August Books

Read & Recommended or Otherwise Noted

AfricaFocus Notes on Substack offers short comments and links to news, analysis, and progressive advocacy on African and global issues, building on the legacy of over 25 years of publication as an email and web publication archived at http://www.africafocus.org. It is edited by William Minter. Posts are sent out by email once or twice a month. If you are not already a subscriber, you can subscribe for free by clicking on the button below. More frequent short notes are available at https://africafocus.substack.com/notes, and are also available in an RSS feed.

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Editor´s Note

Do you read more than five books a year? That is the median number read by American adults surveyed by Pew Research. But I suspect that you, like me, read more, so from time to time I dedicate an AfricaFocus post to books I think you may find useful or enjoy. In October 2023, I featured books on Africa and world history. This issue of AfricaFocus Notes features news of the forthcoming launch of AfricaFocus Books with an edited collection of essays, None of Us Is Free Until All of Us Are Free: New Perspectives on Global Solidarity. This issue also includes short notes about (1) mystery novels by Kwei Quartey set in Ghana and neighboring West African countries, (2) books on the Somali diaspora in Maine and a few other places, and (3) books authored or edited by me, now available free online.

Launch of AfricaFocus Books 

First, some news: this fall will see the launch of AfricaFocus Books as an imprint within Kassahun Checole's Africa World Press. The first book to be published is an edited collection of essays from AfricaFocus Bulletin and the US-Africa Bridge Building Project. It will be available by October or November from Africa World Press, and will be officially launched at the African Studies Association annual meeting in Chicago, December 12-14, 2024.

The book brings together essays from 2020 to 2024 on the theme of global solidarity in the early 21st century. It includes a foreword by Graça Machel, as well as an introduction and a concluding short essay by William Minter. More details will be available in a future announcement. But here is a preview of the cover and a short quote from the foreword.

"The chapters in this collection provide a rich resource for those engaged in the hard work of creating and sustaining solidarity networks of activists, organizations, and institutions. ... The voices you will find in these pages well illustrate these connections across borders that teach and inspire us all." – Graça Machel, first Minister of Education of Mozambique, First Lady of Mozambique (1975-1986) and of South Africa (1998-1999).

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Kwei Quartey Mystery Novels  

Kwei Quartey writes mystery novels based in Ghana and neighboring West African countries. One series features police inspector Darko Dawson, and the other features private investigator Emma Djan. In my opinion, Quartey is among the best writers of mystery novels set in an African country. He is a Ghanaian-American medical doctor based in California. This book, which I picked up from a Little Free Library in Mount Pleasant and just read, is the third in his Darko Dawson series. It is available on Kindle at Murder in Cape Three Points.

I have read all but three of the novels listed on his web site, and will be looking for his latest, to be released in September, to show up at the DC Public Library.

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The Somali Diaspora in Maine and Around the World

https://bookshop.org/lists/somali-diaspora-maine-minnesota-and-around-the-world/

In 2019, I published an article in AfricaFocus Bulletin on the Somali Diaspora in Lewiston, Maine. I cited several books highlighting the role of Somali immigrants in revitalizing the town's economy as well as their role in leading the town's highschool soccer team to a state championship and active role in local politics. See USA/Africa: At Home in Maine, AfricaFocus Bulletin, November 25, 2019 [Excerpts below later in this post].

I have been in Maine for the last two weeks. I wasn't able to visit Lewiston, a center of the Somali immigrant community in Maine, but I went to Portland for two days and was able to make contact with Amjambo Africa, an organization of African immigrants led by Georges Budagu Makoko. Makoko made his way to Maine after leaving his home in Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo to flee to Rwanda and to move eventually to the United States, as he relates in his memoir Ladder to the Moon.

I visited the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center in downtown Portland. While walking around downtown, I happened to be waiting at a pedestrian walk light to cross a busy street at the same time as two Angolans and we delayed crossing for a few minutes as we talked in Portuguese about how they came to the USA. And I met a Somali woman from Ilhan Omar's district in Minneapolis who was hoping someday to visit Somalia, her family's homeland.

Excerpts from AfricaFocus: At Home in Maine

“Safiya overcame so many obstacles, I can’t find the words to describe how much we’re proud of her. Internet trolls could not stop her, threats could not stop her. She’s the perspective the city needs. It’s a really big deal, a tremendous transformation for this city.” - Mo Khalid, speaking of his sister Safiya Khalid on her election to the Lewiston, Maine City Council on November 6, 2019

If you´re not from Maine, but have heard of Lewiston in the news in recent years, it may be because of the Lewiston High School boys´ soccer team on which Mo Khalid played, which has won 3 state-wide championships in the last five years (2015, 2017, and 2018, but not this year). Or it may be from the many articles over the years that have noted the welcome, despite difficulties, for African refugees in Lewiston in the past two decades.

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With a population of 36,000 in 2017, Lewiston is the second-largest city in Maine, after Portland with 67,000. And, of all U.S. states, Maine is the one with the highest percentage white population (94%). Lewiston might seem to be an unlikely location to host as many as 6,000 first or second-generation African immigrants, most of them U.S. citizens. But most residents agree that both Lewiston and Portland (with a larger African immigrant community although proportionately less) have benefited from the new residents. Lewiston in particular has experienced a significant demographic and economic recovery. It has set a precedent that is being closely watched at state-level, as Maine also is the state with the highest median age and a recognized need for a younger workforce.

[more]

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Selected Books Authored or Edited by William Minter

All of these are available online for download as PDFs. Printed copies or Kindle downloads of other books are available for sale by searching Biblio.com or Amazon.com.

Two of my books have been published by Africa World Press and are still available to buy there, since Africa World Press keeps all its books in print with print-on-demand: No Easy Victories, which I co-edited with Gail Hovey and Charles Cobb, Jr., and Operation Timber. 

With the permission of the publisher, PDFs of both of these books are available online in several locations.

No Easy Victories on my own website for the book and on the Internet Archive.

And Operation Timber is on the Internet Archive.

Among my other books that are available online and may be of interest are King Solomon's Mines Revisited: Western Interests and the Burdened History of Southern Africa, and Apartheid's Contras: An Inquiry into the Roots of War in Angola and Mozambique. Used print copies are available from Biblio.com.

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Checking Availability Online

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