Archives par étiquette : MacKenzie Wolf

Une BD nigériane d’Àlàbá Ònájìn inspirée des Aventures de Tintin

L’artiste et auteur nigérian Àlàbá Ònájìn prépare une nouvelle série de BD, « The Adventures of Ajani », qui s’adresse autant aux adultes qu’aux enfants. Dans un style influencé par la « ligne claire » d’Hergé, Àlàbá Ònájìn présente le point de vue nigérian sur la fin de la domination britannique dans les années 1960 à travers son héros Ajani, journaliste yoruba malin et curieux et fervent partisan de l’indépendance.

Dans le premier tome de la série intitulé THE KELP CONSPIRACY, alors que le Nigéria tente de gagner son indépendance, les puissances étrangères pèsent encore fortement sur la gouvernance du pays et la corruption s’installe. La société britannique Kelp Oil and Gas cherche à faire échouer le projet d’indépendance et garder ainsi la mainmise sur l’exploitation pétrolière de la région. A travers des personnages emblématiques, l’histoire véhicule les valeurs de l’amitié, la loyauté et la victoire du bien sur le mal.

Biographie de l’auteur : Àlàbá Ònájìn is a Freelance Cartoonist and Illustrator. He was born in Lagos state, Nigeria and has a Diploma in Freelance Cartooning and Illustration from The Morris College of Journalism, Surrey, Kent, UK. He is currently living in Lagos, Nigeria. He has always had a passion for telling stories through his drawings ever since he was introduced to Hergé’s Tintin books at a very young age; these books sparked an energy to bring his stories to young readers around the world. Ònájìn’s work includes Anike Eleko, a children’s comic book on girls’ education by Farafina Books, On Ajayi Crowther Street, a graphic novel published by Cassava Republic in collaboration with the German cultural organization Goethe Institut, and other art collaborations with UNESCO on the Role of Women in African History Project, illustrating the lives of three great African women: Funmilayo Ransome Kuti, Empress Taytu Betul of Ethiopia, and Miriam Makeba.

“I found in the words and pictures of this Nigerian artist, the page-turning sense of adventure I so admired in Tintin, without the impetuous colonialist language and bigoted depictions that had made me shelf Hergé’s iconic work. . . Rather than present simple and dichotomized plots, we learn of Nigeria’s past and are drawn to understand the historical implications of colonization, as well as politics, environmental issues, and ultimately, evergreen and universal human relations. Giving us a lens into a vibrant Western Africa, while making the subjects presented deeply personal and relatable.” – Juana Medina, author/illustrator of the award-winning Juana and Lucas series

THE SEDIMENTS OF TIME de Meave Leakey

Meave Leakey’s thrilling, high-stakes memoir—written with her daughter Samira—encapsulates her distinguished life and career on the front lines of the hunt for our human origins, a quest made all the more notable by her stature as a woman in a highly competitive, male-dominated field.

THE SEDIMENTS OF TIME
by Meave Leakey
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, November 2020
(chez MacKenzie Wolf – voir catalogue)

In THE SEDIMENTS OF TIME, preeminent paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey brings us along on her remarkable journey to reveal the diversity of our early pre-human ancestors and how past climate change drove their evolution. She offers a fresh account of our past, as recent breakthroughs have allowed new analysis of her team’s fossil findings and vastly expanded our understanding of our ancestors. Meave’s own personal story is replete with drama, from thrilling discoveries on the shores of Lake Turkana to run-ins with armed herders and every manner of wildlife, to raising her children and supporting her renowned paleoanthropologist husband Richard Leakey’s ambitions amidst social and political strife in Kenya. When Richard needs a kidney, Meave provides him with hers, and when he asks her to assume the reins of their field expeditions after he loses both legs in a plane crash, the result of likely sabotage, Meave steps in. THE SEDIMENTS OF TIME is the summation of a lifetime of Meave Leakey’s efforts; it is a compelling picture of our human origins and climate change, as well as a high-stakes story of ambition, struggle, and hope.

« A fascinating glimpse into our origins. Meave Leakey is a great storyteller, and she presents new information about the far off time when we emerged from our ape-like ancestors to start the long journey that has led to our becoming the dominant species on Earth. That story, woven into her own journey of research and discovery, gives us a book that is informative and captivating, one that you will not forget. » —Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute

“An exciting and richly informative scientist’s autobiography…This major work of scientific dedication and original insight illuminates both our distant past and our current, serious, human-caused planetary challenges.” —Booklist starred review

Meave Leakey currently coheads the significant field efforts in northern Kenya, started nearly a century ago by Louis and Mary Leakey, seeking the fossil records to the roots of humankind. She has worked at the National Museums of Kenya since 1969, including the head of the paleontology department, and is research professor at Stony Brook University, New York. She is the recipient of several honorary degrees, has been elected an honorary fellow of the Geological Society of London, inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, was a National Geographic Explorer in Residence, served as a fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, and received the National Geographic Society Hubbard Medal, among many other accolades and achievements. She is also an author of numerous groundbreaking scientific publications in prestigious journals and of several monographs documenting her research.

