A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa

by Alexis Okeowo

Overview

WINNER OF THE 2018 PEN OPEN BOOK AWARD

"A rich and urgently necessary book" (New York Times Book Review), A Moonless, Starless Sky is a masterful, humane work of journalism by Alexis Okeowo—a vivid narrative of Africans who are courageously resisting their continent's wave of fundamentalism.

In A Moonless, Starless Sky Okeowo weaves together four narratives that form a powerful tapestry of modern Africa: a young couple, kidnap victims of Joseph Kony's LRA; a Mauritanian waging a lonely campaign against modern-day slavery; a women's basketball team flourishing amid war-torn Somalia; and a vigilante who takes up arms against the extremist group Boko Haram. This debut book by one of America's most acclaimed young journalists illuminates the inner lives of ordinary people doing the extraordinary—lives that are too often hidden, underreported, or ignored by the rest of the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316382939
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	10/03/2017
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Alexis Okeowo is a staff writer for the New Yorker and a fellow at New America. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Financial Times, Time, and Fortune, among many other publications. The daughter of immigrant parents, Okeowo grew up in Alabama and attended Princeton University. She was based in Lagos, Nigeria, from 2012 to 2015, and now lives in Brooklyn.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

Preface xiii

Part 1

1 Uganda: An LRA Love Story 3

2 Mauritania: Not Restrained by Chains 30

3 Nigeria: No Regrets 65

4 Somalia: War and Basketball 101

Part 2

1 Uganda: In a Perfect Life 123

2 Mauritania: Caravan of Freedom 157

3 Nigeria: Nobody Rescued Them 184

4 Somalia: The Last Two Stadiums in Mogadishu 208

Acknowledgments 238

Discussion Questions 240

Guernica's Intervieiv with Alexis Okeowo 242

What People are Saying About This

NYT-bestselling author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and Quiet Until the Thaw - Alexandra Fuller

"Finally, finally, finally—a humane, skillfully storyteller with sound reporting instincts has dug into the middle of the stories we think we've already heard out of Africa. Alexis Okeowo can write prose as arresting as Ryzard Kapúscinski's, she's got Katherine Boo's big heart, but she has her own fresh way of approaching the work, one that is terribly overdue. Absolutely essential reading, period."

Editorial Reviews

…[a] rich and urgently necessary book in which Okeowo disregards all preconceptions to reach for the truth…[Okeow] is…equipped with the empathy to inhabit her subjects' lives, the emotional and intellectual capacity to withhold judgment and a sufficient measure of detachment…The feeling of selfhood of those who have endured trauma is shaped by the gaze of others as much as their experience. Vital to their own sense of self, to their resilience, is an ability to frame their own narrative, something notably done by all the women and men in A Moonless, Starless Sky. Okeowo has taken their stories, crafted them in all their courage and complexity and placed them at the center of the story of what it is to be human.

The New York Times Book Review - Aminatta Forna

★ 07/03/2017
Okeowo, a staff writer at the New Yorker, offers an evocative and affecting portrait of contemporary Africa with four narratives featuring subjects from war-torn countries who are battling fundamentalism and medieval barbarity where they live. Okeowo, an American raised in Alabama by Nigerian parents, spent five years living in Africa and reporting from across the continent. The people she highlights include a couple from Uganda who met as teenagers when they were both kidnapped by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army; a Mauritanian activist waging a semisuccessful, but lonely, antislavery campaign; a dual account of a Nigerian girl who escapes from Boko Haram and a government worker who starts a vigilante task force against the group; and a women’s basketball team in Somalia that persists—and often thrives—despite deep prejudice and death threats against female athletes in that country. Through these narratives larger issues emerge, such as how ineffectual governments depend on vigilantes to protect their citizens from rebel groups such as Boko Haram, or the way families suffer intergenerational trauma when one or more members have violent experiences. In this memorable debut, Okeowo’s in-depth, perceptive reporting gives a voice to the extraordinarily courageous—and resilient—women and men fighting malevolent ideologies and organizations in their native countries. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Finally, finally, finally—a humane, skillful storyteller with sound reporting instincts has dug into the middle of the stories we think we've already heard out of Africa. Alexis Okeowo can write prose as arresting as Ryszard Kapuscinski's, she's got Katherine Boo's big heart, but she has her own fresh way of approaching the work, one that is terribly overdue. Absolutely essential reading, period."—Alexandra Fuller,New York Times bestselling author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and QuietUntil the Thaw

"From an abolitionist who once owned a slave to women basketball players in a war zone, Alexis Okeowo has an alert and thoughtful eye for the unexpected. The portraits and voices she brings us from Africa are so vivid that the reader can easily forget the determination and bravery it must have taken to gather them in these unhappy corners of the continent."—Adam Hochschild,New York Times bestselling author of King Leopold's Ghost and Spainin Our Hearts

"In A Moonless, Starless Sky, Alexis Okeowo has wandered as a reporter into some of Africa's most difficult and dangerous corners and delivered something remarkable: real characters, women and men, fully rendered."—Howard W. French,author of Everything Under the Heavens

