Rumba on the River

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Author :
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1789609119
Total Pages : 634 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (896 download)

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Book Synopsis Rumba on the River by : Gary Stewart

Download or read book Rumba on the River written by Gary Stewart and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There had always been music along the banks of the Congo River-lutes and drums, the myriad instruments handed down from ancestors. But when Joseph Kabasele and his African Jazz went chop for chop with O.K. Jazz and Bantous de la Capitale, music in Africa would never be the same. A sultry rumba washed in relentless waves across new nations springing up below the Sahara. The Western press would dub the sound soukous or rumba rock; most of Africa called in Congo music. Born in Kinshasa and Brazzaville at the end of World War II, Congon music matured as Africans fought to consolidate their hard-won independence. In addition to great musicians-Franco, Essous, Abeti, Tabu Ley, and youth bands like Zaiko Langa Langa-the cast of characters includes the conniving King Leopold II, the martyred Patrice Lumumba, corrupt dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, military strongman Denis Sassou Nguesso, heavyweight boxing champs George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, along with a Belgian baron and a clutch of enterprising Greek expatriates who pioneered the Congolese recording industry. Rumba on the River presents a snapshot of an era when the currents of tradition and modernization collided along the banks of the Congo. It is the story of twin capitals engulfed in political struggle and the vibrant new music that flowered amidst the ferment. For more information on the book, visit its other online home at rumbaontheriver.com-an impressive resource.

Rumba Rules

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Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822389266
Total Pages : 327 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis Rumba Rules by : Bob W. White

Download or read book Rumba Rules written by Bob W. White and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2008-06-27 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) from 1965 until 1997, was fond of saying “happy are those who sing and dance,” and his regime energetically promoted the notion of culture as a national resource. During this period Zairian popular dance music (often referred to as la rumba zaïroise) became a sort of musica franca in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. But how did this privileged form of cultural expression, one primarily known for a sound of sweetness and joy, flourish under one of the continent’s most brutal authoritarian regimes? In Rumba Rules, the first ethnography of popular music in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bob W. White examines not only the economic and political conditions that brought this powerful music industry to its knees, but also the ways that popular musicians sought to remain socially relevant in a time of increasing insecurity. Drawing partly on his experiences as a member of a local dance band in the country’s capital city Kinshasa, White offers extraordinarily vivid accounts of the live music scene, including the relatively recent phenomenon of libanga, which involves shouting the names of wealthy or powerful people during performances in exchange for financial support or protection. With dynamic descriptions of how bands practiced, performed, and splintered, White highlights how the ways that power was sought and understood in Kinshasa’s popular music scene mirrored the charismatic authoritarianism of Mobutu’s rule. In Rumba Rules, Congolese speak candidly about political leadership, social mobility, and what it meant to be a bon chef (good leader) in Mobutu’s Zaire.

The River in the Belly

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Publisher : Deep Vellum Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1646050681
Total Pages : 139 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (46 download)

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Book Synopsis The River in the Belly by : Fiston Mwanza Mujila

Download or read book The River in the Belly written by Fiston Mwanza Mujila and published by Deep Vellum Publishing. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A moving lyric meditation on the Congo River that explores the identity, chaos, and wonder of the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as race and the detritus of colonialism. With The River in the Belly, award-winning Congolese author Fiston Mwanza Mujila seeks no less than to reinitiate the Congo River in the imaginary of European languages. Through his invention of the “solitude”—a short poetic form lending itself to searing observation and troubled humor, prone to unexpected tonal shifts and lyrical u-turns—the collection celebrates, caresses, and chastises Central Africa’s great river, the world’s second largest by discharge volume. Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as Soviet history, Congolese popular music, international jazz, and everyday life in European exile, Mwanza Mujila has fashioned a work that can speak to the extraordinary hopes and tragedies of post-independence Democratic Republic of the Congo while also mining the generative yet embattled subject position of the African diasporic writer in Europe longing for home. Fans of Tram 83 will discover in River the same incandescent, improvisatory verbal energy that so dazzled them in Mwanza Mujila’s English-language debut.

