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Fair Trade

The Marketplace at Together Women Rise features partners that support gender equality around the world. Making it your first stop for gifts, home goods and more multiplies the power of your purchase by supporting women artisans and Together Women Rise. Support the partners below and find more at togetherwomenrise.org/the-marketplace.

FairTrade Caravans is a social enterprise believing in people and planet before profit and passionate about the way fundraising is done and how products are purchased. It partners with schools and nonprofits giving back 25% of sales while supporting artisans and farmers around the world.  Its fair trade products are made or grown with no child labor, fair wages, safe working conditions, and sustainable practices, ensuring that the producers — many of whom are women — have the opportunity to better themselves, their families, and their communities. Together Women Rise will receive 25% of all sales purchased through this link.

Books

Fiction

Mother to Mother

By Sindiwe Magona

A searing novel, told in letter form, that explores the South African legacy of apartheid through the lens of a woman whose Black son has just murdered a white woman.
Mother to Mother is a novel with depth, at once an emotional plea for compassion and understanding, and a sharp look at the impacts of colonialism and apartheid on South African families. Inspired by the true story of Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl’s murder, the book takes the form of a letter to the victim’s mother. The murderer’s mother, Mandisa, speaks of a life marked by oppression and injustice.

July’s People

By Nadine Gordimer

For years, it had been what is called a “deteriorating situation.” Now all over South Africa the cities are battlegrounds. The members of the Smales family – liberal whites –are rescued from the terror by their servant, July, who leads them to refuge in his village. What happens to the Smaleses and to July – the shifts in character and relationships – gives us an unforgettable look into the terrifying, tacit understandings and misunderstandings between Blacks and whites.

Non-Fiction

Find out about Together Women Rise Book Club events at GoodReads.

Special thanks to the Book Club for these recommendations.

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

By Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.

The Black Mzunga: A Saga of Self-discovery, Love, Identity, and Triumph in Tanzania

By Alexandria Kathleen Osborne

Mzungu [m’zungu]. – an East African term normally used to refer to people of European descent.
When Alexandria “Nur” Osborne applied for a short fellowship in Tanzania, she never imagined that 6 months would turn into a lifetime, and that the bush of East Africa would teach her about love, identity, and courage.

 

Films
Music