Samira Leakey obtained a BA in politics with First-Class Honours from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and a master’s in public administration from Princeton University. Samira worked at the World Bank in Washington, DC, and now lives in Nairobi with her daughter.

DINNER FOR ONE: How Cooking in Paris Saved Me de Sutanya Dacres

The genuine memoirs from a popular Black American podcaster with an international following. Will feature select recipes, illustrative of the author’s Parisian life.

DINNER FOR ONE:
How Cooking in Paris Saved Me
by Sutanya Dacres
Park Row, May 2022
(chez MacKenzie Wolf – voir catalogue)

When Sutanya Dacres married her French boyfriend and moved to Paris in 2013, she felt like she was living out her very own fairy tale. Jamaican-born and New York-raised, she had never entertained fantasies of living abroad, until her grad school days when she discovered the blogs of expat women living in Paris and began to dream of a different life in a different land. Then she met a French man in a bar, fell in love, and voilà, almost as if she willed it, she was living her Parisian fantasy, embarking on her own “happily ever after” … until her marriage fell apart. Sutanya looked back to her beloved bloggers for guidance, but realized their rosé-tinted reality didn’t match up to her own. For one thing, they weren’t writing about divorce. For another, they weren’t Black. While her marriage had ended and the façade of picture-perfect Paris had cracked, Sutanya wasn’t giving up on the City of Light. Instead, she decided to figure out for herself what happens after the Paris fairy tale ends, and to find a way to mend her broken heart and create a home for herself, beginning in her kitchen. Determined to share her genuine, candid perspective and offer a counter-narrative to the typical idealized expat story, Sutanya launched her podcast, Dinner for One, in February 2018. In each episode, she invites listeners into her Paris kitchen as she shares her experiences as a 30-something hopeless romantic embracing her post-divorce life and celebrating the joy of learning to love cooking for herself. This book grew out of the podcast.
In DINNER FOR ONE: HOW COOKING IN PARIS SAVED ME, Sutanya takes the reader on an adventure through love, loss, and finding home, even when home doesn’t look quite how you expected. Along the way, she builds Parisienne friendships, learns how to date in French, and examines what it means to be a Black American woman in Paris—all while adopting the French principle of pleasure, especially when it comes to good food.

Sutanya Dacres is the creator and host of the podcast Dinner for One, which has been featured in The New York Times and BBC Radio Hour, among others outlets. She grew up in New York City and graduated from the University of Hartford where she double majored in international relations and modern languages and cultures (French) and earned a master’s in communications. She has held a number of copywriting positions at branding and advertising agencies, including Interbrand and BBDO Paris, and with Air France. Sutanya is passionate about contributing a new, underrepresented voice to the Paris expat narrative. She currently resides, and cooks dinners for one, in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris.

WHITE TEARS/BROWN SCARS de Ruby Hamad

For readers of White Fragility, an explosive book of history and cultural criticism, which argues that white feminism has been a weapon of white supremacy and patriarchy deployed against Black and Indigenous women, and women of color.

WHITE TEARS/BROWN SCARS:
How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color
by Ruby Hamad
Catapult, October 2020
(chez MacKenzie Wolf – voir catalogue)

Taking us from the slave era, when white women fought in court to keep “ownership” of their slaves, through the centuries of colonialism, when they offered a soft face for brutal tactics, to the modern workplace, White Tears/Brown Scars tells a charged story of white women’s active participation in campaigns of oppression. It offers a long overdue validation of the experiences of women of color. Discussing subjects as varied as The Hunger Games, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the viral BBQ Becky video, and 19th century lynchings of Mexicans in the American Southwest, Ruby Hamad undertakes a new investigation of gender and race. She shows how the division between innocent white women and racialized, sexualized women of color was created, and why this division is crucial to confront. Along the way, there are revelatory responses to questions like: Why are white men not troubled by sexual assault on women? (See Christine Blasey Ford.) With rigor and precision, Hamad builds a powerful argument about the legacy of white superiority that we are socialized within, a reality that we must apprehend in order to fight.

Ruby Hamad is a journalist, author, and academic completing a Ph.D. in media studies at UNSW (Australia). Her Guardian article, ‘How White Women Use Strategic Tears to Silence Women of Color,’ became a global flashpoint for discussions of white feminism and racism and inspired her debut book, White Tears/Brown Scars, which has received critical acclaim in her home country of Australia. Her writing has also featured in Prospect Magazine, The New Arab, and more. She splits her time between Sydney and New York.