We Won't Budge: An African Exile In The World [Hardcover]

Manthia Diawara (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 27, 2003

In this deeply personal and unflinchingly honest exploration of what it means to be African, Manthia Diawara recounts the bittersweet experience of an expatriate who no longer lives life as an "African" yet is the object of others' fantasies and fears about people of the dark continent. Comparing his fortunes in America with those of his cousins in Paris, Diawara assesses the way tradition and community give meaning to their lives, despite the ugliness of modern French attitudes toward Africans. At the same time, he confronts the trauma experienced by Africans in America such as Amadou Diallo. Diawara's experience of life as an African and an African American yields fresh and stunning insights about race, ethnic identity, immigration, and assimilation in the modern globalized world.This important and original book will shatter many cherished notions about what it means to experience race as an African in the world today. Beautifully written and shrewdly argued, its unsentimental view of African culture and traditions, as well as its debunking of the idealized promise of an unracialized life abroad, is certain to ignite debate.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Now director of the Africana Studies program at New York University, Malian native Diawara recounts his journey from rock and roll-struck adolescent to Parisian intellectual manqué, and from D.C. dishwasher to New York teacher, in sharply wrought anecdotes. Whether evoking the pleasures of family life, good company and good food or describing the anxieties of living under the gaze of the French police or the INS, Diawara's narrative hand is economical and sure. But, as he explains to a fellow Malian he meets in Paris, he is less interested in being a memoirist or historian than one "who likes to question things, people, and history." This questioning centers around the meaning of what it is to be African in an age of globalization, an uneasy immigrant to a First World increasingly nervous about those outside its gates. Diawara's account of what he sees as the systemic racisms of France and the United States derives its descriptive power not only from a residue of sometimes bitter personal experience but from an unwillingness to let that experience blind him to the ways in which that racism can be internalized on all sides and passed on. Addressing with an eloquence all the more effective for its broad tolerance the daily brutalities of Western officialdom and ignorance, he is equally concerned with the forces of conformity and superstition that can hobble his community's demand for justice and fair treatment. If Diawara offers no ultimate solutions, his passionate but balanced testimony and analysis suggest a framework for usefully seeking answers.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Born in Mali, one of Africa's poorest countries, Diawara left for Paris in the 1960s, where he worked as a dishwasher to support his studies. In 1974, he came to the U.S., and he's now a professor of literature and film in New York. His provocative, highly readable memoir draws on his personal journeys, as well as those of friends and relatives in Africa, Europe, and the U. S., to open up the contemporary arguments about identity and politics. In the first chapter, he's visiting his Mali hometown, and he can't wait to leave. In New York, he misses "home." On sabbatical in Paris, he's furious at the racism that makes him a marginalized exotic, even as he separates himself from the tradition that includes polygamy and female circumcision. Far from self-importance and didacticism, he keeps switching sides to reveal the good and bad of assimilation versus cultural roots. Like Ariel Dorfman and other fine immigrant writers, Diawara shows that loss is necessary and that you can't go home again. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Basic Civitas Books; First Edition edition (May 27, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465017096
• ISBN-13: 978-0465017096
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,173,772 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An African observer like no other, July 1, 2004

By 

rudiger (Hoople, ND) - See all my reviews

This review is from: We Won't Budge: An African Exile In The World (Hardcover)

Having read Professor Diawara's "IN SEARCH OF AFRICA" and been struck by his outspokenness, I was left with a puzzling question. How could he rail in that book against racism and exploitation in the West, while also taking African societies to task for failing to get on board with modernity? I'm used to views advocating that Africans be encouraged to respect their own traditions, to "be themselves"; the notion that certain aspects of Africans' cultural identity are holding them back is provocative, especially coming from an African intellectual like Diawara.

He elaborates on this seeming contradiction more fully in "WE WON'T BUDGE," while fulminating at length on the very divergent meanings of difference in French and American societies. His focus is modern migration, which he analyzes through his own experience as a young migrant in Paris and then in Washington in the 1970s, then again in Paris (now as a tenured professor and visiting researcher) at the turn of the millennium. Through his remembered interactions in all these settings with friends and family, with policemen and poets, with bureaucrats and bosses, he helps the reader come to grips with the meaning of exile.

"Exile" is an apt word for Diawara's life: like James Baldwin, or even Hemingway, it's something he's chosen, rather than something forced upon him. He's neither a refugee nor a labor migrant looking only to support his family back home. In fact he's severed many of the bonds that connected him with Mali, his native country. He's turned his back on his family's religion and tried to ignore its demands that he conform to what he considers stifling customs. For this reason it's refreshing to read his perspective on migration, identity, and home in the modern world.

Diawara's voice can be jarring, however, as well as contradictory at times. While he wears the mantle of ethnographer in telling his story, he doesn't tell us what his narrative authority rests on. In "WE WON'T BUDGE," all the dialogues with various persona appear to be reproduced verbatim, but I suspect they are merely paraphrased since he never mentions recording his conversations with people. Maybe he occasionally puts words in his interlocutors' mouths to illustrate a point. Moreover, he shows us the full text of letters he both wrote and received while a young man in Paris and DC. Did he keep copies of letters he sent, or get them back from their recipients? To do either shows tremendous ego; more likely, he's paraphrasing again to the best of his recollection. By presenting these memories as hard fact, Diawara tries to come off as both social scientist and memoirist, blending objective analysis with subjective experience.

This approach doesn't always work. Does the author contradict himself? Very well then, he contradicts himself. Nonetheless, or maybe because of this, "WE WON'T BUDGE" is a fascinating, quixotic, and lucid glimpse into the life of an African exile in the modern world.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A modern day African memoir, June 15, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: We Won't Budge: An African Exile In The World (Hardcover)

I stumbled across this book by chance and debated for a while whether or not I should buy the hardback edition or wait till it came out in paperback. Thankfully I spent the money and have no regrets - only shame that I even debated whether to get it or not! This is a wonderfully written book and one that should appeal to a wide audience. For readers who are longing for a book that is hard to put down - this is your book. For readers who are interested in learning more about Africa, Africans, France and America - this is your book. For readers who interested in issues of race, identity and belonging- this is your book. For all global souls and Africans who are dying to see parts of their world and experiences described on paper - you must buy this book. It's a rare gem that made me laugh and want to cry. I highly recommend it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Journey Back, July 6, 2003

By 

Stephanie A Surratt (East Cleveland, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: We Won't Budge: An African Exile In The World (Hardcover)

I have always enjoyed looking at life through another's eyes and now I have been able to do it from an international perspective. The title "We Won't Budge" does not give away the true meaning behind the text. It is just enough to invite the reader to pick it up and explore all that it has to offer. Diawara takes you on a journey of personal and intellectual moments that impact his life and the way he sees the world. It's a very honest and brave reflection of one's self. I am glad that he has decided to share his experience with world.