After the phenomenal success of The White Masai and Reunion In Barsaloi, Bliss Books is delighted to publish their equally astonishing.

Liberia was founded by the American Colonization Society (ACS) in the 1820s as an African refuge for free blacks and liberated American slaves. While interest in African migration waned after the Civil War, it roared back in the late nineteenth century with the rise of Jim Crow segregation and disfranchisement throughout the South. The back-to-Africa movement held great new appeal to the South's most marginalized citizens, rural African Americans. Nowhere was this interest in Liberia emigration greater than in Arkansas. More emigrants to Liberia left from Arkansas than any other state in the 1880s and 1890s. In Journey of Hope, Kenneth C. Barnes explains why so many black Arkansas sharecroppers dreamed of Africa and how their dreams of Liberia differed from the reality. This rich narrative also examines the role of poor black farmers in the creation of a black nationalist identity and the importance of the symbolism of an ancestral continent. Based on letters to the ACS and interviews of descendants of the emigrants in war-torn Liberia, this study captures the life of black sharecroppers in the late 1800s and their dreams of escaping to Africa.

The profound effects of colonialism and its legacies on African cultures have led postcolonial scholars of recent African literature to characterize contemporary African novels as, first and foremost, responses to colonial domination by the West. In Africa Writes Back to Self, Evan Maina Mwangi argues instead that the novels are primarily engaged in conversation with each other, particularly over emergent gender issues such as the representation of homosexuality and the disenfranchisement of women by male-dominated governments. He covers the work of canonical novelists Nadine Gordimer, Chinua Achebe, NguÅgiÅ wa Thiong'o, and J. M. Coetzee, as well as popular writers such as Grace Ogot, David Maillu, Promise Okekwe, and Rebeka Njau. Mwangi examines the novels' self-reflexive fictional strategies and their potential to refigure the dynamics of gender and sexuality in Africa and demote the West as the reference point for cultures of the Global South.

"The authors draw on personal memories, interviews, and oral narratives to present twelve "case histories" of objects--or clusters of objects-- in the Seatle Art Museum's renowned collection of African art."

The authors provide valuable information specific for African travel and tracing African genealogy using traditional methods, the Internet and DNA technology.

In Out of Africa, author Isak Dinesen takes a wistful and nostalgic look back on her years living in Africa on a Kenyan coffee plantation. Recalling the lives of friends and neighbours—both African and European—Dinesen provides a first-hand perspective of colonial Africa. Through her obvious love of both the landscape and her time in Africa, Dinesen’s meditative writing style deeply reflects the themes of loss as her plantation fails and she returns to Europe. HarperTorch brings great works of non-fiction and the dramatic arts to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperTorch collection to build your digital library.