Summary Of Alison Ayers '

In 20111, Molly Ayer is a 17, almost 18, year old troubled foster child living in Maine who is soon going to become too old for the foster system. After stealing a book from the library, the only way she can avoid getting kicked out of her foster home and being sent to a juvenile hall is helping an old woman named Vivian Daly clean out her attic as a community service project. Molly soon learns how closely related her and Vivian’s lives are related. Vivian and her family came from Ireland to New York in 1926 in hopes for a better future, but after a fire kills Vivian’s family she is put on an Orphan Train to Minnesota in order to find a new family. The train has 19 other children hoping for brighter futures, including a boy named Dutchy who Vivian strikes up a friendship with. Vivian is soon adopted by the Byrnes who call her Dorothy. Once the Great Depression struck though, Dorothy was moved to the Grote family, who lived in worse conditions than she has all her life. Although the conditions are grim, Dorothy is sent to school every day. After Mr. Grote attempts to rape Dorothy she goes to live with her teacher Ms. Larsen before being relocated to yet another new foster home. Dorothy soon finds the Nielson family which was a seemingly perfect fit for Dorothy. The only request the Nielson family had was to call Dorothy Vivian after their departed daughter. Vivian lives happily with the Nielsons and grows up to once again find Dutchy. Vivian and Dutchy are soon

Africa has undergone a long history of being invaded, taken advantage of and colonized. European powers are primarily at fault for this, however they have experienced their own turmoil in this time period: war. This led Europe to create mercenary armies of African soldiers to fight for their countries, particularly in the World Wars. The rampant injustice of this system and many African lives lost was a spark for the African nation states under colonial rule. It led to the wildfire that was African independence movements, protests, and riots. It also led to the Year of Africa, where most countries were recognized as their own entities and no longer colonies. While there are many factors involved in this portion of history, the importance of

For centuries Africa has been sought after and colonized by European powers for political, social and economic gain. Europeans needed Africa’s rich resources to fund their industrial revolution. European countries were strategically trying to one up another for the best resources so that their country would come out on top, while completely disregarding African people. Many European countries came to the conclusion that it was well within their rights to colonize Africa in order to protect their commercial interests. They simply decided to lay claim to territories in Africa, treating the continent as if it was theirs to take. In this essay I will argue that to the Europeans, Africa was just a commodity to be fought over and colonized and I

" Who the hell let these damn rookies into my crime scene," I demanded in an annoyed tone while striding through the bedroom door of the crime scene.

In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Europeans invaded Africa, colonizing every country except Liberia and Ethiopia. Some African nations attempted to fight back, but the European’s superior weapon easily suppressed the resistance. Then, the Europeans extracted natural resources and utilized the force labor of Africans. European imperialism and colonization in Africa clearly invoked more harm than the benefits to Africans. The Europeans crippled the Africans by extracting natural resources, forcing Africans to work for them, and leaving Africa unprepared with independence.

Africa is land of various climates, deserts to the north, in the middle of the contenent, lays large jungles, and plains and mountains to the south. The whole southern end itself is various, not only in its in its cultures, but its peoples too. Between the beginning of the 19th century and the beginning of World War I in 1914, there was a power struggle between 3 major groups of people: The British, who had once inhabited the Cape Colony and had returned, the Native Africans, who had been there for some time, and had learned to live off the land, and the Boers, the descendants of the Dutch who had lived in the cape until the British returned. All of these people held power, but none of them held on to

The end of the Cold War has had profound effects on Africa. On the positive side, it has removed the tendency of outside actors to become intricate in internal and regional quarrelling in striving towards their own goals. Diminished the often excessive levels and types of military aid, training, and outside military reinforcements available to African countries, also by making UN Security Council consent of multilateral peacekeeping measures more likely.

When analyzing Frantz Fanon’s theory on violence, although captivating and provoking, I think of it not being completely applied in Africa. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the war-for-profit strategy is current and resulting in six million deaths, which are still rising because of a resource war. Continents

With this conceded class distinction came the fight for reigning ability, and amidst this power vacuum, Rwandans fell victim to conflicting groups and crime, the eventual building blocks that lead to the massacre of 800,000 civilians. The origins of this ethnic loathing and in turn ethnic genocide can be secured to European colonialism, where those who arrived to colonize and yield the wealth of western knowledge, instead carried racist beliefs. Through this haunting event in history, when foreign governments unfittingly place their ideologies in unknown territory, revealed is how uninvited nations can destabilize a state by stimulating ethnic warfare, causing it to collapse and crumble through conflict.

Beginning in 1880, there was a growing desire for European countries to expand and control their rule. The only continent at that time that was left uncontrolled and, in the European's eyes uncivilized, was Africa. This was the start of Western Imperialism. All European countries wanted their piece of Africa and to get it, they would let nothing stand in their way. They would change the entire government, religion, market, and behavior of most of the African nation and affect almost every person living there. An account of the impact of Imperialism is given in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. This book shows the changes that occurred in Africa during Imperialism and its affect on the community and the people

The role and nature of African agency has been debated, and is a contentious issue, especially with regard to its role in shaping the contemporary international relations (IR) of the continent. The nature of African agency is weak and inadequate, however the continent does have some influence in aspects of political debate and the potential to become more prominent. African agency is a broad, yet core concept which is; the ‘ability of states as primary actors in the international system to produce both hard and soft capabilities in pursuit of their national interests (Andreasson 2013). This essay will first discuss the nature of African agency, and the viewpoints contributing to it, then will discuss and analyse its role in shaping the contemporary IR of Africa, and the challenges it faces.

Modern African states have several problems ranging from corruption, to armed conflict, to stunted structural development. The effects of colonialism have been offered as a starting point for much of the analysis on African states, but the question of why African states are particularly dysfunctional needs to be examined, given the extent to which they have lagged behind other former European colonies in many aspects. In the first section, I will consider the problems with African states from the level of the state. That is, the nature of the states' inceptions and the underlying flaws may explain some of the issues that have been associated with African states today. Next I examine the development of, or lack of, civil

Decolonization period in Africa didn’t come peacefully in all the countries. Many times the natives had to get violent in order to achieve their independence. Although the history of this struggle has two sides, it has always been portrayed through a European point of view. This painted the Africans as pure savages without truly examining what drove them to commit these violent acts. Europeans have always bent history to show themselves in a positive manner. One of the battles in which history has been mainly one sided is the Mau- Mau rebellion in Kenya.

This paper looks to examine parallels in the rise of ethnic tensions that have followed state building efforts of multiple forms in regions that had legacies of colonial rule, traditionally independent states, and newly independent states. In considering the potential for ethnic conflicts to become violent we must consider the fact that the ethnic divisions have evolved in a longer running historical context that includes the colonial and post-colonial periods. As modern states have become institutionalized across the Third World, the politicization and conflicting nature of ethnic divisions have taken on new dimensions as the newly created states have taken up the mantles of aspiring to represent the “entire nation.” (Wimmer, 1997) The role of ethnicity has played varying degrees of importance in either solidifying or fragmenting the creation of national identities. Ethnic wars became increasingly common in numbers in the years from 1950-1999, comprising 55 percent to 72 percent of all civil wars during the period. Additionally, in the 1990s alone, more than 200 ethnic minorities and subordinate majorities throughout the world were contesting their political status. (Johnson, 2008). As new nations develop, ethnic conflict is often a key source of division within states for a variety of causes.

Economic factors have been identified as one of the major causes of conflict in Africa. Slowdowns, stagnation, deterioration, and complete collapse are sources of state destabilization and can lead