Kunta Kinte, Ghana and Family Secrets - #BooksoftheWeek: September 23, 2013
Looking for a good book to read? Every week, ZODML spotlights three great books from our extensive collection to inspire readers to try out books they might not have previously heard of. The selections fall under three major categories – fiction, non-fiction and children and young adult literature – so there’s a book to suit every taste. All of the books selected are available to borrow at our Community Library. Also check out our archives to see which books have been selected in the past.
Fiction: Roots by Alex Haley
When he was a boy in Henning, Tennessee, Alex Haley's grandmother used to tell him stories about their family, down through the generations all the way to a man she called "the African." She said he had lived across the ocean near what he called the "Kamby Bolongo," and had been out in the forest one day chopping wood to make a drum when he was set upon by four men, beaten, chained and dragged aboard a slave ship bound for Colonial America. After ten years and a half a million miles of travel across three continents, Haley discovered not only the name of "the African"--Kunta Kinte—but the precise location of Juffure, the very village in The Gambia, West Africa, from which he was abducted in 1767 at the age of sixteen and taken on the Lord Ligonier to Maryland and sold to a Virginia planter. A fictional account of the life and times of Kunta Kinte, Roots speaks to all people and all races everywhere, for the story it tells is one of the most eloquent testimonials ever written to the indomitability of the human spirit.
Non-Fiction: All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes by Maya Angelou
All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes, the fifth instalment in writer Maya Angelou’s autobiographical books, sees her travel to Ghana, where she joins a community of black Americans. In a vivid celebration of the sights, sounds, and feelings of Africa, Angelou also explores what it means to be African-American on the mother continent, where colour no longer matters but American-ness asserts itself in ways that are both puzzling and heartbreaking.
Children and Young Adults: Storm Catchers by Tim Bowler
Fin is devastated by guilt when his sister, Ella, is kidnapped. She is snatched away from the house in the middle of a storm. As the kidnappers make their demands, Fin's guilt is replaced by a fierce determination to find his sister by whatever means he can, and bring the criminals to justice. But as the drama unfolds, a complex web of family secrets is revealed. It emerges that Ella's kidnapping is revenge for mistakes Fin's father made, years before. The consequences will change all their lives forever.
What are you reading this week? Share your #BooksoftheWeek with us in the comments!
