The Beauty Queen of Bonthe and Other Stories of West Africa, Paperback/Gregory a. Bar

Descriere

Description The seven stories of this collection are all set during the early nineteen-sixties, a dynamic age of transition from colonial rule to independence. They show the complex lives of a diverse population: a villager fallen on hard times who laments the means by which he feeds his family; an expatriate couple confronting a headless staircase and their own existential crises; a leper who survives another day of beggary; a British colonial officer and a traditional chief both of whom fear a diminished status as they confront a dramatic change in their chiefdom; and of course the beautiful young Sierra Leonean who alarms her community by her drastic action. About the Author Gregory A. Barnes was among the earliest Peace Corps Volunteers, serving with Sierra Leone I (1961-63), and then with Peace Corps staff in Kaduna, Nigeria (1963-65). After completing Ph. D studies in English at the University of Wisconsin, he pursued a career as teacher and writer, first in Lagos, Nigeria, and later in Philadelphia. Since becoming a member of the Religious Society of Friends, he has written three Quaker histories as well as a comic novel, Jane Among Friends. He and his wife now live in Riverfront, an intentional Quaker community located only steps from the point in Philadelphia where William Penn first landed in 1682.