Book 5: However Long the Night

This is the biography of Molly Melching, a woman who started a non-profit organization called Tostan in Senegal.

I appreciated this description of an organization that seeks solutions from the bottom up, rather than the top down. Tostan provides education to women in small groups, and over time, the women began asking for a module about women's health and the very sensitive issue of female genital cutting. Tostan has been very successful in reducing the rate of female genital cutting where other groups have not because it uses women's social groups and women's ideas to address the real reasons that cutting is practiced.

Book 4: Long Walk to Freedom

If you're interested in Nelson Mandela's life and work, this book is great.

Although there is a lot of information about South African politics that was new to me, it wasn't dry or really even that much over my head! The detail about how apartheid came to exist, and the methods of resistance they used against it, was really interesting.

There are a couple of other books I'd like to read about Mandela's life, including Conversations with Myself, a compilation of primary documents from Mandela's papers. Apparently Mr. Mandela was sometimes uncomfortable with how he was portrayed as nearly perfect. In an unfinished autobiography that was to follow Long Walk to Freedom, he wrote,

One issue that deeply worried me in prison was the false image that I unwittingly projected to the outside world; of being regarded as a saint. I never was one, even on the basis of an earthly definition of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.

A film adaptation of the book was released last year and I haven't seen it, but I have my doubts that it could present Mandela's life in enough detail to be satisfying.

Book 79: Mighty Be Our Powers

At the beginning of her book, Leymah Gbowee says that the story of the African woman is not often told to the rest of the world, and when it is, it is either the story of either starvation or systematic rape as part of warfare.

 
Gbowee tells a story that is neither of these. She was a co-winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in the Liberian peace process.

I found her work in ending the Liberian civil war incredibly interesting, and her personal growth throughout the story was very inspiring, too.

Book 65: Orange is the New Black

I decided to try this book out, even though I was a little put off by the fact that there is a Netflix series by the same name (and somewhat based on the book).



I found it a really interesting examination of how our actions affect others, how people change and grow (or don't), how very different women build a community, and how the penal system sometimes makes no sense at all. There's some deep thought in the book, as well as interesting characters of all types.

After reading, I gave the Netflix series a couple of minutes to see if it was as good. Um, no. Definitely not my kind of viewing. A memoir cannot easily be made into a popular TV show--at least not one that I would want to watch.

Book 30: Mountains Beyond Mountains

I almost didn't pick this to listen to. It was a second choice, after my first choice couldn't be put on an Apple device. I'm so glad that that's how it worked out, because this was amazing.



Dr. Paul Farmer is the founder of Partners in Health (called Zanmi Lasante in Haiti), an organization that provides medical care to the poor. Zanmi Lasante has built a comprehensive health system on the Haitian central plateau. Farmer is an advocate of social justice and liberation theology. He seeks to offer a preferential option to the poor--they receive no less care than those who can pay for treatment.

Kidder recounts that Dr. Farmer often carried two photos with him when he traveled: one of his own toddler daughter, and another of a young child with kwashiorkor. He would show one or the other of those photos to people he met. The message is that one's own child is not more valuable than a poor child; no child is worth more than another.

Book 14: An Affair with Africa

I downloaded this kind of on a whim because the title sounded interesting.



It was not at all what I expected, but I really ended up liking it. It was a travel book, very much from an outsider's perspective. In fact, Kistner often mentioned how they listened to conversations about various political issues and didn't comment, since they didn't have the background or experience to discuss them. I came to admire her restraint, since it seems I am always happy to shoot my mouth off about whatever I know even the tiniest fact about. The aspect of the book that I really enjoyed was her descriptions of how they made these expeditions work with their young children along, and that was quite inspiring. Long-term international travel with young children, here we come?

There was a lot of discussion of termites and ants, since Kistner's husband is an entomologist studying myrmecophiles and termitophiles (insects that live with ants and termites), and I found myself dreaming of marching ant columns a couple of times.

Book 13: Unbroken

I liked this, a lot. It's such an amazing story.



Yes, it was sometimes pretty disturbing to listen to, but there was always an element of hope throughout the whole book. Your clue to that would be the subtitle of the book, which contains the words "resilience" and "redemption". A similar book that I listened to last year (Coming Out of the Ice; also about a prisoner in brutal conditions) seemed much more distressing.