Wangari’s Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa

admin — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:43:00 +0000

Wangari’s Trees of Peace is a beautifully imagined account, designed for young readers, of the life and career of Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan scholar, activist, and environmentalist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her leadership of the Green Belt Movement and her resistance to deforestation. Often, “message books” like these underestimate kids’ level of sophistication and come across as preachy or cloying. In my experience, kids are wary of being propagandized and tune out adult condescension. On the other hand, they are often responsive to environmental issues and moved to action by abuses such as those depicted by Jeanette Winter. What makes this book especially remarkable is that its author does not soft-pedal the hardships that Wangari Maathai faced in her challenge to political authority, even the violence and imprisonment she suffered is represented graphically.

Winter, who provides simple yet colorful and evocative illustrations as well as an age-appropriate narrative, begins the book with an image of shelter: stylized trees in the shadow of Mount Kenya with goats frolicking and a young girl basking in the shade. Wangari is illustrated gathering firewood with her mother, again under the shelter of trees leafed with birds. She and her mother are depicted harvesting crops under a benevolent sun. She then leaves to study in America, and returns to see a land of tree stumps and unhappy women searching great distances, under a much more menacing-looking sun, for wood. Wangari asks poignantly, “And where are the birds?”

The next illustration shows Wangari crying as she imagines Kenya becoming a treeless desert. She then decides to plant trees in her own backyard, cares for them, and then shares her seedlings with others in the village. The trees represent hope, and the other village women embrace the gifts. The trees become “like a green belt stretching over the land”—the author’s nod to the environmental movement Maathai founded.

The book next represents her clash with authority—her standing between the trees and men with axes eager to build an office tower. She is depicted being hit by a club and bloodied by men who “call her a troublemaker and put her in jail.” And yet, in spite of her isolation, we are told she is not really alone, and the women and their trees fill the land with thirty million symbols of hope. Again, the images depict a land of shelter, trees filled with birds, women working happily together. Finally, the book tells of the world’s discovery of Wangari and her victory.

The book justifiably steers clear of some of the controversies that seem inevitably to beset public figures, including remarks she has made about HIV/AIDS. Rather, it focuses on the central figure’s courage and remarkable accomplishments, and the change that women working together can effect.

Written by: Rick Taylor, October 14th 2008

Unbowed

admin — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 17:39:00 +0000

Wangari Maathai

Alfred A. Knopf

This inspirational memoir traces the life of an extraordinary woman. Wangari Maathai was born in 1940 in a small Kikuyu community in Kenya. Throughout the memoir we watch Maathai’s life change and progress alongside Kenyan society. The memoir unfolds with stories of Kikuyu traditions and beliefs as a young Maathai plants crops alongside her mother. We see the influence that British colonization has on Kenyan society as European practices are adopted and cash crop agriculture replaces native plants. Maathai understands the value of Kenya’s natural habitat and how it must bridge Kenya’s past and future.

Maathai’s life lessons culminate in her founding the Green Belt Movement. The Green Belt Movement and its aim to create a better future for Kenya blends the childhood lessons Maathai learned watching her mother work with the land, the ability to think critically and to ask questions which she gained while attending college in the United States, and the importance of valuing one’s culture that she learned while conducting research for her Ph.D. in Germany. Maathai’s aims in Kenya become increasingly political as she rallies for equal pay and benefits for female professors at the college where she teaches, stands up to the government when it attempts to destroy one of Kenya’s community parks, and stages a year long sit-in with mothers whose sons were political prisoners. Throughout the memoir, Maathai struggles to maintain peace both in Kenya and in her personal life. She withstands a humiliating divorce, multiple arrests and social stigma.

This memoir, much like Maathai herself, honors Kenyan history and tradition while simultaneously planting the seeds of a brighter future for Kenya. Maathai’s perseverance and dedication to noble causes bring her allies both in Kenya and abroad, but it is a long journey before Maathai’s efforts are truly appreciated and honored in Kenya. After all of Maathai’s struggles, there couldn’t be a more beautiful ending to her memoir than to see her joy as she is honored with the Nobel Peace Prize.

Written by: Breanne Reindl, April 19th 2007