Son of Elsewhere, a Funny and Frank Story About Life After a Big Move
-
Loading... - Dzifa Nsiah
- 26 Sep 2022
- 119 Views
- 0 Like
- 0 Comment
As an immigrant kid in Kingston, one of the whitest cities in Canada, Elamin Abdelmahmoud learned pretty quickly that he was Black. At first this was news to him: He had spent the first 12 years of his life in Sudan identifying as Arab when he thought about his identity at all.
In my corner of Kingston, the only place I saw Blackness was in the world of hip-hop, Abdelmahmoud writes in Son of Elsewhere, his buoyant collection of essays, or what he calls a memoir in pieces. But having grown up in a conservative Sudanese family, he felt totally bewildered by Sisqos Thong Song and the music videos of Ja Rule. He paid close attention to how the Kingstonians around him talked. I listened to the rock radio station, because 1) they spoke like the people I was trying to mimic and 2) absolutely no Ja Rule.
This book is full of confessions like these: funny and frank, delivered in such a generous spirit that almost any reader (even the most dedicated Ja Rule fan) is bound to be won over by Abdelmahmouds story of trying to figure out who he was. In Sudan, his identity was a given. Read More...
