BOOKS

A MESSAGE FROM AUTHOR AIMEE WISE

"In 2010, I immersed myself in journals, letters, and photos from my time in Malawi, Africa, to write my memoir, Of Human Clay: the Making and Breaking of a Nun. The images that surfaced—especially of villagers using the disease-ridden Shire River for drinking and bathing while nearby wading cattle polluted that same water—triggered memories that collapsed the miles between my home in Georgia and my former life in Malawi. 

After publishing that memoir in 2013, an intense desire to make clean water available to the deserving Malawian people drove me to search for an organization that installs wells. I found Freshwater Project International, a small U.S. nonprofit focusing solely on Malawi. Their grand vision is: Universal access to clean water and sanitation for all Malawians.

Within two months, Freshwater Project International installed a well in a Tengani village, a desperately poor area where I lived for three months in 1970. 

All the income from my book sales went toward that well, which has brought a new chance for life in a community I still hold in my affections.

Within Tengani Tribal Authority there are 125 small villages and 30,000 people. My vision, mirroring that of Freshwater Project International, is that every person in those villages has access to clean water, something we in the West take for granted. 

Driven by a desire to raise funds to bring more wells to Tengani Tribal Authority, I resurrected poems and stories languishing in a file drawer and shaped them into a second book, Word Clay: Molding Memoir into Poetry.

All proceeds from the future sales of both these books, and the E-book version of Of Human Clay will go toward drilling more wells. The sequel to Of Human Clay, which many readers have asked for, is expected to be available in 2016.

OF HUMAN CLAY: THE MAKING AND BREAKING OF A NUN

THE MEMOIRS OF AIMEE WISE

With humor and discernment, Aimee Wise invites the reader into her Irish Catholic childhood, reveals candid insights into her life as a young nun, and recounts her unique experiences in Africa as a medical missionary—a vocation that had come to define her. Over the course of seventeen months in 1970s rural Malawi, the steady accumulation of unrelenting conflicts—a clash of world views, a patriarchal church, and the sensual but innocent first love—all propel Sister Aimee through a cascade of crises and losses she could never have anticipated.

word clay

MOLDING MEMOIR INTO POETRY BY AIMEE WISE

Many people avoid reading poetry, whether turned off by high school English classes, or confounded by obtuse modern poets. Aimee Wise believes the purpose of her poems is to reach out to the reader and evoke a response.

In this book, you will discover insights into the human condition and glances at both the funny and tragic dimensions of our shared existence—while also being invited to write your reactions and reflections on the pages designed for you, the reader.