Koigi wa Wamwere, author of I Refuse to Die: My Journey for Freedom, "a terrifying work of enormous importance that contrasts humanity with bestiality, dignity with depravity," (Kirkus Reviews), has been fighting for social change in his home country of Kenya for three decades. He was imprisoned and tortured in Kenya for thirteen years, his execution averted only by the combined efforts of the Norwegian government and human rights activists around the world.
"An acute and impassioned observer, one of Africa's greatest men of
courage, Koigi wa Wamwere tells a riveting story of coming of age
in his native Kenya with fire, anger, and vigorous joy in
life."
"Not since the great Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka's The Man Died
has such a raw and searing portrait of Africa been drawn, with such
stark colors and contrasts. It should be required reading for every
American school-child, or at the very least, every Black
school-child."
"This strange and powerful work mixes memoir, social history,
polemic, and manifesto. Its basic structure is autobiographical,
but wa Wamwere frequently interrupts with Kenyan history,
ethnography, folk tales, poetry, fables, parables, songs, and
laments for lost friends and lost causes....A terrifying work of
enormous importance that contrasts humanity with bestiality,
dignity with depravity."
Westerners have some knowledge of the twin African scourges of AIDS
and apartheid. However, whether because it is too bloody, its
campaigns too unthinkably brutal, or because of sheer racism, the
terror of ethnic cleansing is passed over. Himself a veteran of
decades of ethnic violence in Kenya, his homeland, wa Wamwere both
describes what he has seen, and recounts the stories of horror that
others have told him--of genocide by machete in Rwanda, in Sudan,
in Liberia, in Nigeria, in Algeria, in Uganda, in Burundi, in
Angola, in Somalia, in Sierra Leone, and in the Democratic Republic
of Congo. Better than any observer could who is insulated by
barriers of privelege or nationality, wa Wamwere, a laborer's son,
explains the virulence of ethnic hatred in Africa, dating to the
colonial period and before. The culprits are many: chronic poverty;
a broken education system; preying dictators; corrupt officials;
the colonial legacy of hate. Wa Wamwere describes how African
cultures have changed to reinforce the cycle of ethnic bigotry,
through language, stereotyping and class conflict. Finally, wa
Wamwere takes the West to task for failing to intervene in Africa,
while rushing to quell similar, though less deadly, conflicts in
Europe; and for contributing to Africa's problems through cynical
power-brokering and parasitic investment practices.
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