A 1,001 Ways to Help -
www.serve.gov
On June 22nd, 2009,
President Obama launched United We Serve,
a campaign designed to encourage all Americans to volunteer this summer in the
arenas of health care, energy independence, education, and community &
economic reform. As part of this initiative, the government created www.serve.gov. This
resource site enables you to search for volunteer opportunities, register a
volunteer project, and read about how people around the country are discovering
new and creative ways to contribute to their communities. Whether it's building
trails, teaching children how to read, or supporting a local food bank, this
site is a great place to get inspired to serve in your own way. Be sure to
click on the toolkit link where you'll find materials to help you design your
own service project.
Women Make Peace- www.praythedevilbacktohell.com
A brave and compelling film, Pray the Devil Back to Hell chronicles the extraordinary actions of
a group of women who succeeded in helping to bring peace to their homeland of Liberia. Armed
only with white T-shirts, Muslim and Christian women came together to stage an
ongoing non-violent campaign for peace which eventually led to the exile of warlord
President Charles Taylor and the election of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf,
the first ever female to hold a political head of state position in Africa.
The civil war in Liberia lasted from 1989 until
2003. This period of brutal violence and instability involved man
y attempts by
foreign backed rebel armies to attack and overrun the government of warlord
president Charles Taylor. In 2003, the women of Liberia joined forces to decry the
continued violence and demand peace. They gathered in a public market in Monrovia to pray for peace
and strengthen their message. This courageous movement culminated in a sit in
during stalled peace talks in Ghana.
Their perseverance and commitment to changing the course of their country resulted
in the talks moving forward and the eventual cessation of violence.
The website for this film offers video clips, information
about upcoming screenings, background information about Liberia, and profiles
of the leaders of this groundbreaking peace movement. The film itself is an
impressive collection of footage, including that of the women meeting with
Charles Taylor, collected in a country that is working hard to recover from the
economic, civil, and technological devastation that is the result of so many
years of war. By watching this movie and passing it along to others, you will
help to ensure that the world remembers this extraordinary example of just how
powerful the collective voice of women can be.
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Half of a
Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The second novel by acclaimed author,  Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie, Half a Yellow Sun is a
marvelously written account of a volatile time in Nigeria. In 1966, the Igbo people,
decimated and hungry for independence, seceded from Nigeria
to form the nation of Biafra. Half a Yellow Sun, the emblem of Biafra,
tells the story of this tumultuous period through the voices of intriguing
characters such as: Ugwu, an adolescent boy who leaves his rural village to
work as a houseboy for Odenigbo, a professor with strong hopes for Nigeria's
independence, Olanna, Odenigbo's lover, and Kainene, her twin sister. As their
lives intersect and their stories unfold we are invited to explore the unique
overlay of politics with the intricacies of human relationships. Adiche offers
us a realistic portrayal of the strong tug of love and war.
Adiche, who grew up in Nigeria and attended
medical school there for two years before moving to the United States,
skillfully interweaves descriptive language that brings the physical landscape
to life with references to the political and cultural climate of Nigeria in the
late 1960s."They went past a sign, ODIM
STREET, and Ugwu mouthed street, as he did
whenever he saw an English word that was not too long. He smelled something
sweet, heady, as they walked into a compound, and was sure it came from the
white flowers clustered on the bushes at the entrance. The bushes were shaped
like slender hills. The lawn glistened. Butterflies hovered above." Adiche's
language is as rich as the motivations and experiences of her characters.
Half of a
Yellow Sun is a tremendously moving book that
offers us a window into the brutal reality of the civil war that raged across
Nigeria for three years. Adiche's characters offer a complex cross-section of
the people directly affected both by the violence and the earnest struggle for
cultural independence.
Lose your Mother by
Saidiya Hartman
Saidiya Hartman spent 1997 traveling through Ghana, tracing
the original slave routes in a quest to piece together not only her family's history
but also the lasting impacts of the slave trade on modern day Africa and
America. "To lose your mother is about losing your
identity, your language, your country, and that's the way th
ey speak of it in West Africa. So, it's about those losses that haunt us,
those ancestors who we know but can't name. We feel their presence but they're
without names for us" (NPR Interview). It's this haunting presence that
inspired Hartman to search for herself, her family's history, and the large
scale impacts of the slave trade that are still present in our world today.
This book is an academically-inclined
memoir written with the poetic beauty of a novel. Hartman combines artfully
sculpted descriptions with hard hitting commentary about her experience of
feeling unmoored in Africa and America.
Upon arrival in Ghana,
she is greeted with the word "Obruni" which means white stranger, a term that
will follow her for the next 12 months as she takes a journey that is fraught
with many confusing turns and dead ends. In this quote, Hartman summarizes the
Obruni experience, "When you really really realize you are not African,' one
expatriate admitted, 'it's the loneliest moment of your life, and if you can
withstand that, you can make it here. It goes on being lonely, and it's how you
adjust yourself to that loneliness that matters, not how you adjust to Africa."
From her position of researcher and personal explorer,
Hartman learns to claim the "slave" as she travels from dungeons to prisons to
pens to forts to castles to auction blocks. As she writes, "My generation was
the first that came here with the dungeon as our prime destination, unlike the
scores of black tourists who, motivated by Alex Haley's Roots, had traveled to Ghana and other parts of West
Africa to reclaim their African patrimony. For me, the rupture was
the story. Whatever bridges I might build were as much the reminder of the
separation as my connection. The holding
cell had supplanted the ancestral village. The slave trade loomed larger for me
than any memory of glorious African past."
This deeply authentic book has the power to alter the ways
in which we think about the impacts of slavery and its lasting legacy on not
only African Americans, but also on the globe. Reading Hartman's powerful and
painful year of healing in Ghana is an invitation to shift your perspective and
alter your understanding of the terms home, family, and connection. Lose
Your Mother boldly asks us to face the experience of the global slave trade
that remains for many of us unknown, unspoken and unhealed.
Upcoming Events:
Take part in our powerful public workshops! Follow
the links below for
more information on how to register:
Join LJS in Barbados! September 23rd, 2009
"You Don't Know What You Don't Know: The
Facilitator's Path to Authentic Cross-Cultural Practice"
Facilitated by Nanci Luna Jimenez, CPF©,
Barbara J. MacKay, CPF© and
Shoshanna Cogan
International Association of Facilitators
Caribbean and Latin America Conference Training Workshop
Early
Bird Registration Deadline August 22nd
To view the preliminary program, Click Here
Join LJS in Chicago!
April 20-21, 2010
"Transformational Alliances: Building Authentic Cross-Cultural Collaborative Relationships"
Facilitated by Nanci Luna Jimenez, CPF©,
Barbara J. MacKay, CPF© and
Shoshanna Cogan
International Association of Facilitators North American Conference Training Workshop
Register Online Now
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