Black Man's Grave

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Black Man's Grave by : Gary Stewart

Download or read book Black Man's Grave written by Gary Stewart and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Man's Grave chronicles the hijacking of Sierra Leone's fledgling democracy by corrupt politicians, the plundering of the country's diamonds, and the rise of the notorious Revolutionary United Front. Based on letters from villagers to the authors, both former Peace Corps Volunteers in Sierra Leone, the book exposes 'big man' Siaka Stevens, warlord Charles Taylor, and rebel leader Foday Sankoh.

Cuba and Its Music

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Author :
Publisher : Chicago Review Press
ISBN 13 : 1569764204
Total Pages : 690 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (697 download)

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Book Synopsis Cuba and Its Music by : Ned Sublette

Download or read book Cuba and Its Music written by Ned Sublette and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2007-02 with total page 690 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This entertaining history of Cuba and its music begins with the collision of Spain and Africa and continues through the era of Miguelito Valdes, Arsenio Rodriguez, Benny More, and Perez Prado. It offers a behind-the-scenes examination of music from a Cuban point of view, unearthing surprising, provocative connections and making the case that Cuba was fundamental to the evolution of music in the New World. The ways in which the music of black slaves transformed 16th-century Europe, how the "claves" appeared, and how Cuban music influenced ragtime, jazz, and rhythm and blues are revealed. Music lovers will follow this journey from Andalucia, the Congo, the Calabar, Dahomey, and Yorubaland via Cuba to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Saint-Domingue, New Orleans, New York, and Miami. The music is placed in a historical context that considers the complexities of the slave trade; Cuba's relationship to the United States; its revolutionary political traditions; the music of Santeria, Palo, Abakua, and Vodu; and much more.

Rumba Under Fire

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Publisher : punctum books
ISBN 13 : 0692655832
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (926 download)

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Book Synopsis Rumba Under Fire by : Irina Dumitrescu

Download or read book Rumba Under Fire written by Irina Dumitrescu and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2016 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A professor of poetry uses a deck of playing cards to measure the time until her lover returns from Afghanistan. Congolese soldiers find their loneliness reflected in the lyrics of rumba songs. Survivors of the siege of Sarajevo discuss which book they would have never burned for fuel. A Romanian political prisoner writes her memoir in her head, a book no one will ever read. These are the arts of survival in times of crisis.Rumba Under Fire proposes we think differently about what it means for the arts and liberal arts to be "in crisis." In prose and poetry, the contributors to Rumba Under Fire explore what it means to do art in hard times. How do people teach, create, study, and rehearse in situations of political crisis? Can art and intellectual work really function as resistance to power? What relationship do scholars, journalists, or even memoirists have to the crises they describe and explain? How do works created in crisis, especially at the extremes of human endurance, fit into our theories of knowledge and creativity?The contributors are literary scholars, anthropologists, and poets, covering a broad geographic range - from Turkey to the United States, from Bosnia to the Congo. Rumba Under Fire includes essays, poetry and interviews by Tim Albrecht, Carla Baricz, Greg Brownderville, William Coker, Andrew Crabtree, Cara De Silva, Irina Dumitrescu, Denis Ferhatovic, Susannah Hollister, Prashant Keshavmurthy, Sharon Portnoff, Anand Taneja, and Judith Verweijen.

Tram 83

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Publisher : Deep Vellum Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1941920055
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (419 download)

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Book Synopsis Tram 83 by : Fiston Mwanza Mujila

Download or read book Tram 83 written by Fiston Mwanza Mujila and published by Deep Vellum Publishing. This book was released on 2015-08-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two friends, one a budding writer home from Europe, the other an ambitious racketeer, meet in the only nightclub, the Tram 83, in a war-torn city-state in secession, surrounded by profit-seekers of all languages and nationalities. Tram 83 plunges the reader into the modern African gold rush as cynical as it is comic and colorfully exotic, using jazz rhythms to weave a tale of human relationships in a world that has become a global village. Fiston Mwanza Mujila (b. 1981, Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo) is a poet, dramatist, and scholar. Tram 83 is his award-winning and raved-about debut novel that caused a literary sensation when published in France in August 2014.

