Customer Reviews

Kinship: A Family's Journey in Africa and America

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There are many books (both fiction and nonfiction) that explore what it means to be an African-American. As far as I know, this is the only book that focuses on being an African among African-Americans, and being an African-American among Africans. Philippe Wamba, born of a African-American mother and a Congolese father, was raised in the United States, Congo, and Tanzania. Growing up he is always partially the outsider, not fitting in completely among Africans nor African-Americans. He astutely observes relations between Africans and African-Americans on both continents. His personal and family history and anecdotes are interesting enough, but they are only half his book. His book is also a thoughtful and very well-researched essay on various connections (and disconnections) of Africans, African-Americans, their culture, history, and relations. He discusses everthing and everyone from James Aggrey to Maya Angelou, Edward Blyden to James Brown, the Congo Free State to the Cosby Show. These two strains are woven together quite well: throughout the book his family's story sets the scene for a lesson in African history or a review of African-American literature, which in turn, leads to the next topic in his own story. (In this way the book reminded me of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig, which is both a story of a father-son motorcycle trip as well as a history of Western philosopy.) The book contains useful notes, a bibliography, and an index. Highly recommended.

This book has enlightened me on so many issues affecting the Africans and the African-American communities. As an african living on the american soil, it has opened my eyes to some peplexing complicated behaviours which I observed among our extended family folk for which I lack the history to verbalise it and understand it. Phillipe was placed in unique position to dig deeper into both worlds and find the answers he needed in order to maintain a healthy balance of his dual heritage.What amazes me is the fact that he became properly assimilated into the Tanzanian community its cultures and values, while on the other hand reverse assimilation on his african-american side proved to be a challange "He was still the African cousin"? Its a wonderful book and a job well done.. We will be looking for more literary works from you Phillipe... and be assured in knowing that I am going to recommended this book to every Mwalimu I know.. we will pad your pockets alright!!

My life is chronicled in Mr Wamba's autobiography/history of pigment-endowed peoples. As the child of a Nigerian father and (black) American mother who was also born in the USA, moved to Nigeria at age 6, and returned here for college, I readily identified with each scenario and sense of excacerbation which he too experienced and describes. I recall once even arguing with someone regarding whether Africa was a country or a continent!

Kinship is a carefully crafted, meticulously researched and beautifully written, enlightening work of art-political history. I have described it to friends as taking off where "Before the Mayflower" stopped, with some forays into earlier history. The focus and view point here, ofcourse are different, but oh! The volumes we learn from both immeasurable!

My only disappointment, was that although he has very deliberately chosen issues to discuss (music, clothing, cross-cultural marital problems), there are some more pressing issues which are only fleetingly adressed, and he offers us no suggestions for possible solutions. I wondered as I read this fascinating piece of Phillipe's heart, whether he worries, as do I, about the continuing brain-drain from the continent, and how to rectify the problem. Does he wonder about how to persuade our (relatives) to desist from destroying themselves and our homelands; how to make the politicians realize that nepotism and corruption will never lead to improvement? Phillipe, do you wonder how much longer we will have that other place to call home?

All that aside, I intend to pad his coffers and buy copies for my siblings, that they too, may look in the mirror he presents us, and reflect on our responsibility as representatives of, and ambassadors to both sides: the African and "New World/Diaspora" Blacks.

Philippe Wamba does a masterful job of using his own family's experiences to introduce and highlight broader trends and issues in the history of relations between Africans and African Americans. He manages to combine historical analysis and synthesis with very personal episodes, showing how long-standing issues continue to bear relevancy and immediacy. I found this book to be a thoughtful examination of how Africans and African Americans have made attempts to work together across the Atlantic, even as each group has labored under mistaken impressions of the other.

I would not limit the readership of this book to African Americans, or students at historically black colleges. I think it's possible for students (formal and informal) of all ethnicities to learn from this book, both about African/African American relations in specific and cultural issues in general. _Kinship_ provides a new angle on U.S. and world history. Its thoroughness and accessibility should make it a useful and welcome addition to any number of course reading lists.

