Unbowed: A Memoir

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2008 M11 12 - 368 pages

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • A remarkable memoir of courage, faith, and the power of persistence about one woman's extraodinary journey from her childhood in rural Kenya to the world stage.  

“[Maathai’s] story provides uplifting proof of the power of perseverance—and of the power of principled, passionate people to change their countries and inspire the world.”  —The Washington Post


In Unbowed, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai recounts her extraordinary life. When Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, she began a vital poor people’s environmental movement, focused on the empowerment of women, that soon spread across Africa. Persevering through run-ins with the Kenyan government and personal losses, and jailed and beaten on numerous occasions, Maathai continued to fight tirelessly to save Kenya’s forests and to restore democracy to her beloved country.

 

Contents

Beginnings
3
Cultivation
29
Education and the State of Emergency
53
American Dream
73
IndependenceKenyas and My Own
98
Foresters Without Diplomas
119
Difficult Years
139
Seeds of Change
164
Freedom Turns a Corner
206
The Struggle Continues
230
Opening the Gates of Politics
254
Rise Up and Walk
277
Canopy of Hope
291
Afterword to the Anchor Books Edition
297
Konyeki na ithe or Konyeki and His Father
309
Index
317

Fighting for Freedom
184

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About the author (2008)

WANGARI MUTA MAATHAI was born in Nyeri, Kenya, in 1940. She is the founder of the Green Belt Movement, which, through networks of rural women, has planted over 30 million trees across Kenya since 1977. In 2002, she was elected to Kenya's Parliament in the first free elections in a generation, and in 2003, she was appointed Deputy Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 2004, she has three grown children and lives and works in Nairobi.

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