A Language of Song

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Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822392070
Total Pages : 365 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis A Language of Song by : Samuel Charters

Download or read book A Language of Song written by Samuel Charters and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-06 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Language of Song, Samuel Charters—one of the pioneering collectors of African American music—writes of a trip to West Africa where he found “a gathering of cultures and a continuing history that lay behind the flood of musical expression [he] encountered everywhere . . . from Brazil to Cuba, to Trinidad, to New Orleans, to the Bahamas, to dance halls of west Louisiana and the great churches of Harlem.” In this book, Charters takes readers along to those and other places, including Jamaica and the Georgia Sea Islands, as he recounts experiences from a half-century spent following, documenting, recording, and writing about the Africa-influenced music of the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Each of the book’s fourteen chapters is a vivid rendering of a particular location that Charters visited. While music is always his focus, the book is filled with details about individuals, history, landscape, and culture. In first-person narratives, Charters relates voyages including a trip to the St. Louis home of the legendary ragtime composer Scott Joplin and the journey to West Africa, where he met a man who performed an hours-long song about the Europeans’ first colonial conquests in Gambia. Throughout the book, Charters traces the persistence of African musical culture despite slavery, as well as the influence of slaves’ songs on subsequent musical forms. In evocative prose, he relates a lifetime of travel and research, listening to brass bands in New Orleans; investigating the emergence of reggae, ska, and rock-steady music in Jamaica’s dancehalls; and exploring the history of Afro-Cuban music through the life of the jazz musician Bebo Valdés. A Language of Song is a unique expedition led by one of music’s most observant and well-traveled explorers.

The Sacred Language of the Abakuá

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Author :
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496829476
Total Pages : 463 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis The Sacred Language of the Abakuá by : Lydia Cabrera

Download or read book The Sacred Language of the Abakuá written by Lydia Cabrera and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2020-12-28 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1988, Lydia Cabrera (1899–1991) published La lengua sagrada de los Ñáñigos, an Abakuá phrasebook that is to this day the largest work available on any African diaspora community in the Americas. In the early 1800s in Cuba, enslaved Africans from the Cross River region of southeastern Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon created Abakuá societies for protection and mutual aid. Abakuá rites reenact mythic legends of the institution’s history in Africa, using dance, chants, drumming, symbolic writing, herbs, domestic animals, and masked performers to represent African ancestors. Criminalized and scorned in the colonial era, Abakuá members were at the same time contributing to the creation of a unique Cuban culture, including rumba music, now considered a national treasure. Translated for the first time into English, Cabrera’s lexicon documents phrases vital to the creation of a specific African-derived identity in Cuba and presents the first “insider’s” view of this African heritage. This text presents thoroughly researched commentaries that link hundreds of entries to the context of mythic rites, skilled ritual performance, and the influence of Abakuá in Cuban society and popular music. Generously illustrated with photographs and drawings, the volume includes a new introduction to Cabrera’s writing as well as appendices that situate this important work in Cuba’s history. With the help of living Abakuá specialists in Cuba and the US, Ivor L. Miller and P. González Gómes-Cásseres have translated Cabrera’s Spanish into English for the first time while keeping her meanings and cultivated style intact, opening this seminal work to new audiences and propelling its legacy in African diaspora studies.

Little Money Street

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Author :
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307487571
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Little Money Street by : Fernanda Eberstadt

Download or read book Little Money Street written by Fernanda Eberstadt and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-12-18 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1998, Fernanda Eberstadt, her husband, and their two small children moved from New York to an area outside Perpignan, France — a city with one of the largest Gypsy populations in Western Europe. Here she found a jealously guarded culture, a society made, in part, of lawlessness and defiance of non-Gypsy norms; and she met MoÏse Espinas, the lead singer of the Gypsy band, Tekameli. As her relationship with the Espinas family developed over the years, progressing from mutual bafflement to a deep-rooted friendship, Eberstadt found herself a part of the captivating Gypsy life–a life rich with tradition and culture, but slowly being consumed by the modern world.

Snow in May

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Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 1627790071
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (277 download)

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Book Synopsis Snow in May by : Kseniya Melnik

Download or read book Snow in May written by Kseniya Melnik and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Residents of a thriving port town in Russia's Far East are shaped by regional history and lore throughout the latter half of the 20th century, from a local woman who considers an Italian footballer's proposition to a former Soviet boss' memories about a thorny friendship. A first collection. 35,000 first printing.

