Reading For Darfur
Maw Books, one of my favorite book bloggers is doing an awesome thing. You can click here to read all about it. She is in need of sponsers and my hope is she will gets lots of them because she is raising money by reading for Darfur. She has all the links on her site where you can read about the atrocities that are happening there and why we all need to get involved. I plan on sponsering her and reading and reviewing some books about Darfur this month in support of her effort. I hope you will join in:) Below is the list of books you can read about Darfur.
The Translator: A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari
From the publisher: The young life of Daoud Hari—his friends call him David—has been one of bravery and mesmerizing adventure. He is a living witness to the brutal genocide under way in Darfur.
The Translator is a suspenseful, harrowing, and deeply moving memoir of how one person has made a difference in the world–an on-the-ground account of one of the biggest stories of our time. Using his high school knowledge of languages as his weapon—while others around him were taking up arms—Daoud Hari has helped inform the world about Darfur.
Hari, a Zaghawa tribesman, grew up in a village in the Darfur region of Sudan. In 2003, this traditional life was shattered when helicopter gunships appeared over Darfur’s villages, followed by Sudanese-government-backed militia groups raping and murdering citizens and burning villages.
Though Hari’s village was attacked and destroyed, he was able to escape and lead survivors to safety. When international aid groups and reporters arrived, Hari offered his services as a translator and guide. He risked his life again and again, for the government of Sudan had outlawed journalists in the region, and death was the punishment for those who aided the “foreign spies.” And then, inevitably, his luck ran out and he was captured. . . .
The Translator tells the remarkable story of a man who came face-to-face with genocide– time and again risking his own life to fight injustice and save his people.
For more information visit the book’s website here.
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Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond by Don Cheadle
From the publisher: While Don Cheadle was filming Hotel Rwanda, a new crisis had already erupted in Darfur, in nearby Sudan. In September 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell termed the atrocities being committed there “genocide” — and yet two years later things have only gotten worse. 3.5 million Sudanese are going hungry, 2.5 million have been displaced by violence, and 400,000 have died in Darfur to date.
Both shocked and energized by this ongoing tragedy, Cheadle teamed up with leading activist John Prendergast to focus the world’s attention. Not on Our Watch, their empowering book, offers six strategies readers themselves can implement: Raise Awareness, Raise Funds, Write a Letter, Call for Divestment, Start an Organization, and Lobby the Government. Each of these small actions can make a huge difference in the fate of a nation, and a people — not only in Darfur, but in other crisis zones such as Somalia, Congo, and northern Uganda.
For more information visit www.notonourwatchbook.com
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Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan by Leora Kahn
Synopsis from Amazon: Winner of the 2007 Lucie Award: Power House Books for Photography Book Publisher of the Year
In June 2007, Power House Books released Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan, a collaboration with three humanitarian organizations and five of the world’s top photo agencies. The book, filled with haunting images and testimonials that displayed the desperate and severe reality of the Sudan crisis, sold out its initial run in just a few months, helping to raise much-needed money for this desperate cause. Now, Darfur arrives in paperback.
Even by conservative estimates, the situation in the Darfur region of Sudan is grave. There are 3.5 million people who are hungry, 2.5 million who have been displaced by violence, and 400,000 individuals who have died since the crisis began in 2003. The international community has failed to take steps to protect civilians, or to influence the Sudanese government to intervene.
Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan is the product of a close partnership between Amnesty International USA, Proof: Media for Social Justice, and the Holocaust Museum Houston. Featuring the work of eight prominent photographers, the book covers three periods in the Sudan crisis, including images shot in 1988, when an estimated 250,000 Sudanese died of starvation; images from 1992 and 1995 that capture the atrocities of a civil war, when hundreds of thousands fled their homes to other destinations in Sudan or left the country altogether; and images from 2005 and more recently, bringing to light the severity of the humanitarian crisis underway, with the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militias committing systematic violence on the people of Darfur.
The book includes website links and additional resources for readers to utilize in seeking an urgent, immediate, and international call to action and to raise awareness of this human suffering. ALL PROCEEDS FROM THE BOOK WILL BENEFIT AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA AND GENOCIDE INTERVENTION NETWORK.
