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    Before Before

    External Review of Whole Manuscript

    A Story of Discovery and Loss in Sierra Leone

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    Author(s)
    Small, Betsy
    Language
    English
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    Abstract
    Sierra Leone is often sensationalized as a place of extreme violence and suffering—of blood diamonds, child soldiers, war amputations, and Ebola and now the highly addictive drug Kush. Before Before captures daily life in a different country, one Betsy Small first encountered as a Peace Corps worker between 1984–1987, and then rediscovered when she returned decades later with her daughter. Living in Tokpombu, a remote community of forty rice-farming families, the author faced struggles that changed her forever and witnessed the growing tensions in this rainforest village—between the young and old, between the traditions of oral history and honoring the ancestors valued by the elders and the siren call of the illicit diamond mines faced by the youth. Before Before offers a rare portrait of everyday people, with particular focus on the lives of women and girls, before the brutal war of 1991 tore the country apart. Through Small’s account of immersion in another world as she witnessed injustice and was welcomed as a friend, readers are invited to explore the shared ground of our humanity.
    URI
    https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/99164
    Keywords
    Peace Corps, memoir, Sierra Leone, rice, Jewish, African American history, diamonds, development, friendship, Blood Diamond war, child soldier, Kono, Mende, Slavery, Freetown, race, grief
    DOI
    10.3998/mpub.14373970
    ISBN
    9780472077298, 9780472057290, 9780472904907
    Publisher
    University of Michigan Press
    Publisher website
    https://www.press.umich.edu/
    Publication date and place
    2025
    Series
    Law, Meaning, And Violence,
    Classification
    Politics and government
    Social and cultural anthropology
    Pages
    219
    Rights
    https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
    • Imported or submitted locally

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    License

    • If not noted otherwise all contents are available under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

    Credits

    • logo EU
    • This project received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 683680, 810640, 871069 and 964352.

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