Read by Theme discussion

Unbowed is the story of Wangari Maathai, the first African woman and the first environmentalist to win the Nobel Prize. I'll be reading this in September for our Green Group, and so will post about the book here as well.

Maathai began the Green Belt Movement in Kenya: http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/wang...

I'm also planning to watch the video about her, "Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai". It is available for free on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNIQL...

So when I finish reading, I'll post more here in September. I was glad to see "Environmentalism" as one of the poll choices, and have decided to follow that nomination :-)

Julia, Unbowedis a wonderful book. I read it last year and was very impressed. My review is at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Thanks, Shomeret--I'm just starting and already have a few pages of notes. Even the little anecdote of how the westerner misnamed Mt. Kenya (their guide thought they asked the name of the gourd he was holding) shows the cultural disconnect that grew from colonialism into corporations.

I love her "voice" in the book--really human and down-to-earth. I learned about how she inspired then-9 year old Felix Finkbeiner to start "Plant for the Planet".

http://plant-for-the-planet.org/en/ab...

"The Plant-for-the-Planet Children's Initiative was founded in January 2007. It has its origin in a school presentation about the climate crisis of the - back then - 9-year-old Felix Finkbeiner. Inspired by Wangari Maathai, who planted 30 million trees in africa, Felix developed at the end of his presentation the vision that children could plant one million trees in each country of the world to create a CO2 balance therewith. During the following years Plant-for-the-Planet developed to a worldwide move: At present approx. 100,000 children all over the world pursue this goal. They understand themselves as an initiative of world citizens which campaign for climate justice in the sense of total reduction of the emission of greenhouse gases and an homogeneous distribution of those emissions among all humans."

It sounds like a very interesting book, Julia; I've added it to one of my to-read shelves. :)

Thanks, Amara--it's amazing how she recalls her early childhood. Her roots in a small village make her achievements even more meaningful--I'm on p. 35, and she's just 7 years old, when she didn't even know there WAS a world outside her small village.

I find it important to keep people like this in my mind when I get discouraged by what is going on in the world.

When you have 2 minutes, the youtube of her telling the hummingbird fable is a joy :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHtFM...

I'll get to this one sometime--I read her The Challenge for Africa.

I finally got a chance to watch the video, Julia, and it's really a charming little story. Thanks for linking!

Thanks, Amara--as I listen to her, I'm picturing her as the little 8 year old girl at the start of Unbowed, who can neither read nor write. What an inspiration.

I'm always amazingly impressed by some of the amazing stories that come out of (the underdeveloped and impoverished regions of) Africa. I recently watched this TED Talk from a young South African man and was totally floored. That's some really inspiring stuff right there.

I just found a 9 minute video on PBS, "Wangari Maathai: Kenyan Environmentalist." It shows several people in the Green Belt Movement who explain how the process works. Once again, Maathai's gentle wisdom and intelligence show through. I really was impressed with the section on "Effective Aid". She points out that just giving money to people is not the answer--the people need to know they have contributed something. http://video.pbs.org/video/2053414803/

The Green Belt Movement has its own website: http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/ I just signed up for their newsletter.