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Darfur: A New History of a Long War by Julie Flint & Alex de Waai
From the publisher: Written by two authors with unparalleled first-hand experience of Darfur, this is the definitive guide. Newly updated and hugely expanded, this edition details Darfur’s history in Sudan. It traces the origins, organization and ideology of the infamous Janjawiid and rebel groups, including the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement. It also analyses the brutal response of the Sudanese government. The authors investigate the responses by the African Union and the international community, including the halting peace talks and the attempts at peacekeeping. Flint and de Waal provide an authoritative and compelling account of contemporary Africa’s most controversial conflict.
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Darfur Darfur by Leslie Thomas (editor)
From Amazon: DARFUR/DARFUR: LIFE/WAR is a powerful collection of images from some of the world’s most celebrated photojournalists who have documented an ongoing genocide that has claimed more than 300,000 lives and has displaced about 2.5 million people.
Launched in September 2006, Darfur/Darfur, the exhibit to which the book is the companion, consists of over 150 color and black-and-white images by seven international photojournalists and one former U.S. Marine and has gained massive national and international attention. It has been shown in museums such as the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, the Eastman House, Rochester, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., and the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Future venues include the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, and FORMA, Milan. In January 2007, Darfur/Darfur became the first exhibit on the crisis to be presented on the African continent.
Visit www.darfurdarfur.org for more about the exhibit tour dates and the book.
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Darfur: African Genocide (In the News) by John Xavier
From the publisher: Both timely and enduring, this book explores the current and continuing Darfur conflict and provides the historical context. While explaining the background behind this violent conflict and the various causes that have contributed to it, it explores geography, environmental hardship, religion, national and regional politics and government, and the development of rebel resistance groups. It also describes the international reaction to the violence, and talks about what the future might hold. (For young adults)
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From the publisher: An unnatural disaster is devastating the Darfur region of Sudan, where civilians are fleeing in terror from government-supported mass killings. Thousands are dead and millions have been forced from their homes. Millions more are at risk. In 2005, Human Rights Watch investigators began giving children paper and crayons to keep them occupied while they gathered testimony from the children’s parents. Without any instruction, the children drew harrowing and heartbreaking accounts of what they had witnessed: brutal attacks by government-sponsored militias known as Janjaweed, indiscriminate aerial bombings by Sudanese government forces, shootings, burning of entire villages and flight to Chad.
Photographer Paolo Pellegrin traveled to Sudan first in 2005, and again in 2007, to expose the consequences of the ongoing human rights crimes fueling this catastrophe.
Now, Human Rights Watch combines these graphic accounts in Darfur: Smallest Witnesses, featuring an introduction by Nicholas Kristof and first-hand accounts and essays by Human Rights Watch investigators.
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Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival by Jen Marlowe and Aisha Bain and Adam Shapiro
From the publisher: In November 2004, three independent filmmakers traveled to eastern Chad and crept across the border into Darfur. Improvising as they went, they spoke with dozens of Darfurians, learning about their history, hopes, and fears, and the resilience and tragedy of their everyday lives.
In February of 2003 following years of oppression, the Sudan Liberation Army in Darfur took up arms against the Sudanese government. The response to the rebellion was a brutal campaign by the government and allied militias of mass murder, rape and the wholesale destruction of villages and livelihood. Millions of people were displaced, and hundreds of thousands killed.
This book introduces us to those who remain: the refugees and displaced people, civilians and fighters resisting the Sudanese government, teachers, students, parents, children and community leaders, whose collective testimonies provide the heart of Darfur Diaries. Their stories, interwoven with the filmmakers’ own personal narratives and conveyed with political and historical context, provide a much-needed account to help understand the tragic situation in Darfur.
Visit www.darfurdiaries.org
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Educating Darfur Refugees: A Jesuit’s Efforts in Chad by Patrick Samway
From Amazon: As a result of the genocide in Darfur, tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee Sudan and seek refuge in overcrowded, desolate desert camps along the Chadian border. Educating Darfur Refugees is the unforgettable journal of a Jesuit priest who spent nine months in 2004 and 2005 working in three of those refugee camps. Samway’s diaries, deeply informed by his perspective as a religious scholar but as engrossing as any page-turner, are an unflinching eyewitness account of one of the greatest tragedies of our time.
Charged with the considerable task of setting up schools for refugee children, Samway recounts his experiences with scarce food and water, nonexistent educational resources, and the remarkable people he encounters along the way. The life-changing story that unfolds, an engaged personal narrative capacious enough to embrace both George Bernanos and Walker Percy, is necessary reading for anyone concerned about Sudanese refugees and those who share their plight all over the world.
