Today we interview Dr. Taiwo Bello about the historical and contemporary contexts of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's HALF OF A YELLOW SUN. Nancy loves this interview because neither she nor Linda knew anything about the Biafran War. Linny likes that we then talk about lessons we can learn so we don’t repeat those mistakes.

Taiwo Bello is an Assistant Professor of African History and an affiliate faculty member of the Africana Studies Centre at Oklahoma State University. His research and teaching interests encompass gender and women's history, war and society, violence and conflict studies, the history of crime, law, and punishment, Black and diaspora studies, genocide, human rights, and humanitarian histories, as well as global and transnational history. He serves on the Editorial Review Boards of the AFRICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION journal, HISTORY IN AFRICA, published by Cambridge University Press; and the CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF AFRICAN STUDIES journal, the CANADIAN JOURNAL OF AFRICAN STUDIES, published by Taylor & Francis. He is a founding editor of SCHOLAR’S CORNER, a subsidiary blog of the journal, GENOCIDE STUDIES INTERNATIONAL, published by University of Toronto Press.

He is revising his second book entitled SOLDIERS ON RAMPAGE: GENDER, BLOCKADE, VIOLENCE AND RESISTANCE IN BIAFRA DURING THE NIGERIAN CIVIL WAR, 1967-1970. The book examines the impact of the wartime violence between the Nigerian and Biafran soldiers on Biafran women and their families, and the women's responses to wartime atrocities. The book demonstrates how food was central to the constant violence unleashed on women in the heartland of Biafra.

His forthcoming book, INVENTING ORDER: CRIME, LAW, AND PUNISHMENT IN NIGERIA AND THE DIASPORA, adopts a multidisciplinary approach to examine the evolution of crimes (armed robbery, immigration fraud, financial fraud, drug trafficking) in Nigeria and their local and global implications.