African and Refugee-related Bibliography
African – Print Resources
Abrahams, Roger. African Folktales: Traditional Stories of the Black World. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983. Middle and High School. (A collection of 94 folktales from throughout the continent.)
Anderson, David. The Origin of Life on Earth: An African Creation Myth. Sights, 1991. Pre-kindergarten- Elementary. (Well-told and wonderfully- illustrated retelling of the Yoruba [Nigeria] creation myth.)
Appiah, Peggy. Ananse the Spider: tales from an Ashanti Village. Pictures by Peggy Wilson. NY: Pantheon Books, 1966. (Memorial PZ8.1 A647 An)
The Pineapple Child, and other tales from Ashanti. Illustrated by Mora Dickson. London: Deutsch, 1969. (School of Library and Info. Studies Library. Ct398.2 Ap49p)
Ring of Gold. Illustrated by Laszlo Acs. London: Deutsch, 1976. (Memorial P27 A646 Ri)
A Smell of Onions. London: Longman, 1971. (Memorial PZ4 A 6474 Sm)
Tales of an Ashanti Father. Beacon Press, 1967.
Apsel, Joyce, editor. Darfur: Genocide Before Our Eyes. New York: Institute for the Study of Genocide, 2005. This book is a compilation of essays which provides background material, and opinion of the crisis in Darfur. This book may be helpful for teachers for it contains topic suggestions, comparative genocide, and human rights facts. In addition, it has references, maps and other source material on the crime of genocide.
Arnott, Kathleen. Tales of Temba: Traditional African Stories. New York: Henry Z Walck, 1967.
Beier, Ulli. The Origin of Life and Death: A Collection of Creation Myths from Africa. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1966.
Benitez, Mirna. How Spider Tricked Snake. Raintree/Steck Vaughn, 1992. Pre-kindergarten-3rd grade. (Adapted from a Jamaican story of the West African Ananse tradition.)
Doch, Marguerite P. Stories from Africa: Folklore of the World. Illustrated by Vincent D. Smith.
Glew, Robert Stephen. The trickster in African oral traditions. (MA thesis) (AWO G55885 R634)
Haley, Gail. A Story, A Story. Macmillan, 1970. Explains how Anansi obtained the world’s stories from God.
Hari, Daoud. The Translator: A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur. New York: Random House Publishing, 2008. This book provides a first hand account of life in Darfur by a native of Darfur, who escaped the attack on his village, and ended up in refugee camps in Chad where he served as a translator for western media outlets like The New York Times, NBC, and the BBC, as well as the United Nations and other aid groups. This came at great risk of his personal safety; for at one point the government of Sudan outlawed journalists in the Darfur region, and called for death to those who helped foreign media. Daoud Hari is now living in the United States.
Kimmel, Eric. Anansi and the Moss Covered Rock. New York: Holiday House, 1988. Pre-kindergarten- 3rd grade. (A trickster tale where Anansi uses a magic rock to steal food from his friends in the forest. Useful for educators in explaining the African Diaspora, since the tale is still told in the Caribbean.)
Anansi Goes Fishing. New York: Holiday House, 1991. Pre-kindergarten- 3rd grade. (Another trickster tale, with the implied moral lesson about the pitfalls of telling lies. Illustrations give the book a Western setting.)
Knappert, Jan. The Aquarian guide to African mythology. Ilustrations by Elizabeth Knappert. Wellingborough, UK: The Aquarian Press, 1990.
Bantu Myths and other tales. Collected and translated by Jan Knappert. Leiden: Brill, 1977.
Epic poetry in Swahili and other African languages. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1983.
McDermott, Gerald. Ananse, the Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti. New York: Henry Holt, 1972. Elementary school. Picture book that uses Asante art forms to tell the story of Kwaku Ananse and his six sons.
Maddern, Eric. The Fire Children: A West African Creation Tale. Dial, 1993. A retelling of an Akan creation myth of the world and its people.
Nunn, Jessie Alford. African Folk Tales. illustrated by Ernest Crichlow. New York: Funk and Wagnalis, 1969.
The River That Went to the Sky: Twelve Tales by African Storytellers. selected and edited by Mary Medlicott. Illustrated by Ademola Akintola. New York: Kingfisher, 1995.
Scheub, Harold. African oral narratives, proverbs, riddles, poetry and song. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1977.
The African Storyteller: stories from African oral traditions. (compiled by Harold Scheub) Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall//Hunt Publishing, 1990.