Mandela, Mobutu, and Me

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Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0307423700
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Mandela, Mobutu, and Me by : Lynne Duke

Download or read book Mandela, Mobutu, and Me written by Lynne Duke and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this stunning memoir, veteran Washington Post correspondent Lynne Duke takes readers on a wrenching but riveting journey through Africa during the pivotal 1990s and brilliantly illuminates a continent where hope and humanity thrive amid unimaginable depredation and horrors. For four years as her newspaper's Johannesburg bureau chief, Lynne Duke cut a rare figure as a black American woman foreign correspondent as she raced from story to story in numerous countries of central and southern Africa. From the battle zones of Congo-Zaire to the quest for truth and reconciliation in South Africa; from the teeming displaced person’s camps of Angola and the killing field of the Rwanda genocide to the calming Indian Ocean shores of Mozambique. She interviewed heads of state, captains of industry, activists, tribal leaders, medicine men and women, mercenaries, rebels, refugees, and ordinary, hardworking people. And it is they, the ordinary people of Africa, who fueled the hope and affection that drove Duke’s reporting. The nobility of the ordinary African struggles, so often absent from accounts of the continent, is at the heart of Duke’s searing story. MANDELA, MOBUTU, AND ME is a richly detailed, clear-eyed account of the hard realities Duke discovered, including the devastation wrought by ruthless, rapacious dictators like Mobutu Sese Seko and his successor, Laurent Kabila, in the Congo, and appalling indifference of Europeans and Americans to the legacy of their own exploitation of the continent and its people. But Duke also records with admiration the visionary leadership and personal style of Nelson Mandela in south Africa as he led his country’s inspiring transition from apartheid in the twilight of his incredible life. Whether it was touring underground gold and copper mines, learning to carry water on her head, filing stories by flashlight or dodging gunmen, Duke’s tour of Africa reveals not only the spirit and travails of an amazing but troubled continent -- it also explores the heart and fearlessness of a dedicated journalist.

Voyage of the Sable Venus

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Author :
Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 1101911204
Total Pages : 178 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (19 download)

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Book Synopsis Voyage of the Sable Venus by : Robin Coste Lewis

Download or read book Voyage of the Sable Venus written by Robin Coste Lewis and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This National Book Award-winning debut poetry collection is a "powerfully evocative" (The New York Review of Books) meditation on the black female figure through time. Robin Coste Lewis's electrifying collection is a triptych that begins and ends with lyric poems meditating on the roles desire and race play in the construction of the self. In the center of the collection is the title poem, "Voyage of the Sable Venus," an amazing narrative made up entirely of titles of artworks from ancient times to the present—titles that feature or in some way comment on the black female figure in Western art. Bracketed by Lewis's own autobiographical poems, "Voyage" is a tender and shocking meditation on the fragmentary mysteries of stereotype, juxtaposing our names for things with what we actually see and know. A new understanding of biography and the self, this collection questions just where, historically, do ideas about the black female figure truly begin—five hundred years ago, five thousand, or even longer? And what role did art play in this ancient, often heinous story? Here we meet a poet who adores her culture and the beauty to be found within it. Yet she is also a cultural critic alert to the nuances of race and desire—how they define us all, including her own sometimes painful history. Lewis's book is a thrilling aesthetic anthem to the complexity of race—a full embrace of its pleasure and horror, in equal parts.

Voice of the Leopard

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Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1604738146
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (47 download)

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Book Synopsis Voice of the Leopard by : Ivor L. Miller

Download or read book Voice of the Leopard written by Ivor L. Miller and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2010-01-06 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba, Ivor L. Miller shows how African migrants and their political fraternities played a formative role in the history of Cuba. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, no large kingdoms controlled Nigeria and Cameroon's multilingual Cross River basin. Instead, each settlement had its own lodge of the initiation society called Ékpè, or "leopard," which was the highest indigenous authority. Ékpè lodges ruled local communities while also managing regional and long-distance trade. Cross River Africans, enslaved and forcibly brought to colonial Cuba, reorganized their Ékpè clubs covertly in Havana and Matanzas into a mutual-aid society called Abakuá, which became foundational to Cuba's urban life and music. Miller's extensive fieldwork in Cuba and West Africa documents ritual languages and practices that survived the Middle Passage and evolved into a unifying charter for transplanted slaves and their successors. To gain deeper understanding of the material, Miller underwent Ékpè initiation rites in Nigeria after ten years' collaboration with Abakuá initiates in Cuba and the United States. He argues that Cuban music, art, and even politics rely on complexities of these African-inspired codes of conduct and leadership. Voice of the Leopard is an unprecedented tracing of an African title-society to its Caribbean incarnation, which has deeply influenced Cuba's creative energy and popular consciousness. This book is sponsored by a grant from the InterAmericas(r)/Society of Arts and Letters of the Americas, a program of the Reed Foundation.

