THIRTY YEARS OF BLOODY CONFLICT with a powerful enemy never broke the spirit of the Eritrean people. After winning their freedom from Ethiopia, a young man dreams of starting a new life, building a home, and teaching his children what it means to be the masters of their own fate. But all-too soon, the fighting resumes. Rounded up and forced into conscription, subjected to inhumane treatment, made to serve a despotic leader in an army fighting a war nobody wants, he will have to sacrifice much just for a chance to get back what he lost - his family, his freedom, his birthright. But will it be worth it? Or will he simply lose everything in the end?
I Will Not Grow Downward offers an exceedingly rare glimpse inside the highly secretive and brutally repressive regime known as Africa's North Korea.
The Dreams of Freedom stories
One family, two powerful accounts of love, heartbreak, and determination from one of the world's most isolated and abusive governments in modern history.
It's 1991, and a bloody thirty-year conflict with Ethiopia has just ended, earning Eritrea its first taste of freedom in over a century. But peace is a delicate flower, and power is all-too easily corrupting. Soon, the small Horn-of-African nation will find itself at war once again, back in the familiar stranglehold of despotism, except this time it will be at the hands of its own beloved leader and war hero. Families are torn apart, suspicion and desperation grow. Human rights are violated. In the midst of worsening oppression, one man and one woman will risk everything to save their children from this life of violence and give them the future they once imagined for themselves..
~ Relentless - An Immigrant Story by Wudasi Nayzgi and Kenneth James Howe
~ I Will Not Grow Downward - Memoir Of An Eritrean Refugee by Yikealo Neab and Kenneth James Howe
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RELENTLESS - AN IMMIGRANT STORY
ONE WOMAN'S DECADE-LONG FIGHT TO HEAL A FAMILY TORN APART BY WAR, LIES, AND TYRANNY
SOON AFTER RETURNING FROM EXILE to a war-torn Eritrea, a young mother receives a devastating medical diagnosis for her first-born child, but adequate treatment is unavailable inside her own country. Meanwhile, her desperate search elsewhere is abruptly thwarted by a new outbreak of fighting and an untested government determined to win at any cost. With her husband forced into conscription, with time and options running out, she must make a terrible decision - stay where she is and jeopardize the life of one child, or flee her beloved homeland, leaving her husband and second daughter behind... possibly forever.
Relentless is the powerful and inspiring story of an Eritrean woman who faced incredible obstacles, defied a ruthless regime, and never gave up fighting for the only thing that matters: family.
There is a proverb in my native Tigrinya language, both warning and admonishment. It goes like this: "Haki tseraba mot keraba." It means, if you speak the truth, you will gather many enemies.
Relentless is the companion memoir in the Dreams of Freedom collection.