In America’s Daughter, the second book of the trilogy, the author arrives in the United States in the company of Catherine Murray, an American high-school teacher. Her adjustment to a new culture includes shocking doses of American-style racial discrimination and Nhambu’s discovery that she must learn to be a Black American. She graduates from college, thus fulfilling her dream of becoming a … teacher, and teaches high school in the inner city. She marries, has two children, and establishes herself in the American way of life. Then a visit to Africa, and especially to Tanzania, reawakens the drumbeats and dancing that she carries in her soul. On her return home, she teaches Swahili and African Studies, performs African dance at schools, and creates Aerobics With Soul®, a fitness workout based on African dance. She both finds and creates the family she longed for as a child and connects with her unknown background. The first book of the trilogy, Africa’s Child, was released in 2016. The final book of her memoir series—Drum Beats, Heart Beats—reveals more of Nhambu’s life as she searches for her father.
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The second book of the Dancing Soul trilogy shows this time the life once the author arrives in the United States. The new life in America is very different from East Africa and she finds new challenges every day. She learns to be a Black American and once she finishes college, she builds the family she wanted so much.
Going back to Africa brings back all those memories she thought were gone, but once again she finds her inner strength to reaffirm who she truly is. Once back, she creates Aerobics with Soul, a fitness workout based on African dance.
This time Nhambu tells her story from a whole different side, building a family, and being a teacher in new circumstances; trust me when I say that her story is beautiful and spectacular.
This is the second instalment from Maria Nhambu’s life story. I was blown away by the first book and the struggles and outright abuse that she was subjected to as a child, and was heartbroken to see that being adopted and moving to America didn’t see the end of Maria’s troubles. This book goes through the difficulties of coping with racism and discrimination but ultimately see’s Maria succeed and become a teacher, get married and travel back to Africa to reconnect with her family and her roots. I know it will be worth reading all 3 of these books to appreciate everything that Maria has experienced and achieved. A real inspiration.
This is Maria Nhambu’s second story in this series. Nhambu really bares her soul in this book and the struggles of transitioning to coming to America as an African. This is an amazing story and journey that really speaks to a lot of social and cultural issues, as well as the experience of someone not from America and coming into the states as a minority as a young adult…thrust into a new situation and how she learned, adapted, and best of all helped others through her experience, determination, and sheer ability to reach into the hearts of others.
Her bio says her name means “one who connects” and I absolutely think there couldn’t be a more fitting name for her. She just doesn’t fail. Even when she struggles, hurts, or hits an obstacle Nhambu just perseveres. Her journey is absolutely eye-opening, inspiring, and a must-read!
After her bittersweet childhood in Kifungilo, Mary faces the cultural shock of flying to America and suddenly becoming a “black American,” having to assimilate a whole new culture and find her own identity in the homeland of her adoptive mother —who happens to be only five years older than her— without failing in the attempt. A few years later, an unsuspected letter reaches Mary’s hands from Morogoro, Tanganyika, and her newly conquered stability suffers a most strange setback that will remove the meaning of some of her most intimate memories.
In this second part of the Dancing Soul trilogy, Mary will face different meanings and ways of defining love, faith, race, personal identity, professional career, creativity, motherhood, determination as an individual, education, commitment, prejudice, mobility of peoples, plurality, multiculturalism, human adaptability, honesty, the challenges of youth, innocence and maturity.
Inspiring, fascinating and humorous, this story shows Mary’s liberation through the redefinition of herself and through dance as a means of expression, identity and love, and shows how different and revealing it can be to return to one’s roots with new eyes. A good continuation of the memoirs of “fat” Mary that makes the reader think about the social assumptions of the current American culture.
I had recently read Africa’s Child and was incredibly moved and also inspired by Maria Nhambu’s story so I was looking forward to reading her next book, America’s Daughter. The struggle continues for Maria despite begin adopted and taken to live in America. The challenges, abuse, abandonment, hate and racism Maria has dealt with seems never ending but she perseveres regardless. An incredible and moving story of an unbreakable woman. A must read!
