Rebels and Sunflowers

In 'Rebels and Sunflowers,' author William D. Howard begins with a description of vacation trips to explore Africa and to generally learn more about his African origins. But ever cognizant of the differences between his paternal and maternal lineages, his travels and reading turned into a research project which sought answers to the question: How did two people who love each other join in marriage and unite two very different family orientations to form the family he has known and loved all his life? Along the way to forming answers, Bill’s research project took him not only to various parts of Africa he had no intention of visiting at the beginning of his project, but also to places and cultures in parts of Europe, The Moluccas, Indonesia, New Guinea, The Philippines, and elsewhere. Starting with the stories his paternal grandfather shared since his youth, and continuing with memories of childhood visits with his mother’s large family in South Carolina, the author realized that the root of the differences he sought to explain go as far back as Yoruba ancestors’ 12th-century Obalufon II and Dada and continue through Angola’s Nzinga and even the 19thcentury 'Howard v Howard' North Carolina Supreme Court decision. The two sides of the author’s family formed two very different survival strategies to plow through the ages. The strategies formed behaviors that are as aggressive as the rebel and as harmonizing as the sunflower.