Unbowed

About this book

Hugely charismatic humble and possessed of preternatural luminosity of spirit Wangari Maathai the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and a single mother of three recounts her extraordinary life as a political activist feminist and environmentalist in Kenya. Born in a rural village in 1940 Wangari Maathai was already an iconoclast as a child determined to get an education even though most girls were uneducated. We see her studying with Catholic missionaries earning bachelors and masters degrees in the United States and becoming the first woman both to earn a PhD in East and Central Africa and to head a university department in Kenya. We witness her numerous run-ins with the brutal Moi government. She makes clear the political and personal reasons that compelled her in 1977 to establish the Green Belt Movement which spread from Kenya across Africa and which helps restore indigenous forests while assisting rural women by paying them to plant trees in their villages. We see how Maathais extraordinary courage and determination helped transform Kenyas government into the democracy in which she now serves as assistant minister for the environment and as a member of Parliament. And we are with her as she accepts the Nobel Peace Prize awarded in recognition of her contribution to sustainable development human rights and peace. In Unbowed Wangari Maathai offers an inspiriting message of hope and prosperity through self-sufficiency.