Thank you for especailly highlighting the fact that not all of Africa is a dumpster. We are like everybody else, we have challenges. I am originally from Botswana and I was extremely disappointed by the reception I recieved from African- Americans. Your book really brought it all home for me.

I am currently a high school student attending a public school in California. I was born in Senegal west Africa came here when I was nine years old, and believe me I was surprised. In Senegal, the average citizens image of North America is paradise. In reality is it? NO. In America the average Americans image of Africa is a jungle. In reality is it really? NO. So you see, -Kinship- is a book that I would recommend to anyone who refuses to continue growing up being ignorant of an important part of history. Some of the misconceptions Americans have on Africa are really heart-breaking, and those of Africans about Black Americans are also very misunderstood and to help prevent further ignorance I encourage all parents of African/ African-American Children to make it their job to educate their children about the opposite culture, because I believe it is the only tool we have to help us unite as one culture which is "Black or African" just like all white people call themselves "European". Let us not rely on the Discovery Channel and National Geographics because like Malcolm X said: The media has the power to make the guilty innocent and the innocent guilty.

I would recommend Kinship to every African and Black American. This book is both candid and humorous. As a University student, I have seen the financial and social challenges that African students go through. What I admire most about African immigrants, is their determination to succeed despite the double dose of hardships. I firmly believe that we as Africans should take an active role in educating the Americans about our continent. If we rely on the media, we will always be considered as the "dark continent."

A excellent and thought-provoking book, not only for the author's fascinating exploration of his own identity, but also for educating this reader, who shares none of Wamba's racial perspective or experience, on what it means to be black. This was a remarkable work from so young an author--Wamba was only in his late 20's when he wrote it. One immediately wonders what growing impact such a thinker would have had had he lived beyond his early thirties.

"Kinship" seems to be an extended exploration of identity, both of a person and of a people. Wamba's family circumstances--Congolese father, African-American mother, born in the US, coming of age in Tanzania--lead naturally to the question of personal identity: "Am I American, African-American, or African?" The answer comes not from an explicit statement but from the preponderance of perspective as the narrative proceeds. He is not strictly American. America has, by the time he returns for college, a foreign feel. And besides, America is "the white man's country," (his title for chapter 7). Neither is he deeply African-American. He often finds African-Americans more American than African, and parochial toward, uninformed of, or uninterested in Africa. So at United World College and at Harvard, he is more comfortable among continental Africans than African-Americans. And so he is African: African by upbringing, African by culture, and ultimately African by choice.

Yet he is clearly attracted to America and to African-Americans. There are family connections here: His mother's entire family is American, for one thing, and even his father has family who have moved to America and made it their permanent home. There are also the strong cultural links between African society and black America, which he explores in, for example, his chapter "Drumbeats from Across the Atlantic," describing musical commonality. Wamba clearly feels a strong personal urge to unite Africa to the African diaspora, speculating that it will be him and the growing numbers of children like him from African/African-American families who will lead this pan-African unification. One senses that striving for the unification of a people would contribute to a sense of wholeness for the person, the sort of complete fitting-in that might be found in an ethnically homogeneous neighborhood.

This cultural identity theme in "Kinship" is part of what helped me see the black experience in America a bit more clearly. African-American resentment of the United States is not a particular theme of the book, but there are a number of unconnected instances that, in aggregate, highlight the topic. For example, much was made during the 2008 presidential campaign of Michelle Obama's comment, "For the first time in my adult lifetime I am really proud of my country," and many Americans were deeply put off by the remark. But nearly a decade before the Obamas were household names, Wamba documented several instances of the same sort of sentiment among African-Americans. Speaking of the "seductive appeal" Africa held for many African-Americans in the 1960's, Wamba suggests that it may have "had something to do with the patriotic satisfaction of having a nation or homeland to call one's own, a sentiment many blacks at the time did not feel toward the United States." In a separate instance he quotes Louis Armstrong in declining to participate in a US State Department-sponsored tour of the USSR: "The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell," and, "It's getting so bad, a colored man hasn't got any country." These examples would appear to be manifestations of historical oppression leading to alienation, which is quite understandable. And even though the structural aspects of that oppression have been legally eliminated in the US, the experience is within living memory, and the cultural memory may continue to echo like the Babylonian Exile.

