Drawn from her own experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana, Melissa Fischer weaves a rich tale set in 1992, Obuasi, a mining boomtown. The gold mine, West Africa Gold, dams the Gyimi River, stagnating the water source of Gyimiso Kakraba, a village of subsistence farmers who refuse to accept a modern world that has forsaken the art of human connection.

The Advocacy portrays with unsparing detail the reality of this era in Ghana’s history, as well as this moment in the evolution of the dialogue between indigenous communities and transnational extractive industrialists. Fischer provides a rare and intimate view of a broad cross-section of Ghanaian society and the inner workings of a multinational mining corporation.

The Advocacy’s protagonist, Louisa Lehmann, is a gritty and opinionated civil engineer who has returned to Africa from the U.S. to reconcile her past. Louisa exudes pride in her profession, honors her fluid gender, and yields to the greatest lesson of all, taught by the people of Gyimiso Kakraba deep in Ghana’s equatorial forest.

Melissa Fischer

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