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Also this issue: Trading Spaces Degas Vu Ballet Lessons 19th Annual Celebration of Black Writing Concerts for the Community Tango Buenos Aires Jeanne Ruddy Dance The Magic Flute |
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February 13-19, 2003
book quicks
By Lynne Duke Doubleday, 294 pp., $24
For those who can withstand sometimes painful truths, as well as those who love a good adventure, Lynne Duke's first book, Mandela, Mobutu, and Me: A Newswoman's African Journey, is an exciting, candid, often wrenching view of modern, post-colonial Africa as seen through the eyes of a seasoned African-American journalist.
A 15-year Washington Post veteran, Duke first traveled to southern Africa in the early 1990s as a visiting correspondent. From 1995-1999, she took up residence in South Africa as the Johannesburg bureau chief. Throughout nearly 10 years in the region, Duke says, she always considered the assignment an honor and a privilege.
Duke takes readers on a personal tour of a continent much maligned and even more misunderstood. Providing accounts of life in war-torn countries such as South Africa, Angola, Namibia, Rwanda and Congo-Zaire, the book offers historical context that informs an understanding of the spate of corruption, depredation and barbarism too often associated with present-day African nations and their leaders. The author also chronicles scores of smaller, often agonizing stories about those whose lives were ripped apart, but who never lost hope.
"The experience made me a bit more jaded about the world and how unequal it is," Duke says. "I saw, in my own consciousness, the distinctions between the First World and the Third World and where my own loyalty stood. I saw myself as being a bridge."
Duke's storytelling is vivid and honest, and she's surprisingly fearless facing a world she had heard much about but knew little of. These days, Duke writes from the Post's New York offices, but says she plans one day to return to southern Africa.
"For me, as a black woman, a black person, often we're afraid of understanding and coming to grips with Africa," Duke explains. "We often recoil from some of the barbarism and dictatorships that are prevalent there. But it is a weakness for us to be ashamed of Africa. That was the strongest lesson I learned out of the whole experience. The more I learned, the more I embraced the fierce dignity and humanity of the people whose stories I told. These were the people on whom I could hang my hat, and I realized, this is my Africa."
Lynne Duke will take part in the Meet the Authors book fair and signing, Sat., Feb. 15, 3:30-5:30 p.m., free, Community College of Philadelphia, 17th and Spring Garden sts., 215-232-4485; and will read Wed., Feb. 19, 1:30 p.m., free, Overbrook Branch of the Free Library, 7422 Haverford Ave., 215-685-0182.
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