Bayou Underground

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Publisher : ECW Press
ISBN 13 : 1554906822
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (549 download)

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Book Synopsis Bayou Underground by : Dave Thompson

Download or read book Bayou Underground written by Dave Thompson and published by ECW Press. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A veteran music journalist explores rock-n-roll’s bayou roots in “a jolting 18-track joy ride [that] unlocks secrets and back-stories worth savoring” (The Wall Street Journal). The bayou of the American south—stretching from Houston, Texas, to Mobile, Alabama—is a world all its own, with a rich cultural heritage that has had an outsized influence on musicians across the globe. In this unique study of marsh music, Dave Thompson goes beyond the storied stomping grounds of New Orleans to discover secret legends and vivid mythology in the surrounding wilderness. In Bayou Underground, the people who have called the bayou home—such as Bob Dylan, Jerry Reed, Nick Cave, Bo Didley, a one-armed Cajun backwoodsman, and gator hunter named Amos Moses—are unearthed through their own words, their lives and music, and interviews with residents from the region. Included interviews with legendary musicians like Jerry Reed and Bo Didley, Bayou Underground is part travelogue, part social history, and part lament for a way of life that has now all but disappeared.

Art on Trial

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231162502
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (311 download)

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Book Synopsis Art on Trial by : David Gussak

Download or read book Art on Trial written by David Gussak and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describing an outstanding example of the use of forensic art therapy in a criminal case, David Gussak, contracted by the defence to analyse the evidence in this instance, recounts his findings and presentation in court, as well as the future implications of his work for criminal proceedings.

Drone Child

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Author :
Publisher : David H. Rothman
ISBN 13 : 1736783173
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (367 download)

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Book Synopsis Drone Child by : David H. Rothman

Download or read book Drone Child written by David H. Rothman and published by David H. Rothman. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lemba Adula is the perfect 15-year-old--brilliant, hardworking and polite to his elders. He excels at flying drones and coaxing new tricks out of smartphones and computers. But murderous Congolese rebels kidnap Lemba and force him to kill. He also must train other child soldiers and even help hijack a giant container ship. Drone Child is a powerful thriller and adventure story recommended for mature readers aged 18 and above. Younger readers should receive guidance and engage in dialogue with parents, teachers or librarians due to the book's mature content. Sex traffickers kidnap Lemba's sister, a gifted rumba singer, highlighting a real-life crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Also, Drone Child contains elements of violence. The novel includes satirical passages that critically address the inhumanity of violence-loving individuals. Lemba is a crack shot both on the firing range and when hunting for food. At the same time, he's far from the typical action hero and empathizes with the families of the people he must kill. For authenticity and cultural sensitivity, author David H. Rothman enlisted the expertise of two Congolese fact-checkers. Junior Boweya is a translator, software localization expert, and businessman. Jean Felix Mwema Ngandu is a former Mandela Washington Fellow and prominent civic activist in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Both experts endorse the book and hope for translations into Lingala and French. Rothman has long been interested in issues affecting developing countries, especially technological ones. Positive reviews have appeared in Kirkus, The Midwest Book Review, and the American Library Association's Booklist. "A hefty tapestry interwoven with the possibilities for change," says the African American Literature Book Club. "In the context of our current times, this is a hope worth having." The second edition includes a new cover and a discussion guide for book clubs, parents, teachers and librarians. Drone Child also offers an informative section that compares events in the book with real happenings in the Congo. Additionally, the war in Ukraine makes this thriller more relevant than ever due to the moral questions that arise regarding drones and war in general, including atrocities against civilians. Don't miss out! Read Drone Child and root for Lemba and the other Adulas.