Earlier this month, we did a Q&A with The Lion’s Binding Oath author Ahmed Ismail Yusuf in our newsletter (What?! You don’t subscribe? Let us help: Subscribe here).
In advance of his upcoming Midwest book tour, we’re posting it here, too! Read on to learn more about Ahmed, his writing, and how books changed his life. Continue reading “Q&A with Ahmed Ismail Yusuf”
Pretty soon, a whole bunch of you will be walking to your mailboxes, and there, tucked between a magazine, grocery store flyers, an electric bill, and all of the other assorted things that show up in the mail these days, will be something we’re super proud of—a copy of Shaka Rising. Through your support and generosity, we were able to fund our Kickstarter project and get started on the next installment of our African Graphic Novel Series. It’s all because of you.
When we joined forces with the good folks at Jive Media Africa to form the imprint Story Press Africa, it was because we wanted to share all the wonder, the excitement, and the richness of African history and knowledge. Historical figures like Shaka have a lot to tell us about, not just African history, but about our world, and we’re thrilled to share it with you.
A lot of people made this happen. A lot of people cared about sharing Shaka’s story with their kids, their libraries, and their communities and that’s why we made our goal—people like you supported this brand new thing we’ve started. Shaka Rising is the first in a long, long line of African Graphic Novel from Story Press Africa. We’re just getting started and we’re so happy to have you along for the ride.
Thanks for believing in us and the work we’re doing! If you like Shaka Rising, be sure to spread the word! Leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, your website, or in some sort of elaborate semaphore (if you pick semaphore, please send a video. We’d love to see that). Let your schools, libraries, and community groups know that you got your hands on an awesome graphic novel that’s teaching African history in a fun and accessible way, and that they should get in on it, too. Basically, tell everyone you know that Shaka Rising is here and that because of you, a second installment is on the way.
A big THANK YOU to all of you who donated to our campaign, and be sure to keep watching to see what’s next for us! An especially huge thanks to our partners at Jive Media Africa!
Many thanks to our donors:
Einar Petersen
Mary Fountaine
Emily Dietrick
Ntsike
Anonymous
Erin Subramanian
Jamil Burns
Paul Glasser
Ray “Raytoons.Net” Mullikin
Noel Mills
Chandra Orrill
Shean, Semeicha and Sapphira Mohammed
Robert L Vaughn
Tinsley
Lisa Jensen
In honor of Michael Kromberg
Mary Puthoff
Tessa Moon Leiseth
Peter LaPrade
The Spitzers
Rosie Tullis-Thompson
The Briar Patch
Nate Gillespie
Maureen Babb
Rico Schacherl
The Bells
Mark Gunter
Rachel
Matt Powers
Kathy Shepler
Alberta Jackson
Catherine Ndungu-Case
Assembly of Literatures for Adolescents of NCTE
Derek W.
Matty Sankauskas
Anonymous
Dennis and Becky
Helen Musselman
Edi
Glynnis Belchers
Justin
Kathleen Shannon
Sarah
Scott
Scott Mitchell Rosenberg and Platinum Studios
Happy New Year, everyone! It has been a really busy, really exciting 2017 for us here at Catalyst. We’ve done a lot of learning, growing, and building this year and we can’t wait to keep bringing that energy into 2018.
As the year begins, we find ourselves right in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign to bring the second volume of Shaka Rising to life, and we’d love your help. Check out our project to learn more about our plans, and while you’re there make sure to take a look at some of the fantastic rewards we’re offering to our donors. We’d love to be able to send you one of those. Also at our project page, Catalyst founder Jessica Powers has written a few words about her life and why this book, this project, and this press mean so much to her:
When I was growing up on the U.S.- Mexico border, there were no books that reflected the reality of my life. I read Laura Ingalls Wilder avidly, to the point where I grew my hair past my waist and only wore dresses. I wanted to be a pioneer girl. Anything was better than the desert town I lived in!
Then I discovered Anne of Green Gables, and all the companion books, and I desperately wished I was Canadian, and perhaps an orphan, growing up on the lush, mysterious, wild island of Prince Edward Island. (As an aside, I visited as an adult and was disappointed that it was basically farmland, with potatoes being the main crop.)
As a kid, I looked around at my neighborhood and it looked to me like nothing more than a dusty desert town of broken down trucks. I didn’t see the magic of migrant workers who passed our house, sometimes several times a day, following the power lines from Mexico to the chili fields of New Mexico. I didn’t understand the musicality that the lilting Spanish I heard every day was infusing into my language. I didn’t realize the way Mexican culture had surrounded and gentled the harsher white Anglo culture that gave birth to my parents.
As a young adult, I bumbled my way into understanding the beautiful gift I had been given: that, instead of the invisible privilege many white children of America are born into, I had grown up witnessing daily the cycle of death and rebirth that accompanies the immigrant experience, the grace that is embodied in failure and the willingness not to let that crush you but to get up and try again, and–not to romanticize anything–the emotional and physical violence that accompanies the harsh reality of poverty. The experiences of immigrant families weren’t abstract experiences. I saw it in my friends’ families and the families of boys I had crushes on and with people at church.
Perhaps even more pertinent, I grew up as a minority. I was a white child with parents from Iowa and South Dakota but almost everybody I knew was Mexican or Mexican-American. Everyday life meant reaching outside of my own home culture. It meant, too, that I was enveloped in another culture to such an extent that to this day it feels like home. And it meant that I’ve always been interested in the ways that race, culture, belief systems, and immigration impact nations and their histories.
Read more about Jessica’s (and Catalyst’s!) story over at our Kickstarter page.
THE LION’S BINDING OATH
