African Son [Paperback]

African Son is a record of the authors many trips to Africaas a Peace Corps volunteer, Fulbright scholar, teacher, and travelerover the course of thirty years. These personal essays range from sympathetic descriptions of village life in Senegal and Cameroon to detailed accounts of the rich physical and natural worlds in Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Madagascar to a mock-curriculum vitae for a Cameroonian man whose skill-set is surprisingly extensive. A work of creative non-fiction, African Son describes individual and, later, family experiences in a number of African locations, from villages to major urban centers and from desert to thick, tropical forest.William J. Hemminger teaches English and French at University of Evansville in southern Indiana. He is also a poet, translator, musician, composer, and gardener. After graduating from Columbia University, he served in Senegal as a Peace Corps volunteer. Hemminger earned a Ph.D. in 1988 and since then has worked in Madagascar and Cameroon under the auspices of the Fulbright Program.

African Son is one of the best travelogues written about African. Its fifteen insightful, well-written, and well-organized essays tackle important social, cultural, and philosophical issues such as social inequities, cultural differences, man and nature, death, and spirituality. The book skillfully blends honesty and realism: the authors feelings and attitudes towards the people and the land, as well as his scathing satire of human flaws. These exciting essays are objective writing that depicts Africaits merits and demeritsas well as the Westerners encounter with the continent. African Son is a great contribution to travel literature, African literature, and nature writing. Christine Djockoua Manyaka Toko, professor of American literature, University of Yaound? I

These vignettes of daily life in various African countries and the experiences of ex-patriots provide insights about human agency, which most textbooks fail to cli