Unbowed by Wangari Maathai

Unbowed by Wangari Maathai

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER * A remarkable memoir of courage, faith, and the power of persistence about one woman's extraodinary journey from her childhood in rural Kenya to the world stage.  

"[Maathai's] story provides uplifting proof of the power of perseverance--and of the power of principled, passionate people to change their countries and inspire the world."  --The Washington Post

In Unbowed, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai recounts her extraordinary life. When Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, she began a vital poor people's environmental movement, focused on the empowerment of women, that soon spread across Africa. Persevering through run-ins with the Kenyan government and personal losses, and jailed and beaten on numerous occasions, Maathai continued to fight tirelessly to save Kenya's forests and to restore democracy to her beloved country.

Wangari Muta Maathai was born in the Kenyan town of Nyeri in the year 1940. She is the originator of the Green Belt Movement, which has planted over 30 million trees across Kenya through rural women's networks since 1977. In the first free elections in a decade, she was elected to Kenya's Parliament in 2002, and in 2003, she was appointed Deputy Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources. She is a Nobel Peace Prize recipient from 2004 and lives and works in Nairobi with her three grown children.