The Rhetorical Legacy of Wangari Maathai

Eddah M. Mutua is professor of intercultural communication at St. Cloud State University.Alberto González is distinguished university professor in the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University.Anke Wolbert is lecturer in the School of Communication, Media, and Theatre Arts at Eastern Michigan University

This book honors the advocacy of Dr. Wangari Maathai, acclaimed environmentalist and the first African woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Peace. Dr. Maathai was a gifted orator who crafted messages that imagined new possibilities for human agency and social justice and who inspired action to protect our natural habitats. This collection explores the various strategies Maathai employed in her speeches to create memorable images and arguments for audiences in Kenya and around the world. Specifically, authors examine Maathai's use of storytelling, her creative use of metaphor and local cultural knowledge, and her use of sharp social-political analysis. Authors approach Maathai's rhetoric from both African and Western ways of knowing.

AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Wangari Maathai and Social Justice AdvocacyAlberto González, Eddah M. Mutua, and Anke WolbertPart I: Africa and the Rhetoric of the Green Belt MovementChapter One: Bantu Sociolinguistics in Wangari Maathai's Peacebuilding RhetoricKundai V. ChirindoChapter Two: Envisioning Peace and Reconciliation for Kenya: Wangari Maathai's 2008 Peace Tent Opening Ceremony AddressAnke WolbertChapter Three: The Rhetorical Potency of Storytelling: The Narrative Role of the Hummingbird in the Green Belt MovementFranklin Nii Amankwah YarteyChapter Four: Heroic Transverser: A Rhetorical Analysis of Representations of Wangari MaathaiWanjiru G. MbureChapter Five: Wangari Maathai's Rhetorical Vision: Empowerment through EducationAhmet AtayChapter Six: The Green Belt Movement and Rhetoric of African Development CommunicationStella-Monica Mpande and Cleophas Tauri MuneriPart II: Planting the Future: Sustaining Agency in and beyond the Green Belt MovementChapter Seven: The Rhetorical Significance of Maathai's Environmental Advocacy to Critical Intercultural Communication and Black FeminismsRachel Alicia Griffin and Gloria Nziba PindiChapter Eight: Wangari Maathai and Mottainai: Gifting "Cultural Appropriation" with Cultural EmpowermentEtsuko KinefuchiChapter Nine: Daughter of the Soil: Wangari Maathai's Rhetorical Vision of Environmental Justice and ReformReynaldo Anderson and D.L. StephensonChapter Ten: Growing the Next Generation: The Sustainability of Wangari Maathai's Rhetoric of EnvironmentalismEllen W. GorsevskiChapter Eleven: Planting the Future: The Spiritual Legacy of Wangari MaathaiEddah M. Mutua and Susan M. KilonzoReferencesIndexAbout the EditorsAbout the Contributors