Book Cover Designed by Rachel Buckley
In honor of the Saints, Holy Martyrs, and our Dearly Departed during Allhallowstide, Oct. 31st- Nov. 2nd, The American Mastodon Publication would like to celebrate with the release of two great works; The Legends of King Odum and The African Diaspora Census Report of 2022-2023. This is a time to remember our dearly departed and the lessons of life they left behind to enrich our time among the living. We lift their names in our prayers, visit their resting places, and plant flowers/give gifts in their honor.
Set
during the reign of the Benin Empire, Akaso,
the primary literature from The Legends
of King Odum, is the story told from the natives a century before Joseph
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and after, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. King Odum, is an
actual figure from the late 1700s. As a young prince in the Niger Delta, during
the European exploration of the Guinea coast, Odum sets out on a journey to
find an Ingiminji (Mermaid), a local cult
figure, only to discover she has been seized by a mutinous group aboard an
infamous vessel of the East India Company, The Hartwell (1787). The challenges
of Prieta, the mermaid, lead to a grand alliance within the Empire.
To
summon the reader to better understand the culture of this novel, “Two Gods,”
allows the two greatest ideas of the East and West to coalesce and ascertain
the better concept. Through the guise of this cult, we discover two tales,
which helped to shape the imagination and moral values of Prince Odum in,
“Abayomi,” and “The Merchant’s Children.”
Finally, in an act of war against Elem
Kalabari, a region responsible for the sale of over 4 million enslaved persons
out of Guinea, Odum is forced to relinquish his throne, in order to save his
own kingdom from enslavement by neighboring tribes. King Odum, is a fallen
medieval figure of precolonial West Africa researched by GI Jones, Trading States of The Oil Rivers (1963)
& Kenneth Dike’s Trade and Politics
in the Niger Delta (1956). The cross-cultural connections are widespread
and abundant, bringing readers into the heart of Guinea and the Benin Empire,
as well as the renown Frigates of the British East India Company. This short
historical fiction creates written art out of history and opens an entire world
for many to view with their spectacles, or open eyes, the wonders of the Dark
Continent.
The African Diaspora Census Report of 2022-2023
The American Mastodon Publication is proud to announce The Afro American Quadrennial Census Report of 2022. Since 2013, the AMP has published a four year study on the population of Africans in the Diaspora. This year, in addition to Africans or Blacks in North, Central, and South America, we will include the African populations of Europe. Our last Census Publication, The African Census of 2020-2021 by Cowan Amaye-Obu reported that the worldwide African population was over 1,425,983,327 people as of July 2021 (African Census AMP 2021), and in comparing it to our Black Census Report of 2016 (Devil in the Details AMP 2016), AMP reported the African population had boomed over 400,000,000 people from the year 2016 to 2020. The most significant fact in our previous report was that Africans are the second largest population of people on Earth as of 2020. This fact was overshadowed by the SARS-COVID 19 Pandemic, but the effect of the virus was not as severe on the continent of Africa, as in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Due to the organization of Pan-African nations and the coordination of epidemic response protocols, experience, and performance, African nations were able to avoid large scale preventable deaths and weather the controversial introduction of COVID 19 into their nations with meticulous control of their borders, immigration, and consideration of the facts over Western propaganda & financial influence, whether for advice, treatments, vaccines, or lack of cooperation due to mistrust. For this reason, the African continent performed better than every continent save Australia, which was also able to minimize the effect of SARS-COVID 19 among its population. However, the Afro America or Africans in Diaspora populations in the Americas did not fair as well. Afro American populations in the Americas are subject to all manner of treatment from marginalization to the continued racial caste enslavement by their 21st Century Post Colonial European governments in rule of the nations of the Americas. Thus, health, unemployment, poverty, life expectancy, GDP per capita, marriage, and education remain vital statistics for African American Census Reports for Africans in Diaspora. The African Diaspora Census Report of 2022 will compare the results from the previous Report of 2017-2018. We hope to disclose some vital information and present our findings for review. We appreciate your donations to aid in the publication and with God's providence, will see you during Allhallowstide, Oct. 31, 2022. Thank you!