I am a writer with multiple cultures and heritage. I believe stories are magical, they touch our hearts and change the way we think and behave. Having lived in different continents around the world, my book list reflects stories with diversity of cultures and story settings around the world, and how the impact of these stories reverberated with me for a long time after reading them.
A breathtaking account of one girl's determination to triumph over a devastating historical event. In Uganda in 1972, President Idi Amin, known as the Last King of Scotland, announces that foreign Indians must be "weeded" out of Uganda in ninety days. The president's message, broadcast on the radio daily, becomes Sabine's "countdown monster," and it follows her through days of terror. Sabine's father is convinced that, as Ugandan citizens, their family will be unaffected, but her mother insists it's too dangerous to stay. When her beloved uncle disappears and her best friend abandons her, Sabine begins to understand her mother's fears. She becomes desperate to leave, but Bapa, her grandfather, refuses to accompany her. How can she leave him, and where will her family go to begin a new life?
I came across this science fiction book since my children studied it in Junior High school in Canada. The protagonist in the story is a young man, 32-year-old Charlie Gordon who has a low IQ. The setting of the story is New York City in the USA in the 1960s. Charlie has battled disability since his childhood and yearns to be smart. Having observed discrimination towards people with disabilities, I was curious to find out what happens if we increase human intelligence artificially. What piqued my interest were the letters Charlie wrote. Upon reading the book, the message that resonated with me was that humanity is not measured by how smart we are, but by our kindness, love, and interaction with other people.
I studied this great work of literature in the 1960s in Secondary School in Mombasa and the injustice of humanity in this tragic story is still indelibly etched in my heart. The story is set in Ndotsheni, a poor, agricultural village in South Africa but with a strong sense of community and in the city of Johannesburg a corrupt, big city where it's every man for himself. It is about a Zulu pastor, Stephen Kumalo, who receives a letter that his sister in Johannesburg has fallen sick. Kumalo undertakes the difficult journey travelling from his village to the city in the hopes of aiding his sister and of finding his son, Absalom, who left to go to the city and never returned. What really moved me is the estranged relationship of two fathers and their sons that evoke anguish in the fathers. Upon reading this book the message that resonated with me was how apartheid rule destroyed traditional families.
Once again, I read this book as my children studied it in school. I especially liked the story since I belong to a visible minority community and this story posed the fundamental question: how do I get along with people who are different from me?
The book was published in America in 1960 but the story is set in the mid-1930s in the small town of Maycomb in the state of Alabama. The story is told by Scout Finch, a six-year-old girl who lives with her lawyer father, Atticus, and her ten-year-old brother Jem. Their father, Atticus, defends a Black man falsely accused of rape. Scout and Jem view the residents of their town with compassion and understanding, rather than bitterness and anger. They empathise with Tom Robinson, the accused black man, and the recluse Boo Bradley.
I especially liked how the author used mockingbirds to symbolize innocence. In the story, innocent people like Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are like mockingbirds who bring happiness but are shunned by the society. I found this book to be very important as much of white America in the 1960s viewed the coming together of different races as immoral. What resonated with me was that this story inspired Americans and helped prepare the way for reforms such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
'Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'
Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel - a black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Lee explores the issues of race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s with compassion and humour. She also creates one of the great heroes of literature in their father, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped…
The story is set in the Cholistan Desert in Pakistan near the border between Pakistan and India. I so admired the young 11-year-old girl Shabanu, who is strong-willed, independent, and ‘wild as the wind.’ It tore my heart to read about the tragic encounter with a wealthy landowner that ruined Shabunu’s older sister’s plan of marriage and when Shabanu was called upon to sacrifice all her dreams. A girl in a Muslim family always obeys her father’s wishes so when Shabanu is betrothed to an older man, I was anxious to find out if she would honor her family and heritage or follow her heart and flee.
The Newbery Honor winner about a heroic Pakistani girl that The Boston Globe called “Remarkable . . . a riveting tour de force.”
Life is both sweet and cruel to strong-willed young Shabanu, whose home is the windswept Cholistan Desert of Pakistan. The second daughter in a family with no sons, she’s been allowed freedoms forbidden to most Muslim girls. But when a tragic encounter with a wealthy and powerful landowner ruins the marriage plans of her older sister, Shabanu is called upon to sacrifice everything she’s dreamed of. Should she do what is necessary to uphold her family’s honor—or…
I found this modern story empowering. In fact, I did not want this gut-wrenching, gripping story to end. The story is set in Nigeria in 2014, a pre-election year, the year in which Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls. It is related in pidgin English by a naïve 14-year-old girl Adunni, who lives in a village in Nigeria. After Adunni’s mother dies, her father pulls Adunni out of school and marries her off to an old man using the bride price to pay the family’s rent. Later, Adunni is tricked into becoming a housemaid to a rich, abusive lady, Big Madam.
Adunni is abused and undergoes a lot of pain and misery, but she has the strength and resilience to persevere. She educates herself, gains confidence, her self-worth, and a ‘louding voice.’ The story will inspire teens, especially girls, to pursue education to seek their ‘louding voices.’
'Unforgettable' New York Times 'Impressive' Observer 'Remarkable' Independent 'Important' Guardian 'Captivating' Mirror 'Luminous' Daily Mail 'Sparkling' Harper's Bazaar 'Beautiful' Herald
THE NEW YORK TIMES AND TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE FOR FICTION ___________________________________________________
I don't just want to be having any kind voice . . . I want a louding voice.
At fourteen, Adunni dreams of getting an education and giving her family a more comfortable home in her small Nigerian village. Instead, Adunni's father sells her off to become the third wife of an old man. When tragedy…
This climate fiction novel follows four generations of women and their battles against a global giant that controls and manipulates Earth’s water. Told mostly through a diary and drawing on scientific observation and personal reflection, Lynna’s story unfolds incrementally, like climate change itself. Her gritty memoir describes a near-future Toronto in the grips of severe water scarcity.
Single mother and limnologist Lynna witnesses disturbing events as she works for the powerful international utility CanadaCorp. Fearing for the welfare of her rebellious teenage daughter, Lynna sets in motion a series of events that tumble out of her control with calamitous consequence. The novel explores identity, relationship, and our concept of what is “normal”—as a nation and an individual—in a world that is rapidly and incomprehensibly changing.
Centuries from now, in a post-climate change dying boreal forest of what used to be northern Canada, Kyo, a young acolyte called to service in the Exodus, discovers a diary that may provide her with the answers to her yearning for Earth’s past—to the Age of Water, when the “Water Twins” destroyed humanity in hatred—events that have plagued her nightly in dreams. Looking for answers to this holocaust—and disturbed by her macabre longing for connection to the Water Twins—Kyo is led to the diary of a limnologist from the time just prior to the destruction. This gritty memoir describes a…
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