One wonders, however, if pan-Africanism is a help or a hindrance to either black alienation in America or in strengthening trans-Atlantic cultural identity. On the American side, racial politics is anathema: having bred alienation in the past, it can hardly be expected to create unity in the future. In America the Irish may gather to celbrate St. Patrick's Day, and the Germans may gather to celebrate Oktoberfest, but any gathering of these (historically white) people to celebrate their racial identity would be roundly booed as racist. How can it be different for Wamba to celebrate the Million Man March as a public display of "black unity"? Try to imagine the reaction if a white American had written this (which is taken from Wamba's description of his arrival at the MMM, where I've replaced "black" and "brown" with "white"): "Disembarking from my bus with two dozen other white men, I was greeted by a sea of white faces. I was excited, exhilarated. I felt powerful, proud, and safe, at home among my own." Public outrage would be swift and fully justified. In the case of African-Americans, we tolerate this sort of rhetoric for what I hope will be a brief historical moment as the "American" part of the hyphenated identity grows to dominate.

And on the African side, well, where in Africa do we see African unity? For one thing, "pan"-Africanism excludes millions of Africans: the Arabic-speaking nations of North-Africa, for example, and the residual white populations still resident in one-time colonies. And for another, unity has hardly been a characteristic among the predominently black nations of Africa. Should pan-Africanism focus not so much on racial identity as on spreading, say, accountable government, it might be a better thing. On another continent, fostering accountable government seems to have been far more effective in delivering unity among the predominently white nations of Europe than any sort of call to racial solidarity. Come to think of it, in Europe calls for racial solidarity have been horrendously fraught.

No doubt such considerations would have occupied Wamba's thoughts had he lived. It would have been particularly interesting to read his analysis of African-American identity, cultural inclusiveness, and the prospects for pan-Africanism now that Barack Obama is in the White House. Has this event given African-Americans a stronger sense of "patriotic satisfaction" and inclusion? Has it strengthened or weakened a need for pan-Africanism to provide African-Americans a "homeland"? How would a Philippe Wamba, on the threshhold of middle age and with ripening wisdom, speak to us on these questions?

After reading this interesting book on the African diaspora I went online to learn more about Africa and specifically how Philippe's father Professor Ernest Wamba dia Wamba was fairing in his currant fight against the Zairean government of Laurent Kabila, and now Joseph Kabila.

The first thing that came up was "Philippe Wamba Obituary"

Philippe uses his life and families experiences living on both Continents to explore Pan-Africanism, it's history and much more. What do Africans think of Black Americans and viceversa. What are their hopes and expectations of each other and their future together. Their mistrusts and fears.

Philippe always was disappointed by Black Americans and specifically Black American college students (he attended Harvard) lack of interest in Africa and the Pan-African movement. But repeatedly gives examples of how Black Americans are still discriminated against in the US. And how difficult it is. Paralyzed by the poison of prejudice, which taints all. So it seems to me he keeps answering his own question of why aren't the US Blacks motivated. Because they still are fighting their own battles here and now. I'm sure the last thing on the mind of a Black American student at Harvard is Africa. His priority during those years is to himself, and rightly so.

Wamba also gets into their music, religion, politics.

Highly recommended reading. Well written.

Atlantic slave trade
"Most slaves were shipped from West Africa and Central Africa and taken to the New World (primarily Brazil [1]). Generally slaves were obtained through coastal trading with Africans, though some were captured by European slave traders through raids and kidnapping.[2][3]"

1. Thomas, Hugh.The Slave Trade. Simon and Schuster, 1997.
2. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Houghton Mifflin Books. ISBN 0618001905.
3. Klein, Herbert S. and Jacob Klein. The Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge University Press, 1999. pp. 103-139.

It is indeed a superb work by Phillipe. I find this book filled with enlightening facts and ideas, that in one way or another will [or has] help strengthen the black diaspora relations in recent decades. I Was really looking forward reading more work by Mr. P Wamba. May the Lord rest his Soul in Peace.