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Study Guide

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Overview


At Meredith we will follow Dr. Maathai's example and plant a green belt of trees on our grounds.  The environmental message in the book is strong.  As you read, however, you will find that Unbowed is a book about many ideas that apply to our lives and culture.  Here are some topics to look for as you read:

Childhood and family
A sense of place or home
Role models and core values
Shaping one's education
Thriving in the workplace
Women's place in public life
Social change
Political activism: risks and rewards
Women's rights
Ambition
Leadership

The reading questions below ask you to think about these issues in preparation for small group discussions of the book.  

Unbowed Reading and Discussion Questions

  1. You may have grown up in circumstances very different from those described by Wangari Maathai.  In spite of the differences, what similarities do you find between your childhood and hers?  You may want to think about relationships with your parents and siblings, the opportunities you enjoyed, and the way your time was spent.
  2. What aspects of Maathai’s life contrast sharply with your own experience?  Which are difficult for you to imagine or understand?
  3. The early chapters of the book describe missionary work in African from an African’s perspective.  How does this description contrast with the ideas you have about mission work, particularly the spread of Christianity in third world countries?
  4. Maathai places a high value on the stories she was told and the environment she grew up in.  In what ways is your identity connected with the physical place where you grew up (the land, the climate, the culture)?  What stories and tales from childhood do you remember vividly?  How have they shaped your identity?
  5. This book is a memoir that draws upon more than fifty years of WM’s life, including her youth and college years.  If you were to begin a memoir at this point in your life, what incidents and impressions would you include?
  6. In Chapter 3 Maathai describes the struggles between the British and the Africans, struggles that led to a guerilla war, the use of detention camps, and many deaths.  What efforts does she make to narrate these events in an objective manner?   What concerns you about the way this struggle was carried out?
  7. Maathai attends college in the United States at the time of the Civil Rights Movement and John F. Kennedy’s short presidency.  How do her impressions of the United States compare with your understanding of that time in history?
  8. What signs do you find throughout the book that Maathai is becoming an independent thinker? What signs do you find that Maathai is becoming aware of the challenges and responsibilities of being a strong and educated woman? 
  9. How did Maathai balance her status as an educated woman with the need to connect with poor, rural women?  What strategies did she use involve people in the Green Belt Movement?  Do you think these strategies were successful?
  10. Throughout her life, Maathai makes a number of choices that involve risk and controversy.  Which of these choices do you find most interesting and/or troubling?  Explain your response. 
  11. What are some of the organizing and leadership strategies that Maathai introduces to her environmental and political activism?  Which are especially effective?
  12. Maathai is often very critical of her government.  This critique is especially strong when she describes what she believes to be the government’s role in ethnic violence in Chapter 11.  There is a similar debate in the United States over the value of such criticism, by individuals or by the press.  Some say that criticism weakens the government by sharing too much information and showing disloyalty, while others suggest that the freedom to speak out is crucial to a strong democracy.  After Reading Maathai’s comments about Kenya, where do you stand on the issue of criticizing one’s government? 
  13. Please choose a passage from the book that made a strong impression as you read.  Bring it to the group discussion to share with your fellow students. 

 

Notes from SRP Workshop on August 13, 2009

 

What are the most important points that you hope come out of the discussion with your students?

 

 

If you could ask Wangari Maathai one question, what would it be?

 

Name a challenge/controversy that could arise in your group discussion.

 

Activities/ways to engage students in your discussions

 

***denote repeat answers

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