Williamsburg Regional Library

The window seat, notes from a life in motion, Aminatta Forna

eng

illustrations

no index present

non fiction

The window seat

1246301668

Aminatta Forna

notes from a life in motion

"Aminatta Forna is one of our most important literary voices, and her novels have won the Windham Campbell Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book. In this elegantly rendered and wide-ranging collection of new and previously published essays, Forna writes intimately about displacement, trauma and memory, love, and how we coexist and encroach on the non-human world. Movement is a constant here. In the title piece, "The Window Seat," Forna reveals the unexpected enchantments of commercial air travel. In "Obama and the Renaissance Generation," she documents how, despite the narrative of Obama's exceptionalism, his father, like her own, was one of a generation of gifted young Africans who came to the United Kingdom and the United States for education and were expected to build their home countries anew after colonialism. In "The Last Vet," time spent shadowing Dr. Jalloh, the only veterinarian in Sierra Leone, as he works with the street dogs of Freetown, becomes a meditation on what a society's treatment of animals tells us about its principles. In "Crossroads," she examines race in America from an African perspective, in "Power Walking" she describes what it means to walk in the world in a Black woman's body, and in "The Watch" she explores the raptures of sleep and sleeplessness the world over. Deeply meditative and written with a wry humor, The Window Seat confirms that Forna is a vital voice in international letters"--, Provided by publisher

The window seat -- Ice -- Obama and the renaissance generation -- Santigi -- 1979 -- Technicals -- Crossroads -- In Timbuktu -- Hame -- How stories get told -- The last vet -- The watch -- Power walking -- What if you gave an inauguration and nobody came? -- Bruno -- The peanut butter thief -- Wilder things

adult