Walking on Cowrie Shells - Nana Nkweti
 
Walking on Cowrie Shells focuses on the lives of hyphenated-Americans with a multi-cultural heritage in the United States and Africa. The book spans genres - literary realism, horror, mystery, YA, science fiction - and features complex, fully-embodied characters: tongue-tied linguistic anthropologists, comic book enthusiasts and even water goddesses. The author hopes her stories entertain readers while also offering them a counterpoint to prevalent 'heart of darkness' writing that too often depicts a singular 'African' experience plagued by locusts, hunger, and tribal in-fighting.