Toasting the Bride

<div id=00N40000001lfFy_ileinner><p>In the matter of personal experience I am qualified to write about Africa & about America as well. In me the phrase African-American is alive with vivid experiences. I have spent equal halves of my eventful life in Africa & in the USA. I have citizenship in both worlds & have been uniquely impacted by both through bouts of traumatic experiences. Presently & continuing one-America-gets to house my body; the other-Africa- my soul. In the ensuing strange marriage of the two cultures the line between the bride & bridegroom is fluid at best. I can therefore constructively praise &/or criticize both interchangeably w/ civilized equanimity & without fear favor/shame. I can Toast the Bride specific circumstance warranting.</p><p>The book is to inform & to query alike. Although the material presented is predominantly a product of the African culture it is not parochially African in its view of human life & Nature; nor in the content of the personal experiences presented. The book draws heavily from the literary wisdoms of philosophers to articulate the language & extract a body of knowledge suitable for describing & coincidental to expressing the deeper side of personal life experiences. It also juxtaposes traditional African spiritual idealism with modern American material realism to establish context.</p><p>The reader is not to equate the different chapters as simple matching titles of the knowledge they contain. Although these chapters are meaningful & intelligible in themselves the reader is persuaded to accumulate them progressively as the background necessary for understanding the relation of each to the whole.</p><p><strong>Toasting the Bride</strong> challenges the reader to know more about certain naked hypocrisies of the American legal system & to formulate educated personal opinions about the American social culture and to imbibe some universal lessons of life by partaking in the more vivid accounts of my personal experiences; & by pondering on the harder questions of living.</p></div>