About the Book
Growing up as a missionary child in West Africa, Carol Polsgrove was raised to be American, but Yoruba voices filled her days and talking drums her nights. Lifting the veil of stereotypes about missionary life, When We Were Young in Africa offers an intimate account of coming of age at a crossroads of cultures.
George Ella Lyon, Kentucky Poet Laureate, author of Many-Storied House and co-author of Voices from the March on Washington, explains the book’s significance:
Part of the legacy of Carol Polsgrove’s childhood is a sense of being between worlds, clearly not African but not fitting in the United States either. Nor is she at home in the evangelizing Christianity of her parents. But in this memoir, brimming with the sounds and smells, the voices and spirits of over sixty years ago, Polsgrove comes to see the unity that links the two continents of her life and, in doing so, to embrace her becoming as it shapes her ongoing.
When We Were Young in Africa is not just recollection but examination, always thoughtful, often funny, wrestling with issues of racism and social justice, the larger history of which her childhood is a part. Don’t miss it!
Review by Literary Labors
Carol Polsgrove always felt apart, the white girl among Africans, or in the U. S. pointed out as the girl who had once lived in Africa. In her book, When We Were Young in Africa 1948-1960, she delineates her parents’ story, too. “In today’s world, they might have joined the Peace Corps.” It was their ‘calling’ to a life of service that gave her and her little brother Billy the fascinating and unusual experiences that delight us by her recollection.
—Literary Labors
About the Author
Carol Polsgrove, Professor Emerita of Journalism at Indiana University, is author of Ending British Rule in Africa: Writers in a Common Cause; Divided Minds: Intellectuals and the Civil Rights Movement, and It Wasn’t Pretty, Folks, But Didn’t We Have Fun: Esquire in the Sixties. For more information go to her website at carolpolsgrove.com
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Preview the Book
Download a PDF preview of the book by clicking on the following link: PolsgroveAfricaPreview
Product Details
ISBNs: 978-1941892077 (for the paperback version) and 978-1-941892-16-9 (for the hardback version)
Paperback: 172 pages
Publisher: Culicidae Press, LLC; 1st edition (December 11, 2015)
Language: English
Binding: Varies by version
Interior Ink: Black and White
Weight: Varies by version, about 1 lb.
Dimensions (inches): Varies by version but paper size for both paperback and hardback is 6 inches wide x 9 inches tall.
