by Madeleine Brand | KCRW
“All the passports look the same, but not everybody looks the same to the border agents,” says author Laila Lalami, who was born in Morocco and became a U.S. citizen in 2000.
Continue reading “Laila Lalami | For some Americans, having a US passport doesn’t mean you’re treated like a citizen”
By Aditi Sriram | Scrool.in
Ethiopian-American Maaza Mengiste’s second novel, The Shadow King, recounts a tumultuous war in Ethiopian history that took the country by surprise, pit locals against one another, and left them scarred for decades to come. Narrating the story is an invisible, omniscient chorus of women, inspired by Mengiste’s own great-grandmother. They alternate between singing, mourning, and rallying the troops into action, never allowing the reader a moment of silence. The result is a visceral story of violence, loyalty and forgiveness.
Continue reading “Maaza Mengiste | Her Booker shortlisted novel choreographs women’s footprints on the battlefield”
The Congresswoman, a Somali-origin Muslim, has fought many obstacles but has a long way to go in American politics.
By News Desk | Talmiz Ahmad
Continue reading “Ilhan Omar’s book tells an inspiring story of her life but much Is missing”
By BlackNews
Buffalo, NY — Author/ African historian Emmanuel Kulu, Jr. has faced racism for his controversial novel, I, Black Pharaoh: Rise to Power. In early 2019, Kulu began his campaign restoring the true African origins of Ancient Egypt. Upon posting his book cover via social media, Kulu received massive amounts of death threats, racist comments, and hate emails regarding the cover.
Continue reading “Emmanuel Kulu Brings a New Perspective to Ancient Egyptian History in His Novel “I, Black Pharoah Rise to Power””
By Patrick Condon | Star Tribune
Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose unlikely rise from refugee to one of the first two Muslim women elected to the U.S. House, has written a memoir that comes out next week. From childhood onward, according to her new memoir, Rep. Ilhan Omar often seemed to find herself in the middle of nasty fights.
Continue reading “Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar describes a bruising life in new memoir”
Tony K Ansah, Jr., M.P.A. is a self-published author and a social entrepreneur based in Rhode Island, U.S.A. He has written and published several books and content via poems, quotes, fiction, non-fiction, blogs, and articles. Tony has received national & international recognition for his articles about African business, culture, and philanthropy. He recently released a new book on his entrepreneurial journey and progress so far.
By Tony Kwame Ansah, Jr. | Modern Ghana
Continue reading “Tony K Ansah, Jr’s new book Chronicles Progress Revolving Around African Business Innovations”
Writing “The Girl With the Louding Voice,” about a 14-year-old employed as a housemaid, challenged how the novelist viewed a common practice in her native Nigeria.
By Concepción de León | New York Times
Continue reading “For Her Debut, Abi Daré Confronts ‘Dreams and Intelligence That We Kill’”
By Alex Thurston
Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, radiating political, cultural and economic influence across the continent and around the world. Yet Nigeria’s incredible complexity — composed of hundreds of ethnic groups and languages — can be daunting even to those interested in understanding the country. The nonspecialist can also be easily misled by the popular image of Nigeria as a land of Internet scammers and, more recently, fanatical jihadists. Three recent books, however, make Nigeria more accessible to the beginner and more comprehensible to the specialist. These books take up core issues facing the country, especially the Boko Haram crisis and the future of Nigeria’s democracy.
Continue reading “Here are the three new books you need to understand Nigeria”
A PARTICULAR KIND OF BLACK MAN
By Tope Folarin
“Task: to be where I am. / Even when I’m in this solemn and absurd / role: I am still the place / where creation works on itself.”
This verse, from the Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer’s “Guard Duty,” provides the epigraph for Nigerian-American Tope Folarin’s debut novel, “A Particular Kind of Black Man,” and echoes of Transtromer’s lucidly self-instructive poem ring throughout its pages.
Continue reading “A Nigerian-American Bildungsroman, in Mormon Country Image”
Hilary Kimuyu
In 2003 a go-getting Kenyan nurse called Janet Kisaka Rangi found out that an application process she had begun with some agents in Nairobi had borne fruit. She had an opportunity to move to the United States.
She quit her nursing job at Aga Khan University hospital after working for a year. She packed her belongings, left her husband behind and flew off to America, all this while expecting her first child.
Continue reading “Kenyan author and blogger, Janet Rangi, writes book on how immigrants can secure success in America”
By Aida Alami
Refugees often say that war feels like a wave of violence washing over them, leaving behind death and destruction. The feeling was no different for Katra Ali Hethar, who fled war-torn Somalia in 1991 with her nine small children.
Continue reading “Somali and American: Portrait of a Minnesota Community”
Always Another Country,” by Sisonke Msimang (World Editions/World Editions)
Msimang’s stories teach readers about race and racism, how one’s political ideology shifts, and about contemporary South African political history
Continue reading “This gripping memoir tells the story of a girl — and South Africa — coming of age”
Abdi Nor Iftin will discuss his new memoir, “Call Me American,” Tuesday, June 4, at 5:30 p.m. at the Southwest Harbor Public Library.
Iftin lives in Portland where he works as an interpreter for other Somalis in Maine. He was recently accepted to the University of Southern Maine, where he plans to study political science.
“Call Me American” is the true story of Iftin’s survival of in war-ravaged Mogadishu, Somalia, and his journey to America.
Continue reading “‘Call me American’ Portland resident who escaped war-torn Somalia shares story”
By David Canfield
Late on a spring night in the Mojave’s Yucca Valley, Driss Guerraoui is killed in a brutal hit-and-run. We meet the man as a helpless victim, but over the course of The Other Americans, he emerges with complexity: a loving grandfather, a flawed husband, a diner operator, a philosophy scholar, a native of Morocco. His death sets into motion a reckoning over 9/11’s long shadow for Muslim Americans, and the treacherous place immigrants occupy in the current climate.
Continue reading “In The Other Americans, Laila Lalami reveals what unites and divides us”
Continue reading “Obama and the Legacy of Africa’s Renaissance Generation”
Little is known of Africa’s role in the Manhattan project, the secretive operations that led to the development of the Atomic Bomb. A new book Spies in the Congo by Dr. Susan Williams discusses U.S. intelligence operations in the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo: DRC), to secure uranium during World War II while also preventing Nazi Germany from obtaining said mineral for its own nuclear weapons program. This is a very well-written book that effectively narrates the activities that members of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency) carried out in the Belgian Congo. W. Alex Sánchez and Yves Bashonga review the book in The International Policy Digest Continue reading “The Unknown Congolese Heroes – Book Review: ‘Spies in the Congo: America’s Atomic Mission in World War II’”
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