Wangari Maathai (1940–2011)

This is the memoir of Wangari Maathai who went from being a girl in a Kikuyu village to being the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, the first African woman to win this award, the first to earn a PhD in East and Central Africa and to head a university department in Kenya. She began the Green Belt Movement in 1977 which has been responsible for planting 51 million trees in Africa and helping more than 30,000 women gain employment. She served as a member of Parliament
and assistant minister for the environment in 2003-2005 after significant struggles and opposition in her journey to get there.

I enjoyed her descriptions of rural village life in Kenya in the 1940s and 50s. I also appreciated her recount of the difficulties she faced getting involved in politics and environmentalism, in particular the challenge of being expected to be subservient as an African woman.

I did feel, however, that the memoir was much less personal as it went on, and more about her public life and achievements. There was very little comment on her feelings and personal life as an adult. She faced great difficulties after her very public divorce and at one point had to leave her children with her ex-husband, but very little is detailed about any of this or her response to it. Overall I found this to be a powerful story of courage and persistence by an inspiring woman.… (altro)