Making Peace & Nurturing Life: A Memoir of an African Woman About a Journey of Struggle and Hope

by Julia Aker Duany

Genres: South Sudan, Short Stories, Africa, The World, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published July 24, 2003

Reviews

[Carmen · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 2005, after the peace agreement was signed, I made a decision to go back home to Sudan. At my arrival I began to have feelings that I might have made a mistake returning home. Many people I knew and grew up with who are no longer alive. Whenever I asked about my colleagues, the answer was that they were dead. The first three people I asked gave the same answer. So I stopped asking. This was the turning point of my Christian belief.

I found this short story on Ann Morgan's website, A Year of Reading the World. The story is here:
https://soundcloud.com/ann-morgan/to-...
Julia Aker Duany reads it herself.

I guess this GR link also links Duany's book, Making Peace and Nurturing Life: Memoir of an African Woman about a Journey of Struggle and Hope. But that is a book that was published in 2003, before South Sudan became a country in 2011. This short story is published in 2012.

The story is Duany's feelings on the civil war, the vast amount of death that came with it, and how this tried her Christian beliefs.

It was interesting, but I find Duany a bit hard to understand. I listened to the story three times in order to make sure I was getting everything correct, sometimes what she says is hard to make out.

[ElenaSquareEyes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Julia Aker Duany’s life growing up in South Sudan, moving to America with her husband and children, and then returning to South Sudan in the 1990s to see how life has changed due to war and learning how best to help people.

Making Peace and Nurturing Life is the kind of memoir that’s very informative, not just about one person’s life and experiences but about so much more like the culture they grew up in and their country’s politics and conflicts. Julia Aker Duany describes herself as “an African, a Sudanese, a Nilotic from southern Sudan, a Nuer from Lou, a Gon from Rumjok section, a woman, a mother” and by the end of the book you really do have a decent understanding of what all those different aspects of her identity mean to her and how they have shaped her when growing up.

I found the culture shock between America and Sudan interesting because the things that she was surprised about weren’t necessarily ones that I’d seen mentioned in other memoirs or immigrant stories. Just generally Julia Aker Duany had a really interesting take on life, family, and responsibility and it was always interesting to see the connections between what was important to her as an adult to what she was taught by her mother and wider community.

Julia Aker Duany is a professor and academic who loves learning so it’s interesting and invaluable to have a woman from Sudan explain things that are usually generalised by white/Western academics. She makes a point to criticise the textbooks she learnt from in America as the were titled things like “Women in the Third World” and didn’t really differentiate between the women in these “Third World” countries, cultures, or tribes. She has an in-depth knowledge of both places and how she used her knowledge of women’s traditions to help empower women and solve conflicts in Sudan was really impressive.

Making Peace and Nurturing Life is a very readable book and it explains complex things in an accessible way. I’ve learnt a lot about many different countries and their histories through my Read the World Project but this is one where I really feel I have a firm understanding of what started the conflict between northern and southern Sudan and how events have had knock on affects for its people.

[Maud (reading the world challenge) · Rating 5 out of 5]

[#39 South Sudan] What a great book! This is the life story of the Southern-sudanese author, and it’s loosely divided in three parts. In the first one, the author’s childhood, we learn about the traditions of her people, the way their society and economy were built and worked. In the second one, she flees to the USA with husband and children because of political tensions that threaten their lives. This part is about building a new life and adapting to a new culture and environment. In the third part, she returns to Sudan ten years later and finds herself in the mist of the civil war. She will not only describe the horrors brought by war but also the efforts made to bring back (a fragile) peace.
All these parts are equally interesting and eye-opening. Duany’s very good at explaining her point, the writing is both clever and easy to understand even for someone unfamiliar with the geopolitical situation in this part of Africa. She would also refer to Western civilization while explaining the ways of Southern-sudanese civilization, to make it easier to understand how biaised we are about it.
What I especially liked about this memoir is that Duany often analyzes situations from her perspective as a woman. For example, I had never read about the specific role of women in the effort of bringing peace in a civil war, by using their traditional place in society.

[Bogdan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely true. To be able to forgive after what South Sudanese people have endured, is something remarkable.

[Omnia · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the few books penned by South Sudanese women; and one of the few talking about life pre and post-conflict just just amidst it.

[Marie · Rating 1 out of 5]

South Sudan

The author speaks of independence and the feelings of joy and sorrow that followed.