BOOK REVIEW

Title: Courageous Journey (Walking the Lost Boys' Path from Sudan to America)
Author: Ayuel Leek Deng, Beny Ngor Chol, and Barbara Youree
Publisher: New Horizon Press
Pages: 311
Price: $24.95

It has been said that "War is hell". Human eyes bear witness to unbearable horror and unimaginable evil. In a time of war, injuries and casualties are all too common. Those caught in the war zone often experience trauma, depression and insanity. Yet there are rare times when, despite tragedy and death, war brings out the best in us. For two young men, survival meant more than just staying alive.

This offering: Courageous Journey: Walking the Lost Boys' Path from the Sudan to America, chronicles the voyage to freedom of Ayuel Leek Deng and Beny Ngor Chol, who survived famine, the brutal deaths of family members and homelessness during the war in Sudan, which raged on for more than a decade. They were merely boys, caught in a bloody battle attempting to escape with their lives. Fleeing to relief camps brought some refuge and aid, but soon it was time to run again from the brutal enemy that continued to stalk them from place to place.

Many of Ayuel's and Beny's family and friends were killed. They were just two of the thousands of "Lost Boys" without a home to return to. As a result, they lost their childhood, faith and compassion. 

After a lifetime of seeing daily bloodshed, Ayuel and Beny at first wanted revenge, and then, 14 years in refugee camps, The Lost Boys, Ayuel and Beny, were chosen to immigrate to the United States. 

In time, they have renewed their beliefs, learned to forgive their enemies, discovered a brand new world, and renewed their hopes to save others in Africa. Courageous Journey: Walking the Lost Boys' Path from the Sudan to America by Ayuel Leek Deng, Beny Ngor Chol and Barbara Youree is an uplifting tour de force that exemplifies the power of heart, strength of determination and proves the indomitable human spirit can triumph. The Sudan Civil War changed countless lives, including numerous orphans dubbed the Lost Boys - the courageous journey to freedom of Ayuel Leek Deng and Beny Ngor Chol will change yours. 

Our regular readers will recall our cover photo
of the US Olympics’ Team flag-bearer,
Joseph Lopepe-Lopez-Lomong who was one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan”

Title: My Fathers' Daughter: A Story of Family and Belonging
Author: Hannah Pool
Publishing Date: January 2009
Publisher: Free Press
Pages: 256
Price: $25.00

What happens when a very westernized black woman goes to Africa for the first time to meet a family she never knew existed? Adopted from birth from an Eritrean orphanage into a British family, Hannah Pool did not give much thought to Africa in her daily life as a beautiful, independent, cosmopolitan thirty-year-old journalist in London. But when she receives a letter carrying the news that birth father is still alive, she decides to make a trip back to Eritrea, eventually reaching the tiny village hut in which her mother died giving birth to her. My Fathers' Daughter: A story of Family and Belonging, is Hannah Pool's story of that journey, and a new way of seeing Africa.

"Unlike the rest of my birth family, I have never gone truly hungry, I have never prayed for rain, and I have never been displaced by war," writes Pool. "Looking at the facts, if anyone should be relieved to have been adopted it should be me. My adoption has meant that I escaped terrible hardships and the likelihood of early death. Even I know that a motherless child does not last long in the villages. Had I not been placed in that orphanage, assuming I made it past infancy, I would have had a normal Eritrean peasant life - complete with a stint on the front doing my national service, an arranged marriage, and children in my teens.

"But I still wish none of it happened. I still wish I had never been adopted, and, most importantly, I still want to know, Why? Why me? And now, here I am, on one side of a door, with only people who can answer that question on the other...."

A story about race and identity, My Fathers' Daughter is much about an adopted child facing up to the challenge of tracing her biological family as it is about her search for African roots. Originally published in England, this heart-rending tale is beautifully honest, Pool gives us a front row view of how identity is built up, but also how it is dismantled. It is simply engrossing. The Sunday Times of London said "The sentiment is never pity, rather awe - at the depth of Hannah's experience, her courage in confronting it and her success in making sense of it all."

Hannah Pool was born in Eritrea in 1974 and grew up in Manchester, England. Best known for her column, "The New Black" in The Guardian, she is currently a feature writer at The Guardian newspaper.

Title: Casting With A Fragile Thread (A Story of Sisters and Africa)
Author: Wendy Kann
Publisher: Picador
Pages: 304
Price: $15.00

With the skill of a born storyteller, Wendy Kann has written that rare debut: a wise, complex memoir. Casting With A Fragile Thread: A Story of Sisters and Africa is Kann's very intimate story of her childhood, contained within a subtle portrait of colonial Africa in its last days. Filled with clear resiliency and keen observations, Casting displays the author's deep love of her sisters and her country, in a moving and universal story of self-discovery.

One Sunday morning in her suburban home in Connecticut, Wendy Kann received a phone call: her youngest sister, Lauren, had been killed on a lonely road in southern Africa. With that news, Kann is summoned back to the territory of her youth in what is now Zimbabwe. The girl's privileged colonial childhood, a rural life of mansions and servants, is devastated by their father's premature death, their mother's insanity, and the onset of civil war. Kann soon leaves Africa, marries an American, and has finally settled into the dry sophistication of life in the States when her sister's death calls her back.

With honesty and compassion, Kann pieces together her sister's life, explores the heartbreak of loss and the struggle to belong, and finally discovers a new, more complicated meaning of home.

According to the Publishers Weekly, "Until recently, writers like Joseph Conrad and Paul Theroux have defined the white colonial experience in literature. Now, with Alexandra Fuller (Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight) and Kann, we're hearing from a different constituency: the daughters. Their tales, Kann's included, make for fascinating reading."

Sandra Erdman, author of Nine Hills To Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village had this to say about Casting: "This is more than a touching story of personal tragedy. Wendy Kann paints an unapologetic and thoughtful view of a different kind of minority. She is first a settler: a white Zimbabwean, brought up in a privileged but dysfunctional cocoon of expats, alcoholics, and hard-bitten farmers. She is later an improbable African immigrant: a Western-looking woman bewildered and alone on the streets of New York. Her candid treatment of race is refreshingly free of political correctness, her tales of bridging cultures are insightful and thought-provoking, and her family's searing history is penned with honesty. Best of all, her lovely words reflect an introspection and grace that are sometimes borne out of so much hardship."