This is the story of a child whose parents, in an attempt to find solution to their problems, find comfort in alcohol which robbed them the right to their only child and their reputation. This child, being a toddler, was filled with emotional trauma and spirit of isolation, was taken to a foster home because of his parents irrational behavior which was brought about by their excessive consumption of alcohol, became a father of two adults and a subject of ridicule among his peers because of his parents addiction. He was rescued by his uncle who took him and nurtured him up to his teenage stage and sent him to university for further studies. In the university, being a vulnerable child who never experienced parental love and attention, he was desperately looking for that attention by all means. Eventually, he got it from being a potential victim of a gang robbery in the school to a partner in crime. This deprived him of his career, led him to jail, and made him a fugitive for many years. Being on the run, he got married, and his love and affection for his friend became a stumbling block in the relationship between him and his wife. His friends character is the exact opposite of his, so with the intention of starting another life of crime, he became totally transformed by his new friend who was searching for his lost sister for many years. The friend salvaged him from going to jail once again as a result of a petty crime which he committed in a corner shop. This brought them together very close that they became inseparable. On their quest to find his friends sister, he displayed his true nature of sympathy and mentorship for the vulnerable, which got them into a misfortune that ruined their hope of fighting for the freedom of the less privileged and those in captive. This misfortune disconnected him and his best friend who rescued him from the life of crime to a freedom fighter and also led them to jail and brought separation between him, his friend, and the three other friends they met during their adventure to find his friends sister.

Writing That Breaks Stones: African Child Soldier Narratives is a critical examination of six memoirs and six novels written by and about young adults from Africa who were once child soldiers. It analyzes not only how such narratives document the human rights violations experienced by these former child soldiers but also how they connect and disconnect from their readers in the global public sphere. It draws on existing literary scholarship about novels and memoirs as well as on the fieldwork conducted by social scientists about African children in combat situations. Writing That Breaks Stones groups the twelve narratives into categories and analyzes each segment, comparing individually written memoirs with those written collaboratively, and novels whose narratives are fragmented with those that depict surreal landscapes of misery. It concludes that the memoirs focus on a lone individual’s struggles in a hostile environment, and use repetition, logical contradictions, narrative breaks, and reversals of binaries in order to tell their stories. By contrast, the novels use narrative ambiguity, circularity, fragmentation, and notions of dystopia in ways that call attention to the child soldiers’ communities and environments. All twelve narratives depict the child soldier’s agency and culpability somewhat ambiguously, effectively reflecting the ethical dilemmas of African children in combat.

In working to build a sense of nationhood, Ghana has focused on many social engineering projects, the most meaningful and fascinating of which has been the state's effort to create a national culture through its schools. As Cati Coe reveals in Dilemmas of Culture in African Schools, this effort has created an unusual paradox: while Ghana encourages its educators to teach about local cultural traditions, those traditions are transformed as they are taught in school classrooms. The state version of culture now taught by educators has become objectified and nationalized—vastly different from local traditions. Coe identifies the state's limitations in teaching cultural knowledge and discusses how Ghanaians negotiate the tensions raised by the competing visions of modernity that nationalism and Christianity have created. She reveals how cultural curricula affect authority relations in local social organizations—between teachers and students, between Christians and national elite, and between children and elders—and raises several questions about educational processes, state-society relations, the production of knowledge, and the making of Ghana's citizenry.

The African Child author tells it as it happened from the harrowing childhood experience to the ups and downs of his adulthood in the African capital cities and the rural typical village. The interesting mix of hard work and faith in Gods Providence makes for an exhilarating reading that challenges African policy makers. The authors critical assessment of the Nigerian crisis in the mid sixties soon after Independence as he places blame on both sides of the conflict depicts the writers sense of impartiality to be encouraged by political leaders particularly in Africa. This book examines thoughtfully the various stages in human development and finds no excuse in the down trodden level of the black man from his native land in Africa to his imposed second home anywhere, particularly in the United States. In the closing chapters the book exposes the hardship, the loss of human dignity and personal exploitation of all black people from the days of the slave trade till today. The book challenges the conscience of world leaders and calls for Reparation for slavery and colonialism. Besides, the author seeks to inculcate the spirit of self respect in all African people maintaining that self respect is the smoothening oil for human dignity while chastising all races of mankind to judge a person not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character, as Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. admonished. This is a must read for all civil rights activists, college young students and world leaders and politicians. Asuzu Agwunobi

What does it mean to be a child in Africa? In the detached Western media, narratives of penury, wickedness and death have dominated portrayals of African childhood. The hegemonic lens of the West has failed to take into account the intricacies of not only what it means to be an African child in local and culturally specific contexts, but also African childhood in general. Challenging colonial discourses, this edited volume guides the reader through different comprehensions and perspectives of childhood in Africa. Using a blend of theory, empiricism and history, the contributors to this volume offer studies from a range of fields including African literature, Afro-centric psychology and sociology. Importantly, in its eclectic geographical coverage of Africa, this book unashamedly presents the good, the bad and the ugly of African childhood. The resilience, creativity, pains and triumphs of African childhood are skilfully woven together to present the myriad of lived experiences and aspirations of children from across Africa. As an important contribution to African childhood studies, this book has the potential to be used by policymakers to shape, sustain or change socio-cultural, economic and education systems that accommodate African childhood dynamics and experiences at different levels.

In order to meet the requirements of the new era, the book, 'the tears of an African child, ' dissolves the sardonic problems of poverty and corruption, repression and deprivation, objectifi cation and subdivision, and human dehumanisation. With the ink of tears in the writer's pen, comes, 'the tears of an African child.' Bound by the grace of democracy, the book renders strategies that will help make extravagantly, a political leap into the heights of wealth, and fame, and knowledge, and economic boost. Read; (1) how Bad leadership enslaves humanity to these grips of our mysterious malady that led to our cultural forlorn and the political despondency that our universe founds herself in. And how the tears of young writer, (2) rewrites the black history and delivers a continent from the shackles of poverty and shell of underdevelopment. And, (3) Broke the vicious cycle of hope and despair, stability and chaos, affl uent and poverty.

Don: American Embassy 2 copies.