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War in Darfur and the Search for Peace by Alex De Waal (editor)
From the publisher: Since 2003, the Darfur region of Sudan has been the locus of a hideous war that has aroused the outrageof milions of ordinary people across the world. But despite a high level of media coverage and activist mobilization, Darfur’s society and politics remain poorly understood. War in Darfur and the Search for Peace brings together essays by noted Sudanese scholars and international experts on Darfur, containing much new historical and contemporary research.
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The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur by Brian Steidle
From the publisher: Former United States Marine Brian Steidle served for six months in Darfur as an unarmed military observer for the African Union. There he witnessed first-hand the ongoing genocide, and documented every day of his experience using email, audio journals, notebook after notebook and nearly 1,000 photographs. Gretchen Steidle Wallace, his sister, who wrote this book with Brian, corresponded with him throughout his time in Darfur. Fired upon, taken hostage, a witness to villages destroyed and people killed, frustrated by his mission’s limitations and the international community’s reluctance to intervene, Steidle resigned and has since become an advocate for the world to step in and stop this genocide. The Devil Came on Horseback depicts the tragic impact of an Arab government bent on destroying its black African citizens, the maddening complexity of international inaction in response to blatant genocide, and the awkward, yet heroic transformation of a formerMarine turned humanitarian. It is a gripping and moving memoir that bears witness to atrocities we have too long averted our eyes from, and reveals that the actions of just one committed person have the power to change the world.
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Darfur’s Sorrow: A History of Destruction and Genocide by M W Daly
From the publisher: Darfur is a region set apart, huge, remote and poverty stricken. Its people are today locked in conflict, terrorized by the lawless Arab militia known as janjawid. As M.W. Daly explains, the roots of the crisis lie deep in Darfur’s past. Tracing the story from the origins of the Fur state in the seventeenth century to Darfur’s annexation by the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, he shows how years of neglect left the region unprepared for independence. This complex story is told with compassion, insight and a strong sense of place.
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From the publisher: The Sudan Project helps make children aware of the devastating effects of poverty and war in Sudan, as well as the suffering of Darfur’s people. As current as today’s headlines, this significant work seeks to stir the conscience of an awakening America. The book focuses on the plight of the people of Darfur and encourages hope that they can flourish through the help readers can provide. Such organizations as the United Nations and UMCOR are working to provide relief to this forgotten region. For ages 9–12.
Based on the experiences of The Sudan Project mission by Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church in Tipp City, OH, The Sudan Project has raised over $1.6 million for Darfur relief since 2004. A portion of the proceeds from this book go to help the people of Sudan through The Sudan Project. For more information, visit The Sudan Project.
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Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur by Halima Bashir
Available September 2008.
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A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide by Eric Reeves
From the publisher: The main theme of this new book is that the Khartoum regime is committing genocide in Darfur while the international community watches in silence or with mere hand-wringing.
Publication of such an important book, at this critical moment in the Darfur genocide, offers to government officials, academics, humanitarian aid groups, human rights organizations, as well as to the broader public an in-depth critical assessment of the current situation in Darfur. It also provides an unsparing assessment of the international community’s diplomatic efforts, past and present, to respond to Darfur. Such an assessment comes at a defining moment. The world is watching clearly and yet responding weakly. Action is essential now if we are not to see a further extension of the international failures so conspicuous in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
Visit www.sudanreeves.org
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Heart of Darfur by Lisa Blaker
From the publisher: Lisa arrives in Sudan full of determination to use her skills as a nurse to do something to ease the plight of the hundreds of thousands of people caught up in the civil war raging through Darfur.
She is working with Medecins Sans Frontieres, the international organization that sends health workers to the most desperate places in the world. The nine months she spends on the mission will be the toughest of her life but will teach her some fundamental truths about what people are capable of, both good and bad, and about herself.
Lisa describes treating children with horrific wounds, babies dying of dehydration, girls giving birth at the age of 13 and old women too traumatized to carry on living. Her relationships with her Sudanese colleagues are treasured and described in fascinating detail. The book is exquisitely written, without sentiment but with a powerful and moving determination to show the suffering of the people of Darfur and to bear witness to their remarkable courage in the face of the most appalling situation.
This is the book to help us all understand the human story behind the newspaper headlines.
