From My Mother's Back

A professor reminisces about her life's journey from Kenya to Canada. As a professor of sociology and equity studies, Wane has written or edited multiple books during her career at the University of Toronto. While her academic work centers on Black feminism and African Indigenous knowledge, her latest is an accessible memoir and celebration of her Kenyan ancestors, culture, and upbringing. The title comes from a poignant moment in Wane's childhood. While walking alongside her mother on the hot road, her feet began to burn. Her mother lifted Wane onto her back and carried her until she was ready to walk on her own. This simple story of a mother's love serves as an effective metaphor for Wane's accomplished walk through life--buoyed at various intervals by her African family, community, and ancestors--that brought her from rural Kenya to the ivory towers of Canada. In an occasionally dizzying chronology, the memoir jumps through different time periods chapter by chapter, retelling Wane's life through short anecdotes. Some chapters are written as letters or poetic verse as Wane weaves her stories from Kenya and Canada into a single narrative. The unifying theme is Wane's notion that "place is carved in us." Though stereotypes about Africa abound in the West, it was Wane's Kenyan upbringing, including proverbs told to her by elders, that provided guidance in her academic life in Toronto. The myriad topics covered in her engaging, often inspirational, vignettes range from insightful comparisons of the average kitchens in Kenya to those in Canada to the unique experiences of an African immigrant in higher education, such as her opening lecture on how to pronounce her name. One particularly effective set of chapters discusses her early education as a non-Catholic student at Sacred Heart Girls School in Kenya and the complex (and occasionally humorous) cultural and spiritual interactions between students and nuns. A scattered, endearing love letter to Kenya. (afterword, acknowledgements)

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