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Informationen zum Autor Keith B. Richburg is the New York bureau chief for the Washington Post . In 1993 he won the National Association of Black Journalists' International Reporting Award, and the following year he won the George Polk Memorial Award for foreign reporting and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Washington, D.C. Klappentext Nothing in Keith Richburg's long and respected journalistic career at the Washington Post prepared him for what he would encounter as the paper's correspondent in Africa. He found a continent where brutal murder had become routine! where dictators and warlords silenced dissent with machine guns and machetes! and where starvation had become depressingly common. With a great deal of personal anguish! Richburg faced a difficult question: If this is Africa! what does it mean to be an African American? In this provocative and unvarnished account of his three years on the continent of his ancestors! Richburg takes us on a extraordinary journey that sweeps from Somalia to South Africa! showing how he confronted the divide between his African racial heritage and his American cultural identity. Zusammenfassung Keith B. Richburg was an experienced and respected reporter who had paid his dues covering urban neighborhoods in Washington D.C., and won praise for his coverage of Southeast Asia. But nothing prepared him for the personal odyssey that he would embark upon when he was assigned to cover Africa. In this powerful book, Richburg takes the reader on an extraordinary journey that sweeps from Somalia to Rwanda to Zaire and finally to South Africa. He shows how he came to terms with the divide within himself: between his African racial heritage and his American cultural identity. Are these really my people? Am I truly an African-American? The answer, Richburg finds, after much soul-searching, is that no, he is not an African, but an American first and foremost. To those who romanticize Mother Africa as a black Valhalla, where blacks can walk with dignity and pride, he regrets that this is not the reality. He has been there and witnessed the killings, the repression, the false promises, and the horror. "Thank God my nameless ancestor, brought across the ocean in chains and leg irons, made it out alive," he concludes. "Thank God I am an American."...
