at Mawi Asgedom Little.at Mawi Asgedom Little, Brown, September 2002 $995 ISBN 0-316-82620-0 "The forsaken I remember. The shrieking hyenas, I remember. if it were not that beyond that, I cannot separate what I remember from what I have heard in stories." Thus begins the slim mass in which Mawi Asgedom recalls his triumphant passage by the agency of war torn Ethiopia to a perilous device in the Sudan, and finally to his just discovered American home. A refugee of the Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict, who get downs from both sides of that horrific civil war, Asgedom animates the plight made in like manner painfully generic by years of of the present days coverage of warfare and famine. Taking its title from his father's advice to "treat all people--even the in the greatest degree unsightly beetles--as if they were angels sent from heaven," this remembrance oftentimes takes the contours of a fable with its idealized heroes who come together tragic deaths (his father Heilab and brother Tewolde) angelic and sketchily supplyed female characters (relief workers, presents as well as his mother and sisters). Asgedom busys elegant, uncluttered prose to relate of his struggle, surviving the two the daily battles of the Sudanese camps, and the more insidious battles during his acculturation into the lily-white Chicago suburb where he lands with his arrival. He appears from African warfare and American welfare to graduate from Harvard University--his 1999 graduation day address serves as the book's epilogue. Asgedom not ever wallows in self-pity. Instead, the story is endlessly optimistic, thus much so that the 25-year-old now uses his story to inspire others, working as a motivational speaker who fittingly has been featured forward Oprah. ---Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts is a freelance writer and art critic living in Harlem. COPYRIGHT 2002 Cox Matthews & Associates |
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