This is the memoir of Wangari Maathai who went from being a girl in a Kikuyu village to being the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, the first African woman to win this award, the first to earn a PhD in East and Central Africa and to head a university department in Kenya. She began the Green Belt Movement in 1977 which has been responsible for planting 51 million trees in Africa and helping more than 30,000 women gain employment. She served as a member of Parliament
and assistant minister for the environment in 2003-2005 after significant struggles and opposition in her journey to get there.

I enjoyed her descriptions of rural village life in Kenya in the 1940s and 50s. I also appreciated her recount of the difficulties she faced getting involved in politics and environmentalism, in particular the challenge of being expected to be subservient as an African woman.

I did feel, however, that the memoir was much less personal as it went on, and more about her public life and achievements. There was very little comment on her feelings and personal life as an adult. She faced great difficulties after her very public divorce and at one point had to leave her children with her ex-husband, but very little is detailed about any of this or her response to it. Overall I found this to be a powerful story of courage and persistence by an inspiring woman. ( )

Incredibly inspiring story written in an accessible and heartfelt style. ( )

Fascinating memoir. It's amazing how threatening tree planting is deemed by the powerful. ( )

"Democracy does not solve problems. It does not automatically combat poverty or stop deforestation. However, without it, the ability for people to solve problems or become less poor or respect their environment is, I believe, impossible."

This book is Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai's autobiography, covering her life from childhood threw her receipt of the Nobel Prize. The book traces Maathai's career in the Green Belt Movement and, more broadly, in activism work in Kenya. It was definitely really interesting to read about the author's work in Kenya; I knew about broad strokes of the Green Belt Movement but definitely wasn't entirely familiar with her work. I will say that my favorite portion of the book was definitely the beginning portion, about Maathai's childhood, adolescence, and education, as that definitely felt the most personal. Later, while a lot of important topics and moments are addressed, the writing was a little more distant. ( )

There is a lot of interesting history in this book, but I found the writing "clunky." I don't think it's reasonable to put this down to "it's not her native language" when the author is highly educated and had the means and opportunity to have this edited for style. That said, I also found the early parts of the memoir cliche and trite. Maathai promotes the "pre-colonial Eden" view of Africa that is neither true, nor particularly interesting to me. However, this is, after all, a memoir, and it might be unfair of me to judge Maathai's view of events. It's her story, after all. But I really got tired of being talked down to and having events and social currents oversimplified to the point of inanity. If you don't know much about Kenya, or East Africa, or the Greenbelt Movement, you'll probably really like this book, if you don't mind poor sentences and vague word choice. However, don't take this as the last word. Remember this is one person's interpretation of events and hero worship is seldom an accurate way to view history. ( )