What Happened to the Pepperbird's Song?: A Reflection on Liberian Reality Through Prose and Poetry (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9798900232805)

A mother grapples with the loss of her unborn child. A young teenage girl stands up to a tyrannical chief and suffers abuse as a result. Her courageous stance against injustice becomes the catalyst that frees her clan from oppression. A juvenile disobeys his grandmother and breaks a closely protected tradition. His action exposes the clan to danger. The dying words of his grandma inspires him to rise above personality flaws to become the greatest leader of his people. This book is a creative portrait of Liberia, Africa's oldest republic. It is a subtle look at how an attempt at self-determination by a group of African former slaves' backfires when they are given the golden opportunity to prove their former slave masters wrong. Their excesses create fault lines that plunge the nation into anarchy when ostracized and repressed indigenous Liberians take matters into their own hands and leave the nation bogged down in an existential battle with itself. The message of the book does not just resonate with the poignancy of profound loss and traumatic change, it drives the discourse that generates the courage to overcome them..