"Spectacular reporting. Full of fresh, unexpected detail. If you want to get an immediate sense of the lives, both quotidian and extraordinary, of Africans in some of the continent's most troubled countries, read Alexis Okeowo's book."—William Finnegan,Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Barbarian Days

"Remarkable.... Okeowo writes with beauty and grace.... Refreshingly, she does not give in to easy answers.... Clear-eyed, lyrical, observant, and compassionate—reportage at its finest."—Kirkus (starred review)

"Alexis Okeowo has gone to the hardest continent and come away with a series of tales about the fight against fanaticism and despair. The result is a deeply sensitive portrait of modern Africa and a microscope on the human condition in the most difficult circumstances."—Dexter Filkins,Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Forever War

"Alexis Okeowo's startling and brilliant account of fierce horrors and tender hopes is one of the best records I have ever read of a world that has been made and remade time and again out of struggle and faith. Okeowo is just the kind of reporter we need to hear from when it comes to Africa, the 'new' old world: truthful, accurate, deep."—Hilton Als,Pulitzer-Prize winning author of White Girls

"Evocative and affecting.... Okeowo's in-depth, perceptive reporting gives a voice to ... extraordinarily courageous—and resilient—women and men."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A Moonless, Starless Sky is a captivating look at the on-the-ground effects of extremist groups and the people who live their lives in spite of them."—Booklist

"Okeowo's compelling prose is lean but empathetic, reportorial and personal both in an individual and cultural sense; her own status as a biological African born in America who straddles two continents and two sensibilities—at minimum—infuses this work with a real urgency.... Okeowo's message to readers, and the lesson she unsentimentally gleans for herself, is that even under a forbidding sky—one without the radiance of moon or stars-there is always enough light to navigate out of the darkness toward a better world."—Ms. Magazine

"Through four distinct stories, she shares the stories of citizens as they resist groups like Lord's Resistance Army and Boko Haram, while also attempting to bravely move forward with their personal lives. The reporting is expert and empathetic, and Okeowo illuminates the people beyond the headlines."—W magazine

"Alexis Okeowo humanizes the lives behind the headlines, transforming often one-dimensional news stories from the African continent into narratives of endurance and survival.... These are narratives of everyday people confronting unimaginable challenges where one's very existence becomes an act of resistance. Okeowo's reporting demonstrates the multiplicity of human resilience and regeneration in impossible times. In a time when our own leaders conflate poverty with personal character, we can think of no more important book. The individuals showcased in A Moonless, Starless Sky are among the best and brightest anywhere in the world."—Prize citation for the 2018 PEN Open Book Award

From the Publisher

10/15/2017
New Yorker staff writer Okeowo grew up in Alabama and graduated from Princeton, but has spent most of her writing career reporting on stories in Africa. In this, her first book, she focuses on individuals in four war- and terror-torn African nations, individuals attempting to lead normal lives in the face of extraordinarily dangerous conditions. In Uganda, a young woman tries to build a life with her children and husband after escaping from the Lord's Resistance Army terrorist group that kidnapped her. Her husband had been part of the group that kidnapped her. In Mauritania, a man battles modern-day slavery in a country where the authorities long denied its existence. In Nigeria, a man devotes himself to fighting Boko Haram and a Chibok girl tries to find a normal life after escaping from her kidnappers. In Somalia, a girl is passionate about playing basketball in spite of death threats from Al-Shabab extremists and clerics who consider the women's sports teams un-Islamic. Countless books have been written on the larger conflicts in these countries, but Okeowo succeeds in evoking empathy for real people living there. VERDICT Of interest to readers following struggles with extremism in Africa.—Joel Neuberg, Santa Rosa Junior Coll. Lib., CA

Library Journal

★ 2017-06-14
Examining conflicts in four African countries through the eyes of those experiencing and trying to fight them.In this remarkable debut, New Yorker staff writer Okeowo, whose Nigerian parents moved to the United States, where she was born, explores significant conflicts in four African countries through the stories of individuals who have been victims of, but have also worked to combat, various forms of extremism. She delves into the lives of a couple who were victims of Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. She tells of a young woman kidnapped by Boko Haram who managed to escape and of a man who joined in a vigilante organization confronting that terrorist group directly. She pursues the story of a man fighting against pernicious (and putatively illegal) slavery in Mauritania. She shows the struggle for young women in Somalia just to do something as seemingly innocent as play basketball. The author focuses her unflinching gaze on only a handful of people in each case study, which allows her a level of depth and nuance that a wider cast of characters would render impossible. Each of her tales, based on five years of on-the-ground reporting, gets two chapters: one in Part 1, "The Beginning," and the other in Part 2, "The Aftermath." These latter chapters, however, do not necessarily reach a conclusion; rather, they reveal a middle in which anything, including tragedy, could surely still happen. Throughout, Okeowo writes with beauty and grace, and her subjects are compelling. Refreshingly, she does not give in to easy answers. In the cases where the extremists are radical Islamists, she makes it clear that oftentimes the victims of their radicalism are devout Muslims, that Christian leaders and politicians are often equally culpable in local problems, and that complexity—not simplistic good-guy/bad-guy narratives—is a dominant theme throughout the region. Cleareyed, lyrical, observant, and compassionate—reportage at its finest.

Kirkus Reviews