Mama Koko and the Hundred Gunmen: An Ordinary Family's Extraordinary Tale of Love, Loss, and Survival in Congo

by Lisa J Shannon

Overview

Driven by her family's devastating losses, Congolese expatriate Francisca Thelin embarks, with human rights activist Lisa J. Shannon, on a perilous journey back to her beloved homeland, now under the shadow of one of Africa's most feared militias--Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army. With gunmen camped at the edge of town, Francisca is forced to face a paralyzing clash between her life in America and her family's rapidly evaporating world--and the reality that their rush to her family's aid may backfire.

Mama Koko and the Hundred Gunmen weaves Francisca's journey with stories of the family's harrowing encounters with gunmen and tales from their past to create a vivid, illuminating portrait of a place and its people. We hear of Mama Koko's early life as a gap-toothed beauty plotting to escape her inevitable fate of wife and motherhood; of Papa Alexander's empire of wives, each of whom he married because she cooked and cleaned and made good coffee; and of Francisca's idyllic childhood, when she ran barefoot through the family's coffee plantation gorging herself on mangoes and fish that "were the size of small children."

Offering compelling testimony to the strength of the human spirit and the beauty of human connection in the darkest of times, Mama Koko and the Hundred Gunmen also explores what it means and requires to truly make a difference in an unjust and often violent world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781610394451
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	02/03/2015
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Lisa J. Shannon is a human rights activist, writer and speaker. In 2005, she founded Run for Congo Women, the first national grassroots campaign in the US working to raise awareness of the forgotten humanitarian crisis in Congo. Since then, she has spearheaded multiple major media and human rights campaigns for Congo and Somalia. She was a 2012-2013 Gleitsman Fellow with Harvard's Center for Public Leadership and is a 2013-2014 fellow with Harvard Kennedy School's Carr Center for Human Rights. Shannon holds a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School and an Honorary Doctorate from Georgetown University.

She is the author of the award-winning A Thousand Sisters and she has been featured on countless media outlets including The Oprah Winfrey Show, National Public Radio's Morning Edition, the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, the Economist, and more. In 2010 she was named one of O Magazine's 100 Most Influential Women on the Planet.

She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Editorial Reviews

“It's never easy for a writer to negotiate the bloody shake-up of history. Far from being silenced or rendered speechless by the complicated political transformation, Shannon chose to narrate the compelling stories as vital testimonies to reflect on the role each one of us can play.…Shannon's emphasis in Mama Koko and the Hundred Gunmen is on the extraordinary tale of a marginal family, caught amidst the crossfire for power and control….Shannon must be credited for bringing to life the stories of human sufferings in an unjust world, which are often subsumed in dominant political-economy discourses that focus on resource extraction as a means of so-called human development.” —Deccan Herald

"Lisa Shannon is known for the courage, grace, and love through which she brings to everyone's attention the harshness and beauty of humanity experienced in the Democratic Republic of Congo. With a compassionate eye, she analyzes how ordinary individuals deal with that difficult reality. In Mama Koko and the Hundred Gunmen, Shannon shows the magic of her writing by taking the reader on that journey. It is a journey of the heart that everyone should read."—Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International and author of Between Two Worlds

“Lisa Shannon is a young woman with courage, conviction, and a craving for adventure... Shannon skillfully reveals a tapestry of characters and personal narratives that are at once moving and frightful... Beautiful writing.”–New York Journal of Books

“Harrowing… Shannon's book bother offers a rich portrait for her subjects' lives and serves as a call to action… A highly personal and memorable story.” –Kirkus

“This compelling narrative is not easily forgotten, nor are the many people whose stories she collected. This is a valiant record of the testimonies of vital witnesses; readers will not be able to look away.” —Booklist

From the Publisher

2014-12-17
Shannon (A Thousand Sisters: My Journey into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman, 2010), an international human rights activist and founder of the nonprofit Run for Congo Women, tells the harrowing story of a Congolese family torn apart by the ongoing threat of Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army.In her home of Portland, Oregon, the author regularly visited with her friend Francisca Thelin, a Congolese expatriate. Francisca confided tales about her safe, seemingly perfect African childhood growing up on her family's coffee plantation, followed by the intrusion of the menacing, violent Lord's Resistance Army. Having immigrated to the United States years before, Francisca lived well, though she was haunted by phone calls from her mother, Mama Koko, detailing the mounting dangers of life in Dungu. Over the course of a year, Mama Koko called nightly to recount the tragic news of the deaths of family members, friends and neighbors who were abducted, tortured and brutally killed by the LRA; some were even burned alive on Christmas Day. Together in 2012, Francisca and Shannon traveled to Africa to visit her family and see and hear for themselves the traumatic narratives of Mama Koko, her husband, Papa Alexander, and other relatives and locals desperate for their accounts to be heard. Shannon weaves together these nightmarish stories of survival and deep grief with the history of Mama Koko's life before the LRA invaded. She also provides details of Papa Alexander's wild, entertaining past and Francisca's struggle to reconcile her happy girlhood memories with the reality of unrelenting threats and cruelty. Shannon's book both offers a rich portrait of her subjects' lives and serves as a call to action. The author closes with a section called "What You Can Do Before Setting This Book Down," since "the damage and the structural issues in Congo's broken government that have allowed the violence to persist will take decades to heal." A highly personal and memorable story.

Kirkus Reviews