I have never received full credit from the SPLA [Sudanese People's Liberation Army], because the men are very sexist and feel that I'm acting out of place, bringing too much attention to myself - but for the funeral of our leader John Garang, they had me write the poem "Chol Apieth" to eulogize him, and that was their way of acknowledging my contributions.
Kola BoofI'm an African woman, I suppose these thoughts torture me more than they do black American people, because it's like watching my own children trapped in a car that's sinking to the bottom of a lake and being impotent to save them'the black Americans have their own holocaust going on. You see the black man erasing black children from the landscape, you see black women desperately trying to get the black man's attention by wearing blonde hair and fake blue eyes, 500 years after he sold her and their children across the ocean.
Kola BoofI learned English by watching soaps as a kid, and since I don't have any formal education and can't teach at the universities like other literary writers do.
Kola BoofI happen to know at least a hundred Sudanese refugees in the United States, all of whom were taken in by white families and white churches, and they all tell me''Naima, you were blessed to be raised by Black Americans.'
Kola Boof