The Turn-Around Bird - Softcover

Wingard, Lucinda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 098484001X ISBN 13: 9780984840014

Publisher: Plicata Press, 2012

Synopsis

Teenage protagonist Aimee Thurman tells the story of how her modern African American family is hurled to the "end of the earth"-Timbuktu, in the fourteenth century. It's a time and place teeming with devious djinn and other wilderness spirits, griots and sorcerers, devout Muslim marabouts and fierce Tuareg generals. Above it all reigns Mansa Kankan Musa, emperor of Africa's legendary Golden Empire. Will he allow them to return to the twenty-first century with their heads still attached?

About this title

From the Author

First, I must make clear that the bird image on this book's cover is not from Timbuktu, nor is it from the time of Mansa Musa's Golden Empire. However, my research indicates both the tradition of brass market weights in geometric or animal shapes and the maxim of the Turn-around bird did exist in 1329.   The market weight pictured on the cover is found in the collection of the National Museum of African Art. I have observed other fine examples of Akan gold weights at the Brooklyn Museum and Seattle Art Museum. Nowadays, the image of the "Turn-around bird" is referred to as a Sankofa. A web search will reveal delightful images and meanings of this African icon.   My book cover also features a wall design painted by women, like designs Aimee would have seen in the "women's baths."  Photographs of marvelous painted walls can be found in the work of Margaret Courtney-Clarke and her book African Canvas.   Descriptions and events in The Turn-around Bird arose from research and my own imagination and experience. Written historical records from 1329 of Timbuktu are few or none, although there are vivid written records of the magnificent hajj of Mansa Musa through Egypt and Arabia. Furthermore, Ibn Battuta, a man who traveled more widely than Marco Polo, wrote at length of his visit to Timbuktu in the 1350s, a time when, alas, Musa's Golden Empire had already crumbled.   The lack of contemporary written records is not because the Timbuktu was an illiterate place in 1329. Far from it. But this fabled city suffered repeated invasions over the centuries; its mosques and buildings were razed and rebuilt multiple times. Fortunately, a rich store of manuscripts imported and copied at the University of Sankore has survived the centuries. Timbuktu is now attempting to maintain a modern library that preserves this heritage.   Writing is only one way to preserve history. There are many other clues about life in Timbuktu, 1329. Despite wars and toppled rulers, oral traditions persist, stories such as the epic of Sundiata, for example. The version told by Aimee relies heavily on In Search of Sunjata: The Mande Oral Epic as History, Literature, and Performance edited by Ralph A Austen, 1999. Also, traces of age-old traditions are revealed in tribal hierarchies, family roles, and languages still used today. Craftsmen, too, have preserved ancient secrets to fashion metal, leather, and clay into functional pieces and art forms. Seeing them work first-hand is best, of course, but I found many detailed and illustrated publications by archeologists, anthropologists, and citizens of Mali for my research. Films and museum collections also provided me many clues. West African art is admired world-wide. Western-born explorers and tourists have collected artifacts in West Africa for the last three centuries, unfortunately severing them from meaningful cultural context.    Finally, as a Peace Corps volunteer living in a traditional West African Muslim town, I became aware that many aspects of daily life had not changed significantly in hundreds of years. Scenes and experiences from my own life-changing time travel adventure in Africa found their way into my story. And so, I confess to several reckless leaps of imagination in describing fourteenth century Timbuktu. Where my story effaces the boundary between Real and Imaginary, I leave it to the reader to draw his or her own frontier. 

From the Back Cover

"Pick up what you left behind" goes the West African saying,  symbolized by a hornbird looking over its shoulder.
It reminds people to honor their heritage.
It also carries a warning.
Aimee Thurman's ancestors want her to know
what else the saying can mean.
 
Aimee and her twin follow their father all the way to the legendary city of Timbuktu. While he studies Mali's ancient manuscripts, his fractious daughters swelter and scout for amusement in the dull brown town.
An odd-looking stranger suggests they might enjoy riding in a camel caravan. Aimee hates camels. Her sister Zoe decides she loves them. As if under a spell, their father pays for an afternoon's outing. And so it happens their lives take a drastic turn.
In the superheated air of the Sahara, Aimee finds it difficult to distinguish Reality from Illusion. Is the grinning stranger before them really a djinni?  Are those blank, fourteenth-century mud walls rising before them only a mirage?
Yes and No.
 
In a faraway time and land
where amulets provide uncertain protection from the Evil Eye,
a modern African American teenager
picks up much more than she ever could have imagined.
 
 
Cover design by John McMillan
Hornbird image from the National Museum of African Art, Washington DC

About this edition

• Publisher: Plicata Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 098484001X
• ISBN 13: 9780984840014
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296