Selected Resources on Sierra Leone
Below is a list of selected resources on west Africa and Sierra Leone. To find more resources about the African continent, go to Central Search, type in your keywords, and start exploring!
Videos
The African experience : from "Lucy" to "Mandela". Summary: This engaging video lecture series covers the long history of Africa from prehistory to the 21st century. These 36 lectures, each 30 minutes long, are richly detailed and illustrated, both in the videos themselves and in the accompanying course guidebook. The guidebook includes lecture outlines and notes, a time line, glossary, biographical notes, and bibliography.
West Africa. Summary: The extraordinary ancient art, architecture, and culture of West Africa, in particular Benin.
Goree: door of no return. Summary: This documentary tells the history of the slave trade: the arrival of the first Europeans, the origins of slavery in the Americas, the development of Goree as a center of the expanding slave trade, the wealthy merchant women who controlled the slave trade on the island.
Chinua Achebe. Summary: A profile of Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart. The novel takes place in Nigeria and touches on common themes in African life. It is the most widely-read book in modern African literature.
Books & eBooks
Most of our most recent books on Sierra Leone and the history of western Africa are in ebook format. You will need a UCO login to read them online. If you do not have a UCO login, you may read them in the library.
African art, interviews, narratives: bodies of knowledge at work. Summary: Interviews with African artists and activists on the power of art to change the narrative that describes the cultural representations of Africa.
Teaching Africa: a guide for the 21st-century classroom by Brandon Lundy, et al. Summary: The authors describe their goal as demystifying Africa as the heart of darkness when teaching students about African culture, health, political economy, history, philosophy, and ritual.
Colonial West Africa: collected essays by Michael Crowder. Summary: Discusses the development of colonial politics, cooperation and conflict, and eventual independence. The Mende and Temne tribes are discussed in depth in the 4th chapter.
I did it to save my life by Catherine Bolten. Summary: Personal stories of survival during the civil war in Sierra Leone.
Abolition and empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia by Bronwen Everill. Summary: Examines the effects of antislavery movements in the United States and Britain on the history and development of Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Epistemologies of African conflicts: violence, evolutionism, and the war in Sierra Leone by Zubairu Wai. Summary: Examines and interprets the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991-2002), the history, attitudes and assumptions that led to conflict, and the outcomes.
A long way gone : memoirs of a boy soldier by Ishmael Beah. Summary: In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah, now 25 years old, tells how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.
Blood diamonds : tracing the deadly path of the world's most precious stones by Greg Campbell. Summary: The true story of the events that inspired the feature film "Blood Diamonds" starring Leonardo DiCaprio. "Blood Diamonds" is the gripping tale of how the diamond smuggling works and how the war and the policies of the diamond industry devastated Sierra Leone and its people.
The battle for hearts and minds : using soft power to undermine terrorist networks by Alexander T. J. Lennon. Summary: Examines the roles and limits of military power, forging an indirect strategy to build a government that rules by the will of the people, and the hope of a bright future for Sierra Leone, "the state that came back from the dead."
