Bøker av Thomas Jing

Logan, a young Canadian priest, finds himself in Jangaland, an African country in the throes of post-independence violence. His friendly relationship with the family of a rebel leader does not endear him to the ruling administration. He is thrown out of the country. Even before he leaves, the leader and his wife are killed. The rebel's daughter, Zinga, miraculously survives the extermination plot and ends up in an orphanage where his true identity is concealed. When she comes of age, she bears a stunning resemblance to her mother.With her life in danger, and aided by family friends who reveal her true identity, she escapes from the country. Now a refugee, her tribulations are just beginning. She is exploited by an immigration official, reduced into a sex slave by a rebel force. She survives and is eventually joined by her husband who was in Jangaland. Plans to make a fresh start are botched. Drug dealers kill her husband. She is despondent but a miracle occurs. Logan traces her whereabouts and it is in Canada that she recounts her story to a psychiatrist.

The village of Yakiri has been cursed by ancestral wrath because of the treatment of Yaa, the first girl who wrestled her male goatherd peers to earn the right to be initiated into the society of manhood. Her struggle is taken up generations later by Yaya, the granddaughter of Tafan and Wirba. Orphaned like her forebear, Yaya becomes a star student in the village's primary school and promises to go far. But, ask the villagers, is it right to invest in an education for an African girl who may become the property of another village? An educated woman will abandon the farm where she is needed, wear high heels and try to order men around!In the midst of it all, one Irish missionary, living in Africa and for the most time with Africans, literally wiggles his way into hearts and minds. With his intervention, Yaya leaves the village to school in the city, but her troubles as a woman have not really begun. Yarns of cultural borrowing, indigestion and transcendence reveal the simple and complex ways in which community matters are confronted and decided. This happens in shrines where seers are consulted and cowry shells thrown, in palm wine houses, but also around the school and presbytery. The untold stories and perspectives of girls and women burst through in illuminating and uplifting ways. Quarrels, squabbles, near collisions and mutual conversions give way to innovative traditions.