Publication date:
13 September 2022Publisher
First Hill BooksDimensions:
229x153mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9781839985799
Slum City Africa: “A Very Bad Place With Good Teachings” is based on the experiences of a family forced to abandon a pastoral life in Ethiopia and move to Kibera, Kenya, one of the world’s dirtiest, most dangerous, and most notorious, city slums. The central characters represent literally thousands of people who made this transition in the twenty-first century. The story is authentic. While the main characters are not true to life, every event described within these covers happened. The authors have confirmed them through extensive research and, most importantly, many emotion-filled hours interviewing a mother and son who experienced the journey themselves.
“Slum City Africa: ‘A Very Bad Place with Good Teachings’ provides a travailing expose of an Ethiopian family’s harrowing and haunting experience as they journeyed to Kenya in search of new lives. This book comprehensively and relentlessly burnishes the vulnerable slum life through the eyes of a mother and a son and how Mahret, the lead woman character in the novel, seeks to cope and necessarily overcome the gender challenges African women face in shantytowns. Through the lens of the kids in the book, we are exposed to the power of communities, the concept of solidarity, and the necessity of hospitality in vulnerable spaces, which ultimately provides us significant insights into the nexus linking home, community, and identity together.” —Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Chair in the Humanities, and author of A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt.