Timeless and timely, there is verse and music in Diaspora Blues tuned by acute intelligence. Ali Jimale Ahmed's pithy and elegant lines span the range from the classical Arab jewels of an al-Ma'ari to the kind of ironies that grace the discursive English Restoration wit of Pope and Swift.' - Ammiel Alcalay. 'Somali poet Ali Jimale Ahmed recounts a lyrical odyssey, confronting the world's monsters, storms and temptations with the glittering safe harbour of his visionary poetic strength.' - Charles Cantalupo.'

Diaspora Blues

Literature & Fiction

Ahmed, Ali Jimale

Poetry

Red Sea Press,U.S.

Since the creation of the Ethiopian empire in the 1880s, political, economic, social and military power has been dominated by the elites of two minority groups. The vast majority of the peoples in Ethiopia have been subjected to the political subjugation, economic marginalization and cultural dehumanization. While the ruling ethnic groups have sought to maintain the status quo, the oppressed majority have been struggling to free themselves from tyrannical rule. As a result, the contemporary Ethiopia is a mass of contradictions and contest revolving around the paradigms of oppression and liberation producing decades of civil wars, violation of human rights, poverty, famine and misery in monumental proportions.

Arrested Development in Ethiopia

Politics & Social Sciences

Seyoum Y. Hameso

Social Sciences

This book presents the life and times of Reverend Kumsa Boro and a selection of his lifetime collection of Oromo folklore and cultural songs, compiled, organized, and edited by his children. Rev. Kumsa's life spans a tumultuous century of Oromo history in general and the reality of Sayyo Oromo in particular. As a microcosm of the broader Oromo reality, Rev. Kumsa's story is riddled with intense moments of oppression, persecution, courage, and defiance. Others have written about his religious persecution before. What makes this book special, however, is that Rev. Kumsa presents an incredible historical depth to make it clear that his faith and his Oromo identity were never separable in his experiences of persecution. This book is also special because Rev. Kumsa narrates in impassioned prose and poetry as a subject in his own right and from his own perspective. The book is bilingual in that it is written in Afaan Oromo (the Oromo language) with a synopsis of the whole book in English.

Kumsaa Boroo

Kumsa Boro

Politics & Government

Khat (catha edulis) is a psychoactive shrub whose tender leaves and twigs are chewed in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula for their euphonizing effects for a millennium. A stimulant grown in small gardens for consumption on cultural and religious occasions around the turn of the last century, khat has now become the preferred and most sought-after cash crop, the most visible and pervasive social habit, and an important income-generating occupation for millions of Ethiopians. Within Ethiopia, khat chewing has become a ubiquitous habit, cutting across class, religious, ethnic, and gender affiliations. In addition to satisfying the domestic demand, Ethiopian producers supply fresh leaves to chewers in Djibouti, the Republic of Somaliland, and some Middle Eastern countries. More recently, refugees from the Horn of Africa further spread the custom of chewing to their host nations, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and various Western European countries, opening up new demand for Ethiopian khat. The growing prominence of khat has prompted many governments to react to the phenomenon variously. While khat use is still legal in many countries, there is growing international pressure to impose a ban on its use and trade. The chapters in the current volume articulate the perplexing questions that khat farmers, traders and traditional users raise about the need for such action by showing that khat is not a drug that leaves a trail of destruction in its wake in the form of addicts, criminal traffickers, and corrupt officials. The khat farmer, trader, and majority of chewers are deeply tied to the leaves for historical, economic and cultural reasons. Khat is an integral part of the agricultural systems of nearly all regions of Ethiopia. In the traditional context, khat is used in ritual and habitual ways that exhibit its cultural embeddedness. As a cash crop, it has improved rural life, enabled farmers to become food self-sufficient, and allowed many to move to non-farm occupations, thus relieving pressure on land resources. The revenue from taxes and duties on khat transactions supports government expenditures and development efforts and the cash flow generates multiplier effects in the regions where it is grown. Ironically titled, Taking the Place of Food, explains that the shift to high-value cash crop agriculture in many parts of Ethiopia represents farmers informed and forward-looking response to changing market situations, political adversities, environmental challenges, and family considerations. The shift was inevitable in a situation where no alternative crop that possessed khat s economic benefits existed. While outlining khat s economic importance and cultural significance, the chapters in this volume stress that khat production cannot be the foundation for sustainable rural development in Ethiopia solely based on the effort of smallholder producers. As such, it highlights the stark choice between extreme poverty and the lure of a high value cash crop that the farmers face. The country faces a similar dilemma. The chapters in this volume collectively argue that official policy thinking must move away from rural development strategies that perpetuate the doctrinaire assumption that farmers must be helped to become better farmers to emphasizing diversification of the regional economy.

Khat in Ethiopia: Taking the Place of Food

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Ezekiel Gebissa

Addiction & Recovery

REMINISCENCES OF MY LIFEby Emmanuel Abraham REMINISCENCES OF MY LIFE by Emmanuel Abraham Price: $29.95 Retail: $29.95 You Save: $0.00 Quantity: Brief Description Detailed Description Specifications This book is an exemplary narrative about the inner workings of Emperor Haile Sellassie s government. It contains an account of some of the personalities who held high government offices and the state of ecumenical relations during the imperial period. Yet, the history of this period will not be complete until those who, like His Excellency Ato Emmanuel Abraham, had the privilege of serving in various positions of responsibility in the emperor s government offer us their reminiscences.... This book is an exemplary narrative about the inner workings of Emperor Haile Sellassie s government. It contains an account of some of the personalities who held high government offices and the state of ecumenical relations during the imperial period. Yet, the history of this period will not be complete until those who, like His Excellency Ato Emmanuel Abraham, had the privilege of serving in various positions of responsibility in the emperor s government offer us their reminiscences....What is expected of the former officials, who are now in their twilight years, is not to criticize from the sidelines what others have written, but to present their version of the true account of the period with the same care for quality and organization evident in this memoir. Prof. Tadesse Tamrat, from the Amharic edition of Reminiscences of My Life Students of Ethiopian history and politics are greatly indebted to Ato Emmanuel Abraham for having accomplished the invaluable task of writing down his reminiscences with remarkable detail and elegance....Having served Emperor Haile Sellassie in various capacities for nearly four decades and half (1931-1974), Ato Emmanuel is eminently qualified to tell that story. The diversity of posts that he came to occupy during that period headmaster, legation secretary, director-general, ambassador, and minister has given his story a richly variegated character. The conscientiousness with which he had kept records of his official correspondence gives his narrative a wealth of documentation that is uncommon in a work of this genre. His personal integrity and relatively independent character has also invested his account with a degree of detachment that is not so often encountered among loyal public servants....With this book, Ato Emmanuel has done great service to all students of history as well as to the country and the church that he served with so much dedication. Prof. Bahru Zewde, Journal of Ethiopian Studies, Vol XXIX, No. 1, June 1996 Reminiscences of My Life offers an invaluable window on less dramatic, but critical developments in the evolution of modern Ethiopia such as the early years of the Tafari Mekonnen School, the beginning of a modern provincial administration in the 1920s, and the impact of the work of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus on the life of many Ethiopians. Equally valuable is the rare insight the author provides into Emperor Haile Sellasie s life in exile during the Italian occupation, which he witnessed from close quarters, and the political intrigues and infighting within the imperial government, which he experienced on the receiving end. What makes this memoir unique is the author s perspective as the emperor s confidant who was nevertheless kept on the fringes of power, and his willingness to tell his story without undue prejudice or embellishment. Prof. Ezekiel Gebissa, Kettering University, Flint, Michigan, USA

Reminiscences of My Life

Emmanuel Abraham

In Mutilating Khalid, historian Charles G. Steffen examines one of the most remarkable cases of female genital mutilation ever to be prosecuted in a United States court. In 2006 a suburban Atlanta jury convicted Khalid Misri Adem, a thirty-one-year-old Ethiopian immigrant, of two counts of aggravated assault and cruelty to children for allegedly circumcising his daughter when she was two years old. The judge in the case sentenced him to ten years in a Georgia state penitentiary. The precedent-setting Adem case received widespread coverage in the national and international media, energized women s rights and human rights activists from Atlanta to Nairobi, and prompted the Georgia state legislature to pass a law criminalizing female genital mutilation. Mutilating Khalid explores the symbolic politics that surrounded the Adem case, showing how prosecutors, judges, reporters, politicians, and activists set out to mold the public s image of Khalid and to appropriate his symbolic value for their own particular purposes. As a result of their efforts, Khalid came to personify a dark and forbidding world at odds with women s rights, family values, and enlightened modernity. East Africans watched the Adem case unfold with a growing sense that each and every one of them was on trial, for the publicity surrounding the prosecution seemed to revive stereotypes of Africa as a Dark Continent where superstition, savagery, and bloody rituals held sway. Protesting that Khalid was convicted not on the strength of the evidence presented against him but because of the fearful symbolism he came to embody in the public mind, East Africans from Atlanta to Addis Ababa mounted a campaign to appeal the verdict to a higher court. Mutilating Khalid should be of interest to anyone concerned about dangerous forms of symbolic politics that have arisen as transnational immigration alters the human landscape of American cities.

Mutilating Khalid: The Symbolic Politics of Female Genital Cutting

Charles G. Steffen

Ethiopian Discourse is a text which makes heroic efforts to engage the Ethiopian reader with the problems, challenges and traditions of classical and modern Ethiopia. For the past fifteen years, the author took on Ethiopian topics as they unfolded in real time and commented on them, challenging the policies of the existing regime. Some of the essays marveled at the idea of revolutionary democracy, when it was freshly introduced to Ethiopian thinking. Like many Ethiopians, the author was profoundly impressed by the promises of the regime in power. Hope fueled his imagination, and he wrote about revolutionary democracy admiringly. However, no condition is permanent. When the ruling regime began changing, his writings also changed. They become bitter, disappointed and marred by hopelessness. The essays of the new period reflect this mood. Teodros Kiros is an eloquent tribune for radical democracy. He presents often complex ideas in a style that is not only accessible but warmly engaging. He seamlessly blends attention to particular issues with reflection on matters of universal import. In these ways he directly embodies the radical democratic practice that he advocates. Victor Wallis, Professor, Liberal Arts, Berklee College of Music The many years of painstaking writings of Teodros Kiros are vindicated by the compilation of series of articles into a solid book lucidly and cogently presented to the reader. Dr. Teodros successfully blends philosophy and politics in Ethiopian Discourse, and since he is a superb intellectual and scholar, he presents an illuminating analysis of themes ranging from tolerance and democracy to national reconciliation to politics as the art of compromise to the new political culture and to a democratic citizen . The book is a powerful medium, in that it propagates a myriad of ideas, constructs a rational analysis, delineates the foundations of a new Ethiopian political culture, and advocates a forward moving of cultural evolution. Ghelawdewos Araia, Ph.D. African &amp; African-American Studies Lehman College, City University of New York The essays that fill the pages of Ethiopian Discourse are brilliant exercises in moral and democratic critique. They are powerful challenges to persistent inequalities between human beings and also of the the non-democratic nature of the political regimes that continue to govern Ethiopia in the modern period. The moral imagination soars to great heights in these writings by Prof. Kiros. Paget Henry Professor, Sociology &amp; Africana Studies, Brown University

Ethiopian Discourse

Teodros Kiros

Philosophical Essays seeks to present the idea of democracy systematically beginning with the ancient philosophers and ending with the modern philosopher, John Rawls. Democracy as we have come to know it is associated with the Greek Philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. The accepted view is that the idea of democracy originated with the Greeks and that democracy is exclusively European. Although this is largely true, there is a sense in which it is misleading, which needs to be corrected by further analytic distinctions. The author proposes that democracy is both a formal idea and a lived idea. As a formal idea, it is true that Plato and Aristotle presented it to the world systematically by writing about it and by subjecting it to a rigorous conceptual analysis; as a lived idea the ancient Egyptians and Asians and following them other African states lived it, as the activity of the people arriving at ideas, deciding matters, taking positions and justifying them through deliberation and participation, two cardinal features of the democracy idea. The essays in this book were written with the purpose of diffusing the democracy idea to a large audience in a lucid, intelligible and clear language that would appeal to an English reading audience. The essays were first written for an Ethiopian audience, most particularly university students who may not have the means to purchase the classical texts, which fortunately are available to Western students. The typical Ethiopian student is not so fortunate. In writing to his Ethiopian sisters and brothers with the call to critical reflection on democratic participation and justice through drawing upon their creative resources and reflective judgment, Kiros is engaging in that radical reflective spirit of universalizing praxis. In this sense, in all his homes-in Ethiopian and North American thought-he exemplifies the value of fearless speech, and in so doing, speaks to us all. Lewis R. Gordon Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy, Temple University and author An Introduction to Africana Philosophy and co-author of Of Divine Warning: Reading Disaster in the Modern Age In Philosophical Essays, Dr. Teodros Kiros once again offers us his elegant analysis and critique of the major philosophers from Plato to John Rawls. By elucidating the philosophical underpinnings of the giant philosophers and systematically dissecting the themes in comparative perspective, the author invites the reader to explore the many facets of philosophical discourses. Whoever reads this book will initially encounter multiple refractions of philosophical essays, but s/he will soon realize that a convenient simplification undergirds the seemingly complex nature of the book. Although the book thoroughly examines the ideas of the philosophers, the dominant framework of thinking manifested in such titles as participatory democracy and passion for justice and freedom are entirely original. Freedom, creativity, and democracy are central to Philosophical Essays and Teodros Kiros indeed fervently believes that freedom is the most valuable principle of justice and based on the Kantian notion of intelligence , he argues, quite convincingly, that a good constitution can mobilize this intelligence, in service of humanity and produce a good moral condition of citizens. Ghelawdewos Araia, Ph.D. African & African American Studies, Lehman College, City University of New York

