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Clinics: SIERRA LEONE AND LIBERIA

WEST AFRICA INITIATIVE READING LIST

In Sierra Leone
Michael Jackson
In 2002, as Sierra Leone prepared to announce the end of its brutal civil war, the distinguished anthropologist, poet, and novelist Michael Jackson returned to the country where he had intermittently lived and worked as an ethnographer since 1969. In Sierra Leone is a beautiful rendered mosaic integrating a prominent political figure’s story with personal reflections, ethnographic digressions, and meditations on history and violence.

The Devil That Danced on the Water; A Daughter’s Quest
Aminatta Forna
A personal history of the author is a passionate and vivid account of an idyllic childhood that became the stuff of nightmare. As a child she witnessed the upheavals of post-colonial Africa, danger, flight,, the bitterness of exile in Britain, and the terrible consequences of her dissident father’s stand against tyranny. A remarkable and important story of Africa.

A Long Way Gone
Ishmael Beah
This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone’s civil war goes beyond even the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare. Beah’s harrowing journey transforms him overnight from a child enthralled by American hip hop music and dance to a refugee bereft of family, wandering from village to village in a country grown deeply divided by the indiscriminate atrocities of unruly, sociopathic rebel and army forces. Beah then finds himself in the army- in a drug filled life of casual mass slaughter that lasts until he is 15, when he’s brought to a rehabilitation center sponsored by UNICEF and partnering organizations. A gifted story teller with a first hand account of the ongoing plight of child soldiers in conflicts worldwide.

By the Goodness of God: An Autobiography
Bishop John G. Innis
An autobiographical account which provides insights into life in Liberia including a compelling account of living the Christian faith in the midst of a long, bloody, and destructive civil war. The book provides the reader with a powerful witness of how God’s grace and love can surmount life’s greatest challenges and bring renewed hope.