Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai grew up in a lush corner of Kenya in the 1940s--two decades before the country wrested its independence from Great Britain. During her lifetime she saw her people oppressed by greed and corruption--first by the Western government that colonized Kenya, and then by those Kenyans who freed the country and claimed to represent its interests.
In her memoir Unbowed, Maathai depicts colonization from the perspective of the colonized: she describes how Kenya's natural resources were devoured by an enormous colonial government, how Kenya's people lost their identity when their land was taken from them, and how they have struggled to recover it since. She ties Kenyans' disconnection from their land to the political oppression and discontent in the country today, and she offers a radically simple solution: the Green Belt Movement, an initiative to reclaim Africa's green spaces.
Maathai's involvement with Kenya's political, educational, and health care systems; her battles with the government to preserve Kenya's land and resources; her advocacy for women's rights and civil rights; her Kenyan upbringing and her Western education; and her personal struggle for equality as a woman, a Kenyan, and a human being--all make for an absorbing history of one woman's refusal to follow the status quo. It is en engrossing and inspirational read.
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