Philosophical Essays

Wounded Nation

Biographies & Memoirs

Bereket, H. Selassie

Leaders & Notable People

This volume takes up the life story of the author from where the first volume culminated. Through historical and political analyses the author lays bare the hidden (and not so hidden) elements that have contributed to Eritrea s descent from a stellar model of democracy and progress to a tragic abyss of dictatorship and isolation. The narrative is at once a historical and biographical testament of a man who had been part of the freedom fight as well as of a process of constitution making that had earned the admiration of a wide variety of observers and commentators. Combined together with the first volume, the book is a must read for students of the history and politics of Eritrea and the Horn of Africa region. The title itself is an indication of the central theme of the book providing a clue of the basis for Eritrea s current predicament. Trust is a fundamental ingredient in human relations. People place trust in the government they elect expecting it to perform its duties according to the promises it makes and pursuant to the law. But promises and laws are frequently broken, which raises the issue of responsibility. That is why there are legal and constitutional requirements for accountability and transparency. The book s title and subtitle are indicative of the bitter disappointment of the Eritrean public whose government of former freedom fighters broke its promises. A ratified constitution has been shelved and frozen for over thirteen years and the country has been governed by one-man dictatorship contrary to all expectations, both domestic and international. In 1998, the country went through a devastating war with Ethiopia that took the lives of some one hundred thousand people. The two countries have yet to restore normal relations over a decade later. In Eritrea s case, the situation of no-peace-no-war has subjected hundreds of thousands of youth to an endless forced military service. This has led to a mass exodus of scores of thousands of them defecting to neighboring countries. This condition, together with the general dissatisfaction of the public has raised serious questions about the country s future. This is one of the various salient issues discussed in this volume. The second volume of Bereket Selassie s unforgettable memoirs, The Crown and the Pen, is an outstanding analysis of the descent of Eritrea into personal rule and dictatorship. This beautiful land along the Red Sea is aptly described as a wounded nation, for its once promising quest for freedom, lasting peace and material prosperity has been betrayed by the denial of democratic rights and liberties, the destruction of constitutional government, and the lack of an aggressive pursuit of regional integration and development in the Horn of Africa through pan-African solidarity. Those who have read the first volume of this book will continue to enjoy this rich narrative and the superb manner in which the author conveys it in writing. New readers have much to learn about Eritrea and postcolonial Africa. Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja Professor of African Studies University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Wounded Nation by Bereket Habte Selassie is a gripping and troubling account of post-liberation politics in Eritrea. The book is both a personal memoir and an analysis of how a country s fate and future can be put into serious jeopardy by actions of a single individual or a group of a few people. Volume 1 of Bereket s memoirs traced his life up to the time of Eritrea s liberation in 1991 and the euphoria of independence after thirty years of independence. Bereket who himself had been part of the liberation movement became Chair of the Constitutional Commission charged with the responsibility of writing a constitution for the newly liberated nation. Less than a decade after liberation, and only a few years after the adoption of the

Wounded Nation: How a Once Promising Eritrea Was Betrayed and Its Future Compromised (Crown and the Pen)

Bereket Habte Selassie

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