We wrap up book news for our readers in our regular Book Digest segment with books from Veronique Tadjo, Zukiswa Wanner, Bill “Blade” Howell, and Andie Davis.
Je Mercie La Nuit by Veronique Tadjo
Publisher: Mémoire d’Encrier
Date: August 19, 2024
Genre: Fiction
Language: French
Where to find it: Mémoire d’Encrier
Veronique Tadjo
Born in Paris, Véronique Tadjo grew up in Cote D’Ivoire. A poet, novelist, academic and painter, she has lived in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa. Her work is acclaimed worldwide.
Je Mercie La Nuit
Flora and Yasmina live their student life in Ivory Coast. The country is sinking into a political crisis. Caught up in the turmoil, the two friends see their destinies change direction. Yasmina is forced to return to the village while Flora takes refuge in Johannesburg where she starts her life over again.
Let Me Liberate You by Andie Davis
Publisher: Little A
Date: July 9, 2024
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Amazon
Andie Davis
Andie Davis’s curiosity about other people’s lives inspired her love for languages and her travels around the world. Born in Montserrat, Davis grew up in Barbados before moving with her family to the US, where she attended Howard University and Harvard Law School. She works as a global development advisor focused on sustainability. She lives in New York City.
Let Me Liberate You
A restless New York artist searching for purpose returns to Barbados and stumbles into the role of activist in this scathingly funny and brilliantly observed satire about privilege, family discord, and performative do-gooding. Dark, lanky, and bald, New York–raised photographer Sabre Cumberbatch can’t tell if she’s highly talented or just highly Instagrammable. Up to here with art critics and their gaseous praise, Sabre returns to Barbados, her childhood island home, to water her roots. She needs to quell self-doubt by doing something―anything―profoundly important. Welcoming her with bejeweled open arms is her aunt Aggie, a fearsome high-society attorney eager to show off her famous American niece. When Sabre witnesses Aggie unleash her wrath on the household staff over a minor mistake, Sabre finds her cause. During an interview for a puff piece about art, Sabre goes off-script and takes a righteous stand against the tyranny of the ruling class―starting with Aggie. Overnight, Sabre throws her family and an entire island into chaos. How many ways can the best intentions go wrong? They’re racking up. But tingling with purpose, Sabre is counting on the ways they just might go right.
Setlhare Sa learogi/The Peculiar Tree: Children’s Stories from Botswana edited by Zukiswa Wanner
Publisher: Gaborone Book Festival
Date: July 31, 2024
Genre: Fiction, anthology, short stories, children
Language: English/Setswana
Where to find it: Gaborone Book Festival
Contributors
Olga Wankie Tladi, Abigail Mwikisa, Goitseone Raphael, Wendy Joy Boucher, Ms. Phontelle, Omphile Sharon Monnana, Dr. Lesedi Gaeemelwe, Neo B. Ntepa Kitso, Laone Chombo, and Caiphus Mmino Mangenela.
Setlhare Sa learogi/The Peculiar Tree: Children’s Stories from Botswana
Setlhare Sa learogi/The Peculiar Tree is an anthology of ten short stories for children by Batswana writers written in English and translated into Setswana.
Pinnacle: The Lost Paradise of Rasta by Bill “Blade” Howell and Hélène Lee
Publisher: Akashic Books
Date: August 6, 2024
Genre: Biography
Language: English
Where to find it: Penguin Random House, Amazon
Bill “Blade” Howell
Bill “Blade” Howell was born to Leonard Percival Howell and Tenneth Bent-Howell in 1942 at Pinnacle in Sligoville, St. Catherine, on the island of Jamaica. In 1956, Howell and his family were evicted from the land that they had been living on for over sixteen years through a series of corrupt tactics from government officials, wealthy landowners, and crooked lawyers. Howell went on to become one of the first Black art directors working in New York advertising agencies in the 1970s. He has been living in New York for over fifty years.
Hélène Lee
Hélène Lee is a French traveler, biker (Tokyo to Paris on a Yamaha dirt bike!), journalist, writer, documentary director, and translator. For decades she has been writing about African and Caribbean music for the French newspaper Libération and many magazines, along with translating books and writing several of her own. She is best known for The First Rasta: Leonard Howell and the Rise of Rastafarianism, her groundbreaking volume on the founder of the Rasta movement. That book and an award-winning documentary on the same subject have deeply impacted the understanding of reggae music and Rasta. A longtime friend of the Howell family, Lee convinced Leonard Howell’s son Bill to share his own memories of Pinnacle; this book is the only testimony ever published by a member of the original Rasta community.
Pinnacle: The Lost Paradise of Rasta
A fascinating first-person origin story of the Rastafari ideology, culture, and philosophy, capturing a crucial and little-known chapter in Jamaican history IN 1932, A JAMAICAN MAN NAMED LEONARD PERCIVAL HOWELL began leading nonviolent protests in Kingston, Jamaica, against British colonial rule. While history books rightly credit Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. with popularizing nonviolent protest strategies in later years, little is known about Leonard Howell and his vision of self-reliance―poor people working together to build a society of their own. When Howell first started preaching on street corners in Kingston, he was immediately perceived as “seditious,” and he became a target for police harassment. Howell soon founded an organization called the Ethiopian Salvation Society. His idea was to add a religious element to Marcus Garvey’s message of African independence. Although Christian values were part of his belief system, he decided to make a break from the Christian interpretation of the Bible and extend the idea of divinity to a living man, Emperor Haile Selassie I, who had been crowned king of Ethiopia in 1930. Jamaican journalists coined a name for the group: the “Ras Tafarites,” or “Rastas.” Howell was arrested several times and was eventually found guilty of sedition and sentenced to prison for two years of hard labor. In 1940, Howell and his growing group of followers moved to an old estate in the parish of St. Catherine. They named their land Pinnacle, and for the next sixteen years built a self-reliant community that would ultimately give birth to the Rastafari movement. In 1942, Leonard Howell’s wife Tenneth gave birth to their second child, who they named Bill. In Pinnacle: The Lost Paradise of Rasta, Bill “Blade” Howell offers his firsthand account of this utopian community that suffered near-constant persecution from Jamaican authorities. Howell also dispels many misguided notions about the origins of Rastafari culture, including allegations of sexism and homophobia. Pinnacle was built on egalitarian principles, and steered clear of all religious dogma. Pinnacle: The Lost Paradise of Rasta provides a crucial and highly informed new perspective on the Rastafari subculture that Bob Marley would later help to spread across the globe. The volume includes photographs and original documents related to Pinnacle.
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