It’s difficult to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, but Maria Nhamba shares her life so beautifully in her memoir. Allowing her readers to view what she went through as she came to adjust to life in America. Originally from an African orphanage, she migrated to the States for an education, a chance at a life, but was met with culture shock and racial discrimination. Her determination to become a teacher and to have the life of her dreams kept her striving towards her goals. Maria becomes a teacher, a wife, mother, and an accomplished American. I am thrilled she has been able to make a life here, and that she has brought her African culture with her. I have the greatest respect for Maria and what she has accomplished. This book is written with devotion to the life she has created, intelligence toward the topics of discussion she addresses, and also with love and appreciation for her life. I haven’t read her first book, but I will, right before I read the third book. Her story is one you want to follow. She’s amazing and I am so thankful to have read her story.
Americas Daughter is the second book in Maria’s trilogy and in my opinion the most powerful and realistic one yet. I love the honesty of Marias writing in this novel. She connects with the readers with her own compelling life story and experiences. The book is an emotional rollercoaster that I can imagine will inspire young women in unpleasant situations everywhere, and the struggle to overcome. It grabbed my attention right from the opening page and was an incredible read. Highly recommended.
America’s Daughter by Maria Nhambu is inspiring and fascinating as you see America through the eyes of an immigrant. This novel is a continuation of Maria’s life, this time after she is adopted and travels to America. The things we take for granted are new and confusing to a poor orphan from Africa. The material things of our country are easy to adjust to, it is the racial prejudice that she struggles with the most. Maria relies on her inner strength “Fat Mary” and dancing to work out the problems she faces.
Maria Nhambu opens her heart within the pages of America’s Daughter. This is one of the best memoirs I have read. Her strength and resilient attitude is refreshing as she gives one hundred percent though periodically others try tearing her down. I was really intrigued by the perception Maria had during the time of race riots and civil right marches. Her insight on black people losing their ancestral identity just because of their skin color is correct. I loved how Maria brought her story to life and allowed the reader to visualize her years since arriving to our country.
Maria Nhambu’s account of her adjustment to life in America after an awful childhood in an orphanage in Tanzania was compelling and moving. Struggling for acceptance in her new home, she encountered isolation and racial abuse, but she had a great inner strength that cannot be beaten. She graduates college and becomes a teacher, but it is a trip back to her birth country that would change the course of her life.
‘America’s Daughter’ is an insightful, informative, upsetting, but also uplifting story of the experiences of one immigrant in America, which is sure to resonate with so many people. Despite the difficult themes tackled, the book is full of wisdom, hope, and humour.
America’s Daughter is the second book in the Dancing Souls trilogy by Maria Nhambu. It’s an incredibly powerful tale of overcoming adversity that continues to highlight Maria Nhambu’s strengths as a writer.
The journey at the heart of the story is one that grabs you from the opening page. Nhambu crafts a mesmerizing narrative that is not scared of tackling some seriously big issues in a frank and honest way. Nhambu is clearly a writer who knows how to build a strong emotional arc and she does a brilliant job here once again.
The book is an emotional rollercoaster that will inspire young women tackling adversity everywhere. Those who enjoyed the first book in the trilogy, Africa’s Child, are sure to get just as much, if not more, from America’s Daughter.
Wow! What a life, what a blessing! I am marveling at the remarkable journey of this biracial woman who was born in Tanzania, who got educated by the Roman Catholic nuns over there, and later was adopted and brought to America by a good, kind-hearted American woman who is only about four years older than her in the early 60s. Maria Rose or Mary who is the narrator of her book here, details a life of blessings as well as hardships in her book here. She tells of how she successfully got to make teaching Swahili (an African native language) a part of the curriculum at a school she first worked at here in the USA when she moved here. She also tells of how she danced at a dance club in addition to teaching to make extra money. Maria Rose is hardworking and ambitious and refused to bow down to anyone during her first years here in America. She also includes here the troubles she faced including racism and prejudice. All in all, Maria eventually caught the eye of a Norwegian man who saw her dancing at the nocturnal place she was partially employed at to show off her African dance moves. Soon after, they got married and had two children together.