Bibliography of African oral narratives. Madison: African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin, 1971. (School of Library and Information Studies Library. 398 Sch 29b)
Enhancing Teaching Quality. [videorecording] Madison: Instructional Media Development Center, UW-Madison, 1994. (IMC Professional Stacks LB2331 E54 1994)
Steidle, Brian and Gretchen Steidle Wallace. The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur. New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2007. Brain Steidle, former United States Marine, and military observer for the African Union (AU), and his sister Gretchen Steidle, reports on the evolution of the Darfur genocide.
The Tongue is Fire: South African Storytellers and Apartheid. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.
Tales from Southern Africa. translated and retold by A.C. Jordan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.
Troughton, Joanna. How Stories Came into the World: A Folktale from West Africa. Peter Bedrick, 1989. Pre-kindergarten- 3rd grade. (Collection of six West African creation myths. Illustrated, with some nudity.)
Tutuola, Amos. Yoruba Folktales. African Bookm Collective, 1987. Elementary-Middle school. (Includes seven Yoruba folktales.)
Washington, Donna. How Anansi Obtained the Sky God’s Stories. Children’s Press, 1991. Pre-kindergarten - 3rd grade. (A wordless book and audio cassette package that makes the Anansi stories accessible to younger children.)
African - Video Resources
African Story Telling. (Ghana) Cecilia Dumor. (Global Studies Center, College of Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824) 28 minutes. Ms. Dumor, a Ghanaian teacher, tells stories to American children and discusses how Ghanaian story telling techniques can improve children’s pre-reading skills. This can be used for teacher in-service workshops and in the classrooms.
Anansi. (LSS Video AF2.057) 30 minutes. Ages 5 and up. Denzel Washington narrates two Anansi stories from Jamaica, with reggae band UB40 providing the musical background. Animated introductory segment shows link between the Jamaican Anansi and his African origin.
Refugee – Print Resources
Picture Books
Aliki. 1998. Marianthe’s Story One: Painted Words and Marianthe’s Story Two: Spoken Memories. New York: Greenwillow, 1998. A priceless picture book based on Aliki’s own experiences, in which a Greek family escapes to the United States.
Argueta, Jorge. 2003. Xochitl and the Flowers/Xóchitl, la Niña de las Flores. Illustrated by Carl Angel. San Francisco: Children’s Book Press. Fleeing war torn El Salvador, a family that tries to recreate the beauty and memory of flowers from their own country runs into trouble with a landlord, who resists their selling those flowers. The community bands together to help the landlord see that flowers for sale on a vacant lot is preferable to what existed before the changes they made. Based on a true story.
Cha, Dia. 1996. Dia’s Story Cloth: The Hmong People’s Journey of Freedom. Stitched by Chue and Nhia Thao Cha. New York: Lee & Low and Denver Museum of Natural History. The story cloth of the title is an intricate record of the travails of the Hmong people as they flee China, then Laos, finally taking refuge in Cambodia.
Hoffman, Mary. 2002. The Colour of Home. Illustrated by Karin Littlewood. London: Frances Lincoln. Arriving in the United Kingdom, a boy tells a traumatic story of life in Somalia, a country he misses but had to leave.
Khan, Rukhsana. 1988. The Roses in My Carpets. Illustrated by Ronald Himler. Markham, Ontario: Fitzhenry and Whiteside. Upon arrival in a refugee camp, a young boy continues the Afghan tradition of making beautiful carpets, which provides comfort for him and his family during illness and trouble.
Kilborne, Sarah S. 1999. Leaving Vietnam: The Journey of Tuan Ngo, a Boat Boy. Illustrated by Melissa Sweet. Ready-to-Read Series. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Nye, Naomi Shihab. 1994. Sitti’s Secrets. Illustrated by Nancy Carpenter. New York: Four Winds. An American girl visits her Palestinian grandmother.
Williams, Mary. 2005. Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan. Illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. New York: Lee & Low. This true account, written by the founder of The Lost Boys Foundation, tells of orphan refugee boys fleeing a homeland torn by civil war.
Youme. 2004. Sélavi: A Haitian Story of Hope. El Paso, TX: Cinco Puntos. A young boy finds other Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Port-au-Prince, where they establish a radio station with the help of Aristide.
Novels
Crew, Linda. 1991. Children of the River. New York: Doubleday. Based on her experience with Cambodian refugees in Oregon, Crew writes about the cultural conflicts a teen experience as she struggles to maintain respect for her aunt and uncle while wanting to participate in things Americans do.
