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Senior Member
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 2,591
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Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa
Customer Reviews:
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One of the most honest books, regardless of stance!
February 9, 2004
By Kevin Currie-Knight "Education Grad Student" (Newark, Delaware)
Out of America is a black man's journey back to Africa as a newspaper reporter. Within the book, a myiad of political and social issues are delved into and the answers - not THE answers, to be sure, but answers as good as any other - are disturbing.
While Mr. Richburgh makes clear towards the beginning of the book that he never felt his 'blackness' was his defining characteristic, his journey in the book sours him on Africa and wipes many preconceptions out of the window. Before anyone can help Africa, he concludes, Africans need to help Africa. The descriptions of tribalism, dictatorship, factionization, and senseless murder seemingly as a way of life, are disturbing and graphic. Richburgh pulls no puches. The irony is that in the process of reading a book where the author ultimately concludes that Africa may be less 'salvagable' than we thought, it is obvious that he is not callous about this judgment, that he remains all-the-while sympathetic, and that this conclusion is one of the hardest ones the author has ever had to make (he tells us THAT much).
Many who've read Out of America denounce Richburg as an out-and-out "uncle Tom". He is a black man who realizes that he is an "american" before he's an "african-american" (as if I'm 'european-american' instead of just plain 'white'). The irony is that those who are shocked that Richburg, a black man, would DARE criticize Africa seems to prove RIchburgs ancillary point. Black leaders, intellectuals, and arm-chair diplomats have pussyfooted around Africa, ignoring abuses of 'human rights', ignoring the deadly tribalism and murder, so as to keep the image of "Africa - the glorious motherland" alive. We may, of course, criticize Europe ("the hegemonic western world") but dare we ever criticize atrocities in Zaire?! How dare we! So it is ironic that the authors point - that we must be realistic instead of untopion when dealing with Africa - is played into perfectly by those so willing to call Richburg an 'uncle tom" or a 'sellout'.
So as not to rant anymore, this book is somewhere between a personal biography, a corageous political statement, and an insider glimpse at the sheer hell international journalists go through to get the story and the shot. Don't miss it.
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A brutally honest book, and a must-read!
April 23 2004
By Geoff Puterbaugh (Chiang Mai, T. Suthep, A. Muang Thailand)
This book was a real eye-opener for me. It makes me realize that you can divide people into two different groups: those who have spent time in Africa, and those who have not. And when I say Africa, I do not mean Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, those Arabic-speaking countries of North Africa. I mean black Africa, or sub-Saharan Africa. As an African the author met on a train explained, "I mean REAL Africa."
The people who have actually spent time in Africa -- not passing through on a tourist expedition -- will tend to have radically different ideas about the continent than those who have done their travelling while seated in their armchairs.
Africa is a brutal, dangerous, and horrifying place, where the mentality is still largely tribal and the most important type of violence is direct inter-tribal violence of the most shocking sort. The genocidal slaying between the Tutsis and the Hutus in Rwanda is perhaps the most horrific, but there have been similar horrors in Somalia -- and all over the continent!
The author is a black American who realized, while he was in Africa, that he could not consider himself an "African-American." He was simply an American, born and raised in the USA. I believe Richard Wright and James Baldwin have had similar experiences while living in Europe: they realized that they were not at home, so to speak. And then they realized where "home" was.
One of the author's main conclusions is that he's very lucky to be an American, not an African. But the problem strikes me as a little more radical than that: leaving Black Africa for (say) Tunisia will already markedly improve your quality of life. The author seems to have no problems living in Asia or in Europe. The problem is that Black Africa seems to have its own unique set of problems, and so far nobody seems to have a clue about how to solve these problems. Until that happens, the outlook seems to be extremely bleak.
Highly recommended!
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February 7th, 2010
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