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How to pronounce Dinaw Mengestu: dih-now men-guess-too
Dinaw Mengestu is the author of three novels, all of which were named New York Times Notable Books: All Our Names, How to Read the Air, and Dinaw Mengestu is the author of three novels, all of which were named New York Times Notable Books: All Our Names, How to Read the Air, and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. A native of Ethiopia who came with his family to the United States at the age of two, Mengestu is also a freelance journalist who has reported about life in Darfur, northern Uganda, and eastern Congo. His articles and fiction have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper's, Granta, Jane, and Rolling Stone. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow and recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Prize, Guardian First Book Award, and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, among other honors. He was also included in The New Yorker's 20 under 40 list in 2010.
Dinaw Mengestu's website
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How much of your own story and your family’s story is in
this novel? How did you learn about your family’s experience?
The novel is definitely a blend of fact and fiction. The parts
of the narrative that are true were told to me over the course of many years,
sometimes by accident, sometimes deliberately. As is often the case with
fiction, a certain factual detail becomes the starting point from which the rest
of the narrative takes off. My uncle, for example, was a lawyer in Addis, and he
was arrested and died during the government’s Red Terror campaign. The details
of his death, however, are entirely unknown to me or anyone else in my family.
Similarly, another uncle who was a teenager at the time did flee Ethiopia for
Sudan during the Revolution, and while we’ve discussed his journey, it’s always
in relatively vague and general terms, and that’s partly where the fiction
element comes. It allows you to create the details that can bring a story to
life.
Why do you think that the lives of African immigrants in the
United States have been so little explored in fiction until now?
There have clearly been dozens of wonderful novels written by
Africans about Africa. ...
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. She is from Abba, in Anambra State, but grew up in the university town of Nsukka where she attended primary and secondary schools and briefly studied Medicine and ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Someone Like Us
Try:
Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Bisi Adjapon is the author of The Teller of Secrets (first published as Of Women and Frogs), A Washington Post, Essence, ALA, Boston Globe, Ms Magazine's top 20 novel in November 2021. Her second novel, Daughter in Exile, was... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Someone Like Us
Try:
Daughter in Exile
by Bisi Adjapon
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