Ellis, Deborah. The “Breadwinner Trilogy”: 2000. The Breadwinner. Toronto: Groundwood; 2003. Mud City. Toronto: Groundwood; 2002. Parvana’s Journey. Toronto: Groundwood. The Breadwinner depicts the life of Parvana, who must dress up as a boy to help her family survive after the Taliban imprisons her father. In Parvana’s Journey, Parvana sets out to find her mother and sister, from whom she has been separated, after her father’s death. Along the way, she bands together with other forsaken children, including an infant. Mud City, focuses on Parvana’s friend Shauzia, who endures difficult conditions in a refugee camp in Pakistan.
Zephaniah, Benjamin. 2001. Refugee Boy. New York: Bloomsbury. A young London author of Jamaican descent writes about a refugee from the Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict.
Short Stories
Armstrong, Jennifer, Ed. 2002. Shattered: Stories of Children and War. New York: Knopf. Stories about refugees and war by award-winning authors.
Informational/Nonfiction
Brkic, Courtney Angela. 2004. The Stone Fields: An Epitaph for the Living. New York: Farrar. For young adults. Brkic revisits her country of origin to document the war in Bosnia and Hercegovina.
Holliday, Laurel, ed. 1998. Children of Israel, Children of Palestine: Our Own True Stories. New York: Pocket Books. Like Ellis, Holliday gives voice to children growing up in traumatic circumstances.
Walgren, Judy. 1998. The Lost Boys of Natinga: A School for Sudan’s Young Refugees. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Walgren’s background as a photojournalist makes this book and its photography an exceptional contribution to the literature on the Lost Boys of the Sudan.
Wilkes, Sybella. 1994. One Day We Had to Run! Refugee Children Tell Their Stories in Words and Paintings. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook.
Biography
Asgedom, Mawi. 2001. Of Beetles and Angels: A True Story of the American Dream. Chicago, IL: megadee books. Mawi Asgedom, a refugee from Ethiopia, received a scholarship to Harvard. He chronicles the path of his journey, including the logical misunderstandings people make when moving out of one culture into another.
Bok, Francis, with Edward Tivnan. 2003. Escape from Slavery: The True Story of My Ten Years in Captivity—and My Journey to Freedom in America. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2003. Bok, from the Dinka tribe in the Sudan, was captured and lived in slavery for ten years. Now living in the United States, Bok is an antislavery activist; estimates are that 27 million people worldwide live in slavery.
Dalton, David. 2006. Living in a Refugee Camp: Carbino’s Story. Children in Crisis series. Milwaukee, WI: World Almanac Library. A multigenre text: informative, interviews, memoir. Carbino, a Sudanese refugee, describes his life growing up in a refugee camp.
Deng, Benson, Alephonsion Deng and Benjamin Ajak, with Judy A. Bernstein. 2005. They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky: The True Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan. New York: Public Affairs. With Judy Bernstein, three young men who now reside in the United States chronicle the events that led up to their emigration.
Graff, Nancy Price. 1993. Where the River Runs: A Portrait of a Refugee Family. Photographs by Richard Howard. Boston: Little, Brown. About a Cambodian family that immigrates to the United States.
Howard, Helen. 2006. Living as a Refugee in America: Mohammed’s Story. Children in Crisis series. Milwaukee, WI: World Almanac Library. A multigenre text: informative, biography, memoir. Mohammed, a refugee from Afghanistan, describes what he misses about his country, about being separated from his father, and his new life in America.
Huynh, Quan Nhoung. 1999[1982]. The Land I Lost: Adventures of a Boy in Vietnam. Illustrated by Vo-Dinh Mai. New York: HarperCollins. A memoir of growing up in Vietnam.
Warren, Andrea. 2004.
Escape from Saigon: How a Vietnam War Orphan Became an American
Boy. New York: Farrar. An Amerasian boy’s story of living
in Vietnam, then Ohio.
Special thanks to:
Jermaine Jones, African Studies Outreach, University of Wisconsin Madison African Studies Program;
Jane M. Gangi, Ph.D., “Refugees in Recent Children’s and Young Adult Literature: Sociocultural Considerations”, Children’s Literature Association’s 33stAnnual Conference;
Eric Kofi Acree, Director of the John Henrik Clarke Africana Library, Cornell University
|
||||