This book was truthfully, eye-opening for me. I was a bit ignorant to how Africa is and Maria Rose gave a very positive outlook of the continent it was all so marvelous while I was reading her book here. I think she is a very fortunate woman and a blessed woman at that. All of her experiences, bad or good are written about in here and that is a good thing because then readers who are facing similar issues can look at her example and say, there is hope after all. I especially cried at the moment when she was being denied at a hospital from seeing her dying White American mother because the orderly thought they weren’t blood related because they looked different from each other. This is a story about endurance, about suffering and about turmoil and these elements are what I love about a book. The book’s front cover is very eye-catching and makes it seem like a textbook for a class in college.
I recommend this book to those who are looking for a memoir/biography to read this holiday season. It is fun, it is brilliant and it can also be depressing and saddening. It was very well-written and I was honestly amazed at her English language writing skills. I think she is one of the best mixed race role models out there that I have come across. Very poignant, very triumphant, and very didactic. This is a book that everyone should include on their to be read lists for the upcoming new year because we could all learn a thing or two from it. Thank you very much Maria Rose Ryan Bergh for showing the amazing side of Africa that people don’t know about.
This story narrates the life of the author, Maria Nhambu- an orphaned mixed race Tanzanian woman, adopted by her American teacher, herself barely older than Maria. In the author’s words, this is ‘the story of how a somewhat bewildered, often overwhelmed and confused nineteen-year-old…from East Africa dealt with the challenges of a new life in America…’. The details of Maria’s childhood and her struggles and search for identity are covered in the first book of this trilogy, Africa’s Child.
Written in an engaging, confessional way that instantly won me over, Maria made me invested in following her story right from the beginning. She includes details of how everyday things in America were so different for her, which really provides a great insight into the perspective of an immigrant, new to the country and culture. She documents significant events in her life, including her marriage to a Norwegian man, the Apartheid they experienced, the family they raised and finally meeting her birth mother.
A heartfelt and genuine story, told with compassion and humour.
Coming of age novel triumphant in the worldwide success of America’s Daughter. Mixed race woman revered as an author for her non-fiction storytelling. Born in Tanzania in Africa, raised in a poor part of the country, loniness and despair in the orphanage she was brought up in. Education was sparse, only a fourth grade education supplied by the orphanage. Any further education cost money, boarding schools that would take hours to travel to and still cost a fortune. Maria Nhambu recognized herself at an adolecent age, to have an abundance of wonder, faith, expression and creativity that a fourth grade education would not withstand.
Don’t let race, creed and life circumstances turn you away from this book. It is an important non-fiction, true life story. A human suffering explains the reaction of people’s distinct outlook on how one person can change lives.
Her journey of being poor, facing untenable style of living, situations as a child adults should only know, grew Maria to strive and work hard for everything. And become a spokesperson to help others.
When Maria arrived in the United States, Catherine Murray, an American high-school teacher helped Maria to assimilate in a new society, country and work.
An interview on Maria’s website shows the bravery and humble and fierce woman exhibiting love and acceptance over her life.
http://marianhambu.com/wp/
The author takes no short cuts in the production of her stories and the emotion that clearly comes through. I see it as an honor to be introduced to her writing and her. I often wonder who develops the words that touch my soul, make me cringe when harm is done, smile when good happens especially when bad stuff was first shown. The meld of consequence and thereafter solutions.
This is why I viewed Maria’s interview after reading her book.
Don’t let race, creed and life circumstances turn you away from this book. It is an important non-fiction, true life story. A human suffering explains the reaction of people’s distinct outlook on how one person can change lives.
If you enjoy an inspirational memoir, look no further than ‘America’s Daughter’ by Maria Nhambu. She is a truly remarkable woman who travelled from Tanzania to America, where she was adopted by a mother determined to give her all the opportunities she may have missed out on in her homeland. Maria had some deep struggles adjusting to American life and culture so alien to her own. But, she managed to triumph with each challenge, whilst finding herself and her purpose in life, being a teacher both to disadvantaged inner city children, and Swahili and African Dance after rediscovering her love for her birth country.
Maria Nhambu is a fierce and powerful woman, who has dedicated her life to helping others, whilst being a wife and mother. She really is an inspiration!