Deeper than African Soil captures the romantic, pores-open wonder of a child raised among worlds. It unveils the adventure and suffering of revolution, disease, boarding school trauma, wrenching farewells and losses deeper than most people endure in a lifetime. It explores the nature of memory itself, why we repress it and how to call it forth, all five senses open. Daughter of Canadian Mennonites, Faith Eidse was separated from family at the scariest moments of her life. Amid postcolonial tensions in Congo, Canada and the U.S., Faith and her sisters—Hope, Charity and Grace—lived vivid lives, bridging cultures from their home (Dutch Mennonite) to their host villages in southern Manitoba, the American Midwest and southwestern Congo. Yet home was always changing—sometimes drastically. Faith seldom felt she truly belonged to the places they lived. In the United States, Faith was an immigrant. In her parents’ passport country, Canada, she was a visitor. In Congo, she claimed friendship, longing and memories. She related to all cultures yet owned none, formed identity from bits of home (first culture) and host (second or third) cultures to create a unique third culture. “Third culture kids” each have their own enriched, complicated story but share a diaspora of the heart and longing for home. (352pp. illus. Masthof Press, 2023.)

This sequel to Between Worlds: Essays on Culture and Belonging, Marilyn Gardner¿s first exploration of the Third Culture Kid (TCK) experience, probes more deeply into the journey that forms a TCK¿s identity. Memories of joy and pain, close friendships and loneliness interweave in this compelling portrait of an international childhood. In Growing Up Between Worlds, Marilyn Gardner traces a journey of growing faith and emerging identity in a small missionary community. From the close quarters of boarding school, to the strangeness of furloughs in her parents¿ native Massachusetts, this honest portrayal of a young girl¿s struggles with faith, friendship, and belonging will resonate deeply with anyone who has lived between worlds.

"Marilyn Gardner was raised in Pakistan and went on to raise her own five children in Pakistan and Egypt before moving to small town New England. This book will resonate with those who have lived outside of their passport country, as well as those who have not. These essays explore the rootlessness and grief as well as the unexpected moments of humor and joy that are a part of living between two worlds."--Back cover.

This book analyzes the memoirs of 42 'missionary kids' - the children of North American Protestant missionaries in countries all over the world during the 20th century. It explores ways in which the missionary enterprise was part of the Western colonial enterprise, and ways in which a colonial mindset is unconsciously manifested in these memoirs.

Learning to care for a baby monkey and a chameleon, growing giant vegetables, meeting Pygmies in the jungle, finding the source of the Nile that Davidson and Stanley once searched for, sleeping in the open of the Serengeti prairie, and hiking around the rim of a volcano were some of the rare activities that Marilyn Kellum Barr describes that she experienced while living in Burundi, Africa as she attended schools there and in Kenya in the 1960’s. In The Heart of Africa she reports that the native people of this tiny, mountainous agricultural land lived simply, valuing their family, their small plot of land, and their mud hut, while many found Jesus and worshiped Him with enthusiasm in the midst of poverty and government strife. Even though she had to eat foods she found abhorant, she loved the culture and challenges of central Africa as her parents reached out to the people and worked with native leaders to begin a Christian radio station. Through God’s grace and the hard work of many Christians, Radio Cordac opened to air the gospel in five languages, also providing a school where Burundian students could learn electronics, recording techniques, and other relevant skills while working alongside other missionaries. While the station is now closed and missionaries are no longer allowed in the country, she shares reports from family members who have returned more recently on short-term visas that faithful Christians abound in this country and that a Christian radio station still offers the people spiritual hope even though electricity and running water are not available to rural people.

Africa in My Soul: Memoir of a Childhood Interrupted is the true story of Cheryl's turbulent, and sometimes joyous years growing up in a third-world culture. When she was eight, Cheryl's family started preparing to go to Nigeria, West Africa. Cheryl's parents were to serve as Protestant missionaries with the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM). The book describes Cheryl's years growing up in the boarding school from sixth grade through graduating from twelfth grade in high school. Her parents were transferred many times from one station to another across Nigeria which is common practice with the mission, but this left her without a real sense of "having a home." Because no mission high school was readily available for Cheryl's older sister, she had to be left behind in the states with a church family. Leaving Maria behind angered and hurt her deeply, as Maria, and Cheryl were very close; Cheryl missed her terribly. The boarding school experience for Cheryl was very painful, and she had a hard time adjusting. While there, she suffered mental, physical, spiritual, and sexual abuse. But, Cheryl was a determined young girl and developed defense mechanisms. Although some were dysfunctional, they helped her deal with the challenges she was faced with-these coping strategies are described in the book. However, Cheryl experienced some very exciting things in Africa. she was the first white girl to visit in a remote village. While there, the village chief offered Cheryl's father a goat and two pigs for Cheryl's hand in marriage. She was witness to a private tribal ritual called the Fulani Tribal Beatings where young men had to endure beatings with a stick across the chest while showing no outward signs of pain in order to become a man and get married. To Cheryl, Africa was a land of magic. She dearly loved Africa, and everything about it. The African people are warm and kind; the friendliest people you will meet. Cheryl has been back to her "home-away-from-home" twice since she first left in 1967. Africa is always fresh on Cheryl's mind and deep in Cheryl's heart.

National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry