Unbowed: A Memoir (Vintage)
by Wangari Maathai
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Book Summary Information
Author: Wangari MaathaiEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-09-04
ISBN: 0307275205
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of Unbowed: A Memoir (Vintage)
Book Review: A Memoir of Substance and Soul
Summary: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Charles Shea LeMone [...]
Nobel laureate, Wangari Maathai was born in Nyeri, Kenya, in 1940. Her earliest memories of the highland country are of a paradise of fertile soil, lush forests and abundant crops. The land was rich with rivers and streams. However, returning home from college in America, one of the first things she noticed was how deforestation and the mass cultivation of cash crops had devastated the countryside, causing severe top soil erosion and many creeks and streams to dry up. Furthermore, the people in her region were no longer as robust and strong as she recalled. Instead, having changed their diets to eat like Europeans, they now appeared weak and undernourished. She found the same to be true of the animals that her people raised.
As a professor, a biologist, and a Kikuyu woman, she turned to the women of her country to help restore the decimated forest. Launching the Green Belt Movement to plant trees--more than 30 million since 1977--she was subjected to beatings, arrest and death threats. Nevertheless, she and her women followers remained unbowed. In fact, the discrimination she faced for merely being a woman, led Maathai to question all human rights abuses that the corrupt government was guilty of perpetrating.
She also fought for free elections, which further alienated her in the eyes of the local leaders. Despite all of their efforts to discredit her, though, in 2002, she was elected to Kenya's Parliament. A year later, she was appointed assistant minister for the environment; and in 2004, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She continues to live and work in Nairobi.
On the back cover of "Unbowed a Memoir" there is a quote from former president Bill Clinton. "Wangari Maathai's memoir is direct, honest, and beautifully written--a gripping account of modern Africa's trials and triumphs, a universal story of courage, persistence, and success against great odds in a noble cause."
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