Unbowed

by Wangari Maathai
Alfred Knopf, 2006
314 pages, $24.95

Reviewed by LiDoña Wagner

Writers can learn about the power of “voice” by reading Wangari Maathai’s memoir, Unbowed. The Nobel Peace Prize winner speaks with the voice of reason—calm, objective, and balanced.

In the memoir, Maathai recounts her history from her roots in rural Kenya and her education in the United States to her political battles to save the African environment and her eventual award of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. She communicates her passion for the environment not through rhapsodic prose or political polemic but by recounting four decades of persistent action, understanding that submitting evidence is more powerful than emotional rhetoric.

After attending college in Kansas and graduate school in Pennsylvania, Maathai returned to Kenya with “a belief that I should work hard, help the poor, and watch out for the weak and vulnerable.” Back home, she encountered both gender and ethnic discrimination. Her training as a scientist enabled her to look upon these with objectivity.

The objectivity in Maathai’s voice comes from her training in veterinary anatomy and years of teaching at University College of Nairobi. This contributes to her even-handed attitude toward the British, Western missionaries, even the Mau Mau. Maathai sorts through several other messy details, including her divorce and tribal conflicts, with the same clarity and balance.

When describing her connection to the land, Maathai’s voice is reverent, never strident. And her voice takes on a storytelling quality when she describes founding an environmental movement.

As Maathai matured into an independent African leader, the movement she founded grew from a desire to help malnourished women to a political force that threatened the entrenched ruling elite. In protecting Kenya’s parks and forests, she learned to use local and international media for her own protection and to shame Kenyan officials into more humane and forward looking policies. She stood up for her beliefs and endured prison on several occasions. As with the trees she planted and defended, Maathai had her roots in the soil yet reached for the sky.