Harlem to welcome Provocative Sudanese Writer Kola Boof

Award winning novelist-poet Kola Boof will give a reading at the Schomburg Center on Sunday, Sept. 16th.
By: Bragman Media N.Y.
 
Aug. 1, 2007 - PRLog -- Fresh from winning a Swedish Feminist writing prize and being selected by Europe's African-Writing Magazine as one of the novelists most likely to follow in the legendary footsteps of Chinua Achebe, Egyptian-Sudanese-American author Kola Boof will headline a book reading at the Schomburg Center in Harlem on Sunday, September 16 at 4 pm in the Schomburg's Langston Hughes Auditorium.

Admission is Free.

Though many who've never read the "glamorexic" author's works have unfairly dubbed her the "Diana Ross of the publishing business", Boof is a powerfully gifted and  acclaimed literary stylist and social activist often despised for her candor.  

Born Naima Bint Harith, Kola Boof was one of the first writers to alert America about the catastrophe that continues to unwind in her homeland of Sudan. The highest ranking woman in the SPLA despite the "sexism" of detractors within the group, Boof was an early advocate against the Biblically-proportioned plagues afflicting that once-beautiful country: genocide, starvation, rampant rape, and predation by modern-day slavers.


In 1978, Ms. Boof was adopted by a Black American couple and raised in Washington D.C.  She later returned to North Africa as an adult.


Kola Boof's presentation will encompass entertainment and cover material from the four books of hers available in America presently. Her autobiography, controversial for her account of an affair with a pre-9/11 Osama bin Laden and her views on race, also contains beautifully evoked chapters on her childhood in Sudan, before she was ripped away from her homeland as a young girl after the murder of her parents, who opposed the beginning rumblings of slavery and genocide in Khartoum.


Boof, who describes herself as a womanist writer in the tradition of Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Terry McMillan, has also been dubbed "the African Garbo" by the New York Times and is considered very controversial for her use of nudity and for her war on "colorism" in the black community. Boof will also read from her shocking and gripping collection of short fiction, "Long Train to the Redeeming Sin- Stories of African Women", her beautiful and angry landmark book of poetry, "Nile River Woman", and her epic novel "Flesh and the Devil", all published by Door of Kush Press.


A new poem by Boof in honor of activist-writer Ward Churchill entitled "Indigenism: White Man/Bare Chest" will also be read (see link to poem below). Boof says that Ward Churchill was totally wrong for his comments about the victims of 911, but that the University of Colorado is equally wrong for "persecuting" such an important artist.

Often maligned by the press, Kola Boof, who has never called herself a "sex slave" and refuses to be called one until Patty Hearst is called the same, plans to discuss the media's mis-reporting of her experiences with Osama Bin Laden, accusations by Whitney Houston experts that the lead character in Boof's upcoming hip hop novel "Virgins In the Beehive" is based on Whitney Houson, the racist accusations by many black activists that Boof is a "Jew lover" and her rage over the way Drusilla (Victoria Rowell) was treated by "Young and the Restless" and how she wishes her idol Brian Frons would give her a new job (Boof has served as a ghost writer for several daytime soaps).

By appearing at the prestigous Schomburg Center, the notoriously ambitious Kola Boof follows in the illustrious footsteps of Afro-American legends such as Marita Golden, Walter Mosley, Pearl Cleage, Eric Jerome Dickey, Amiri Baraka, Star Jones, Fantasia, Iyanla Vanzant, Tavis Smiley, bell hooks, Stephen Carter, Gloria Naylor, Tiki Barber, Lauryn Hill and Jasmyne Cannick.      

Kola Boof will take questions from the audience and sign books and take photos with fans. The program starts at 4 p.m.

Link to Boof's poem for Ward Churchill:
http://proofmagazine.i8.com/about_1.html


BRAGMAN MEDIA N.Y.
Mark Fogarty (917) 776-7827
Email: copyeditor@post.com

Ms. Boof's Web Site: http://www.kolaboof.com

Website: www.kolaboof.com
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