revolution from his home base of Cairo where he serves as a journalist for an English-language paper in the country. Contrary to what was originally reported in the American news media, the revolution was more than a spontaneous uprising. The problem was not just Hosni Mubarak but the way […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Africa, Middle East, Nonfiction • Tags: Ashraf Khalil