Out of America is a black man's journey back to Africa as a newspaper reporter. Within the book, a myiad of political and social issues are delved into and the answers - not THE answers, to be sure, but answers as good as any other - are disturbing.
While Mr. Richburgh makes clear towards the beginning of the book that he never felt his 'blackness' was his defining characteristic, his journey in the book sours him on Africa and wipes many preconceptions out of the window. Before anyone can help Africa, he concludes, Africans need to help Africa. The descriptions of tribalism, dictatorship, factionization, and senseless murder seemingly as a way of life, are disturbing and graphic. Richburgh pulls no puches. The irony is that in the process of reading a book where the author ultimately concludes that Africa may be less 'salvagable' than we thought, it is obvious that he is not callous about this judgment, that he remains all-the-while sympathetic, and that this conclusion is one of the hardest ones the author has ever had to make (he tells us THAT much).
Many who've read Out of America denounce Richburg as an out-and-out "uncle Tom". He is a black man who realizes that he is an "american" before he's an "african-american" (as if I'm 'european-american' instead of just plain 'white'). The irony is that those who are shocked that Richburg, a black man, would DARE criticize Africa seems to prove RIchburgs ancillary point. Black leaders, intellectuals, and arm-chair diplomats have pussyfooted around Africa, ignoring abuses of 'human rights', ignoring the deadly tribalism and murder, so as to keep the image of "Africa - the glorious motherland" alive. We may, of course, criticize Europe ("the hegemonic western world") but dare we ever criticize atrocities in Zaire?! How dare we! So it is ironic that the authors point - that we must be realistic instead of untopion when dealing with Africa - is played into perfectly by those so willing to call Richburg an 'uncle tom" or a 'sellout'.
So as not to rant anymore, this book is somewhere between a personal biography, a corageous political statement, and an insider glimpse at the sheer hell international journalists go through to get the story and the shot. Don't miss it.

I read this book when it was first published and pulled it off the shelf after going to see "Hotel Rwanda". The amazing thing about this book is that it is far more honest that the movie, but it also was almost universally condemned when it was published for its brutal honesty in exposing modern day Africa. Richburg was brutalized for being thankful that his ancestors survived the crossing of the Atlantic and were delivered into slavery in the US. The reason he was thankful was that he was following in the footsteps of millions of descendents of millions of others who voluntarily left their native countries to seek a better life in the USA. His critics focused on the fact that many of Richburg's ancestors fellow slaves did not make the transit, but they also never admitted that the brutality of the continent, including the fact that Richburg's relatives were sold by black slave traders to black or Arab or white slave traders is never mentioned in the literature about slavery. Richburg is to be commended for his honest reaction to the cesspool that is Africa today, far worse a place to live than the continent when European colonists tried to introduce codes of conduct to replace those of the Hutu or Tutsi, where hundreds of thousands were slaughtered because of racial characteristics just as superficial as skin color. Richburg is to be commended for his honest reaction to the reality of Africa as it is today. It is unfortunate that his critics have never been exposed to the actuality that was his life while he was African bureau chief for the Washington Post. It is a book far too honest to ever be turned into a movie by Hollywood since it would require them to admit how out of touch with the truth they are.

`Out of America: A Blackman confronts Africa'.

The book title alone alludes to a major show down. The two combatants are the author and Africa. An unfair contest as Africa takes on a passive role, and allows her son from America to roam her geography. Her son tries to make sense of her, but is left bewildered, disappointed and irritable, which soon turns to anger and immense contempt. The book is a critique of Africa (unfortunately observed during some of her most brutal conflicts) and a narrative of the inner struggles within the author; his identity and his relationship with white America. On page 225 he writes; "Africa. Birth of civilization. My ancestral homeland. I came here thinking that I might find a little bit of that missing piece of myself. But Africa chewed me up and spat me back out again. It took out a machete and slashed into my brain the images that have become my nightmare". Alienation and ugliness is what Richburg experiences in Africa. He witnesses the same, in America, but lashes out at Africa, his ancestral home.

Richburg in the early 90's spent three years in Africa covering the civil wars and political upheavals in Somalia, Rwanda, Sudan and Zaire, as an American journalist, for the Washington Post. He reports on the horrors of the wars, and the dynamics on the national and international playing fields, that leads to these unnecessary wars. The book repeats a catechism of faults that is often referred to as the African malaise; corruption, repressive dictators clinging to power long after they have accumulated their billions, the absence of effective African leadership in the now 21st century, and the preponderance of African states in the statistics of least developed countries.

As Africa fails on delivering on the most abstract of level, the issue of `hope'. Richburg gets angry and suggests there is an innate flaw in the African psyche. There is no humanity in Richburg as he observes Africa. He defines Africa by the horrors of the war and famine, he witnesses in Rwanda, Somalia and other places. He measures Africa by a different set of standards, the brutality in the western world both historically and in the most recent, that he has knowledge of, do not seem to elicit the question, is the European psyche not similarly be innately flawed?

When Africans he meets, say to Richburg, don't judge us so hard. Richburg accuses Africans for being apologists for backwardness and preferring a permanent state of victim hood and dependence. Richburg implies that the violence of slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, on creating the conditions that exist in Africa today, are just excuses. On page 233, he writes, `I hate this maddening propensity of Africans to wallow in their suffering, to simply roll over
When kicked, and to express unswerving faith that some outside force, some divine intervention. Will bring deliverance from their misery."

There is no polite way of saying this Richburg does not like his African Ancestry.
He witnesses the killings, the human suffering, poverty, corruption and disease, that makes Africa look like an ugly place, and he wants nothing of it. This is demonstrated in his lengthy discourse of why he is not an `African', or even a `black' American, he is just an `American'. In trying to justify his American-ness he denigrates Africa and the Africans. It is from this mind set he evaluates Africa.

The book astounds. It swirls you through a range of emotions; revulsion, at the factual content of the ethnic genocide that took place in Rwanda, disappointment, at the anarchy that led to disintegration of Somalia as a state, loss of hope, as many African countries are held up as evidence of Africa's inability to create sustainable conditions for development in the 21st century.

After three years on the continent Richburg asked, "are these really my people?" Am I truly an African American? Richburg drops the `charade' and is tired of `lying' and tells it as he sees it. He thanks God that his ancestors were `liberated `from Africa. Keith B Richburg is `glad' of slavery. An incredulous thing, for a black person to say. It is like the Jews thanking Hitler for the experience. Can you imagine?

This book `really', is not about Africa. The power of the book is it provides a roadside view of the total rejection of Africa by a blackman. Keith B Richburg has a lot of issues. Namely, I suspect his relationship and context as a Blackman within America.