She becomes known as 'Mama Miti' or 'mother of the trees.' It captures the spirit of the African culture-specifically the Kenyan notion of harambee (swahili) which means pulling together for the common good-as this one woman encourages her people to reengage with the land and respect the symbiotic nature of trees. While the movement was a grassroots movement organized by this woman politician, this picture book tells the story as if Wangari is a town elder who gives advice to women who travel from all over the country for her help. She has held grants and fellowships from numerous sources, including the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the Sloan Foundation.Ī beautiful story describing the Green Belt Movement started in Kenya by Wangari Muta Maathai who was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize (2004) for working to revitalize a deforested Kenya. In the area of linguistics she has authored, coauthored, edited, or coedited 17 books, ranging from theoretical linguistics to practical matters in language structure and use, including matters of interest to d/Deaf people. She has held visiting positions at the University of Queensland (Australia), the University of Geneva (Switzerland), Capital Normal University of Beijing (China), the University of Newcastle (UK), the University of Venice at Ca' Foscari (Italy), and the Siena School for the Liberal Arts (Italy) as well as lectured at the University of Sydney (Australia), Macquarie University (Australia), the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), and the University of Stellenbosch (South Africa) and held a fellowship at Trinity College Dublin.

It was at UM that she earned tenure (in 1981) and became a full professor (in 1984). She has since taught linguistics at Smith College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Georgetown University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Swarthmore College.

in Romance Languages and Literatures in 1973, both from Harvard University, then did a postdoctoral year in Linguistics at MIT. She received her BA in mathematics in 1970 and her Ph.D. She has five children, seven grandchildren, and currently lives outside Philadelphia.

For thirteen years she had a cat named Taxi, and liked to go outside and call, 'Taxi!' to make the neighbors wonder.

She loves to garden and bake bread, and even dreams of moving to the woods and becoming a naturalist.Īt various times her house and yard have been filled with dogs, cats, birds, and rabbits. Donna Jo Napoli is both a linguist and a writer of children's and YA fiction.

Mama miti book