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Editorial Reviews
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With his bicultural heritage, journalist Philippe Wamba--born of an African American mother and Congolese father and reared in California, Boston, Tanzania, and the Congo--offers an evenhanded and encyclopedic examination of the facts and fictions that have grown on both sides of the Atlantic. "My Blackness has been the bridge that has linked my two identities," he writes, "the commonality that my split selves share." In this exceptional book, Wamba recounts the long history of the African image among black Americans, from the 18th-century Senegal-born slave poet Phyllis Wheatley to Marcus Garvey, the fiery back-to-Africa "race man" of the early 1900s. Across the water, Wamba tells how Africans waited for Afro-Americans to liberate them from colonialism, and how their leaders like Haile Selassie, Kwame Nkrumah, and Patrice Lumumba interacted with their transatlantic brethren. Wamba also recalls how he was treated as a foreigner in Tanzania, the ambivalence his mother received from his paternal relatives, and the idealism that U.S. blacks have of the continent, which at times has led to uncritical support of corrupt dictators like the former Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko (who once imprisoned Wamba's activist father). As he relates how Michael Jackson sneaks Swahili words in his songs while African kids incorporate hip-hop slang into their vocabulary, Wamba lays out the past perils and, ultimately, the future promise of transcontinental black unity. "I have discovered that African Americans and Africans are culturally distinct," he says. "But through the evidence of history and my own personal experience, I have learned that Africans and Black Americans can move beyond their real and perceived differences to celebrate and build on what they share." --Eugene Holley Jr.
From Publishers Weekly
In a beautifully written, extensively researched personal response to the idea that shared skin color implies a shared heritage, outlook or destiny, journalist Wamba examines his African-American family roots in order to understand the importance, if any, of racial affinity. Born to an American mother and a Congolese father, Wamba spent his formative years in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam and in the suburbs of Massachusetts. A child of the 1970s, he writes that while he took for granted that black was beautiful, he was less sure of what being "African" meant. Each time he crossed the ocean, either literally or figuratively through music and literature, Wamba was confronted with cultural expectations and prejudices. Each place was viewed as either a jungle (whether it was an urban jungle or one flush with lions and tigers) or a paradise, and its people as either savages or saviors. Most troubling for Wamba was that, beyond myth and preconceptions, neither Americans nor Africans seemed to have much interest in the other's politics, history or people. In addition to his own family's experience, Wamba examines decades of political, literary and musical reactions to the pan-African ideal of all black people sharing common interests and goals. In the end, he argues that though simple Afrocentrism serves only to contribute to the "often seemingly unbridgeable cultural gap separating black Americans from their African counterparts," pan-Africanism remains a desperately needed political force lying dormant. Agent, Tina Bennett, Janklow & Nesbit Associates; 10-city author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
With his bicultural heritage, journalist Philippe Wamba--born of an African American mother and Congolese father and reared in California, Boston, Tanzania, and the Congo--offers an evenhanded and encyclopedic examination of the facts and fictions that have grown on both sides of the Atlantic. "My Blackness has been the bridge that has linked my two identities," he writes, "the commonality that my split selves share." In this exceptional book, Wamba recounts the long history of the African image among black Americans, from the 18th-century Senegal-born slave poet Phyllis Wheatley to Marcus Garvey, the fiery back-to-Africa "race man" of the early 1900s. Across the water, Wamba tells how Africans waited for Afro-Americans to liberate them from colonialism, and how their leaders like Haile Selassie, Kwame Nkrumah, and Patrice Lumumba interacted with their transatlantic brethren. Wamba also recalls how he was treated as a foreigner in Tanzania, the ambivalence his mother received from his paternal relatives, and the idealism that U.S. blacks have of the continent, which at times has led to uncritical support of corrupt dictators like the former Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko (who once imprisoned Wamba's activist father). As he relates how Michael Jackson sneaks Swahili words in his songs while African kids incorporate hip-hop slang into their vocabulary, Wamba lays out the past perils and, ultimately, the future promise of transcontinental black unity. "I have discovered that African Americans and Africans are culturally distinct," he says. "But through the evidence of history and my own personal experience, I have learned that Africans and Black Americans can move beyond their real and perceived differences to celebrate and build on what they share." --Eugene Holley Jr.
From Publishers Weekly
In a beautifully written, extensively researched personal response to the idea that shared skin color implies a shared heritage, outlook or destiny, journalist Wamba examines his African-American family roots in order to understand the importance, if any, of racial affinity. Born to an American mother and a Congolese father, Wamba spent his formative years in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam and in the suburbs of Massachusetts. A child of the 1970s, he writes that while he took for granted that black was beautiful, he was less sure of what being "African" meant. Each time he crossed the ocean, either literally or figuratively through music and literature, Wamba was confronted with cultural expectations and prejudices. Each place was viewed as either a jungle (whether it was an urban jungle or one flush with lions and tigers) or a paradise, and its people as either savages or saviors. Most troubling for Wamba was that, beyond myth and preconceptions, neither Americans nor Africans seemed to have much interest in the other's politics, history or people. In addition to his own family's experience, Wamba examines decades of political, literary and musical reactions to the pan-African ideal of all black people sharing common interests and goals. In the end, he argues that though simple Afrocentrism serves only to contribute to the "often seemingly unbridgeable cultural gap separating black Americans from their African counterparts," pan-Africanism remains a desperately needed political force lying dormant. Agent, Tina Bennett, Janklow & Nesbit Associates; 10-city author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
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