Words that have been used
to describe the late Honorable Dr. Senedu Gebru include Resistance
fighter, philanthropist, educator, feminist, patriot, author, teacher
and mother. History may
remember her foremost as the first woman elected to Parliament, but her
contributions to this nation were so many and varied, she
could rightly be considered Ethiopia’s Renaissance Woman of the 20th
century.
Although it might seem like more Ethiopians from abroad are moving back to Ethiopia than ever before, it is also true that the much greater outflow of Ethiopians leaving the country in search of better opportunity abroad, continues unabated.
Dinaw Mengestu belongs to that special group of American voices produced by global upheavals and
intentional, if sometimes forced, migrations. These are the writer-immigrants coming here from Africa, East India, Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
Their struggles for identity mark a new turn within the ranks of American writers I like to call "the in-betweeners." The most
interesting work in American literature has often been done by such writers, their liminality and luminosity in American culture produced by
changing national definitions (Twain, Kerouac, Ginsberg), by being the children of immigrants themselves (Bellow, Singer), by voluntary exile
(Baldwin, Hemingway) and by trauma (Bambara, Morrison).
The new writer-immigrants are more uniquely caught between loyalties
— to a home they are still linked to and involved in and to the lives they are committed to making here. It is a difficult negotiation and
yet an amazing resource for works of exquisite frustration: hopeful, lonely, joyful and something else that cannot be named. These are writers
who are making America their own but are also bringing the larger world into its streets, to borrow a phrase from Walter Mosley. This is the
kind of writer Mengestu is, and "The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears" is the wrenching and important book he has made of this
struggle.
Set over eight months in Logan Circle, a gentrifying neighborhood in Washington, D.C., the novel shows us three
characters bonding over their joint but different memories of another home, another sense of self, lost in the Africa they cannot return to. The
engine of the book might be the relationships among these immigrants/refugees — Joseph from the Congo, Kenneth from Kenya and Sepha from
Ethiopia — but the book's molten core belongs to Sepha and his witty though elegiac voice. Seldom has a character emerged in a recent
novel who is so compellingly dark but honest, hopeful but dismal, and able to turn his chronicle into a truly American tapestry: racially
fraught, culturally limited, haunted by a dream of itself that has driven writers like Twain and others to make and remake it.
The book's title, placing an emphasis on paradise (and thus redemption), is one of the many subtle indications of the book's debt to
Dante's "Divine Comedy." For the narrative structure is one of a variety of circles, of the hells and purgatories that characters
endure, and that nest within each other like Russian dolls. Sepha opens a convenience store in Logan Circle, named after the general whose
statue graces its middle. What happens here, as Sepha watches families getting evicted to make way for gentrification and redevelopment, is
symbolic of an American empire that is as disappointing as the empire that Haile Selassie created in Ethiopia and from which Sepha has fled.
Sepha never contacts the family he left there, but he is unable to move forward until he can reconnect with them. In fact, in one attempt by
Sepha to escape the monotony of his grief, we are led with him on a vision quest through the heart of D.C.
But
"Beautiful Things" is no simple coming-to-America fable. Mengestu constantly parallels Ethiopia's failed revolution with life in the
U.S., and readers see in what happens in Logan Circle some proof that the alternative that America offers is failing and failing fast —
what kind of paradise evicts its occupants on behalf of gentrification?
Ethiopia has one of the oldest histories of literacy
and written literature, going back to the Middle Ages, and it is no wonder that Sepha is the chronicler of this book — he is the one who
can contain it all and process it into the possibilities for transformation.
With "The Beautiful Things That Heaven
Bears," Mengestu has made, and made well, a novel that is a retelling of the immigrant experience, one in which immigrants must come to
terms with the past and find a way to be loyal to two ideas of home: the one they left and the one they've made in America. If there is a more
American concern, I haven't found it yet. This is a question that American writers like Walt Whitman, and even Ben Franklin, have wrestled
with: how to make an America that is born of Europe but free of it and at peace with it. With this book, Mengestu moves the conversation
forward.
Meti Yilma is a radio show host, poet, writer, MC, one time tv
personality and a number of other things besides. Including, a top 4 finisher in 2006's Survivor Africa.
Sehin Teferra
is a freelance trainer and consultant with an academic background in
international development and gender equity. She has written since her teens, and invites your comments and
thoughts on her observations.
There is no question that there is a lot of agricultural investment occurring in Ethiopia right now. The question is how much of that is being initiated by Ethiopians?
Despite a global downturn in real estate prices, it seemed like Ethiopia's market was impervious to it all. But there are signs which point to an inevitable downturn in the near future. Just how far down prices will go is anybody's guess.
After emigrating abroad, going to school and then opening a successful business in London, it only took a vacation to Tewodros Tadesse's hometown of Hawassa to convince him to leave everything behind and move back once and for all.
ESAI celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. Horizon Ethiopia would like to congratulate them on their achievements through the years and wishes them another decade and more of continued success.
He’s broken every record he’s ever gone for so what mission are we talking about? Here’s a clue…it has absolutely nothing to do with sports.
Internet connection rates take another dive.
Coffee Round Table held at Hilton right after EAFCA 2010 and ECX's launch of Direct Specialty Trade.
There is no question that there is a lot of agricultural investment occurring in Ethiopia right now. The question is how much of that is being initiated by Ethiopians?
Despite a global downturn in real estate prices, it seemed like Ethiopia's market was impervious to it all. But there are signs which point to an inevitable downturn in the near future. Just how far down prices will go is anybody's guess.
After emigrating abroad, going to school and then opening a successful business in London, it only took a vacation to Tewodros Tadesse's hometown of Hawassa to convince him to leave everything behind and move back once and for all.
ESAI celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. Horizon Ethiopia would like to congratulate them on their achievements through the years and wishes them another decade and more of continued success.
