The country of Liberia boasts a rich history and a vibrant culture. Founded as a home for former slaves and free blacks from the United States and the Caribbean, Liberia is unique among its African neighbors as the political, economic, and social structures of the country are derived from both American and African traditions. Detailed photographs and insightful sidebars accompany the text and allow the reader to learn about the challenges facing Liberia today, as well as the customs, cuisine, and artistic contributions of the Liberian people.

A little child wakes up starving. Her mother can¿t feed her because she¿s dying from hunger. Her village can¿t protect her because they are engulfed in the midst of a bloody civil war. They have the misfortune to live in a village that is a strategic spot on the map of warlords and government forces; both groups determined to take and or keep that little town at all cost. Their men have fled; left them unprotected. Their sons have been taken or killed. But a small group of women must ensure the lives of their children, their elders and themselves.What they do, how they do it and when they do it, will determine their fates. Who survives, who doesn¿t? Who turns on the other, who doesn¿t? Who holds the group together or who falls apart?Kpana tells her story as a child trying to make sense of it all.

Portor Portor is an anthology of emerging and established poets from Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, and Botswana. Portor-Portor, a Liberian concept, refers to a pot of unevenly cooked rice-soft, sticky, grainy and lumpy. Within a single pot, is the embodiment of the notion of unity in diversity. Portor Portor features 12 African poets whose poems cover a wide range of topics- from daily life issues to religious, traditional and contemporary issues plaguing the continent. They offer us a rare glimpse into a diverse modern Africa. Portor Portor, in this edition, presents a unified voice amidst that diversity. KWEE: Liberian Literary Magazine

Breaking the Silence is the first comprehensive collection of literature from Liberia since before the nation's independence. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley has gathered work from the 1800s to the present, including poets and emerging young writers exploring contemporary literary traditions with African and African diaspora poetry that transcends borders. In this collection, Liberia's founding settlers wrestle with their identity as African free slaves in the homeland from which their ancestors were captured, and writers of the early twentieth and twenty-first centuries find themselves navigating a landscape at odds with itself. From poets of Liberia's past to young writers of the present, the contributors to this volume celebrate the beauty of their nation while mourning the devastation of a long, bloody civil war.

Fresh and electrifying—stories, poems, and essays by African and diaspora writers, edited by author Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond. Relations punctures the human illusion of separation. New and established storytellers reshape the narratives that divide and subjugate, revealing the truth of our shared humanity despite differences in language, identity, class, gender, and beyond. This vital anthology is Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond’s striking vision of a meeting place of perspectives, centered in the African and diaspora experience. In a post-Black Panther world, it is an urgent and welcome embrace of the diversity of Blackness. A refreshing collection of genre-spanning literature, it offers a vibrant meditation on being—inviting connection across real and imagined borders, and celebration of the most profound relations.