“Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is a commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause -- the cause of liberation.”
― Paulo Freire

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On Sale

September 16: Rebel Women, Book launch of "The Stone Breakers"

$10.00
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Title

September 16, Saturday


Book launch for Congolese writer Emmanuel Dongala's novel of feminist labor resistance, The Stone Breakers. Set in an imagined African country, it tells the story about the uprising of women stone crushers at a gravel pit as they rise up against their corporate bosses to demand higher wages for their grueling labor. What begins as a village protest escalates to a state-wide rebellion that confronts the corrupt leadership and challenges the status quo set by the government and the mining corporations. Told in a unique second person narration, this is Dongala's fifth novel and has already been adapted to stage in Africa, Europe and South America. Reviewers praise translator Sara Hanaburgh's "verve" in bringing this novel to us in English. 

Watch the recording!

About the book
Set in an imagined contemporary African country, The Stone Breakers by Emmanuel Dongala is a gripping novel told from a unique second person point-of-view of the uprising of a group of women stone crushers at a gravel pit, who rise up against their corporate bosses to demand higher wages for their labor—a gruelling process of break rocks down to gravel-size bits to be used as road surfacing for the expansion of the country's airport. Translated by Sara Hanaburgh and published by Schaffner Press. 
About the author
Born 1941, Emmanuel Dongala is a Congolese chemist and novelist. The former Dean of the Marien Ngouabi University in Brazzaville, Dongala was forced to flee to the United States from Congo when civil war broke out in 1997, and he was offered a professorship at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, where he taught until 2014. He is the author of a number of highly acclaimed, award-winning books, including Johnny Mad Dog and Little Boys Come from the Stars. His work is featured in the Penguin Anthology of Modern African Poetry, and he has been a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. A film based on Johnny Mad Dog was released in 2008, and this novel also received the Cezam Prix Littéraire Inter CE Award in 2004.
About the translator
Sara Hanaburgh is a scholar (French and Francophone African literature and cinema) and translator working between French, Portuguese, Spanish and English. Her literary translations include Kaveena by Boubacar Boris Diop (Kaveena, 2016), co-translated with Bhakti Shringarpure, and Angèle Rawiri’s novel Fureurs et cris de femmes (The Fury and Cries of Women, 2014). Her articles and translations have appeared in Africa is a Country, The Savannah Review, Warscapes, The Dictionary of African Biography, Imagine Africa, v. 3 and América Latina. She teaches at St. John's University and is currently editing a volume on the history of adaptation of African literature to the screen. She lives in New York.

Moderator Bhakti Shringarpure is the Creative Director for the Radical Books Collective.