The Color of a Lion’s Eye: Memories of Africa

Jane F. Bonin was born in deepest Louisiana. After marrying a successful lawyer, and while bringing up two children, she worked toward a PhD in English, serving as a distinguished professor at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, Louisiana. Always a writer, she published three books of drama history and criticism as part of the work toward her PhD and to satisfy the requirements of her university position as Professor of English at ULL. She retired from the university, settling in Washington, D.C., and several years later, she went overseas to work in Africa on the Peace Corps staff; first in Malawi for two years, then in Niger as Country Director for four. After living in Africa for six years, she began to write in a more personal way about her life in this country. The Color of A Lion’s Eye: Memories of Africa contains vignettes covering her stint as a Peace Corps worker in a country she came to love. Today, she devotes her attention to reading and writing, both in French and English, and to singing in a large chorale. She enjoys the cultural riches of Washington, especially its many museums and theaters, and continues to travel abroad.

SKU: LION Category: Nonfiction

Description

These twenty-four vignettes about a woman’s sojourn as a Peace Corps worker in Malawi and Niger, Africa place the author among the best writers of contemporary travel literature. With heightened awareness of her surroundings, including a description of a period of drought and a poignant sketch about rain, Bonin records her experiences in Africa with a keen eye for description and human behavior in a style that reflects an expanding worldview. Vignettes range from “The New Hedonism, African Style” (a beauty parlor experience in Malawi) to unusual Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations in a foreign environment. She concludes her experiences with a sketch about the color of a lion’s eye in Le Jardin Zoologique, an African zoo. The interconnected vignettes are reminiscent of the charming description and characterizations in essays of D. H. Lawrence’s Mornings in Mexico. The Color of a Lion’s Eye: Memories of Africa is also available in eBook format from Amazon for $4.99. Published 2015.