Our October Author: Peter Akinti (Forest Gate)

This month we are reading Forest Gate by Peter Akinti. Kicking off our supplemental links this mont, Akinti introduces his book in this video:



The book comes with a supplemental essay and interview.  If your edition doesn't have them, check here.  The Bookbag has an interview,

BB: For this ex-Londoner, Forest Gate draws some very painful parallels between war-torn Somalia and life on some of London 's streets. Yet Armeina defends London. Why does she?


PA: When I wrote Forest Gate one of my aims was to provide a snapshot of young black people in London, to try to paint a truer picture of their mixed identity and or culture. I wanted to show what life was like under the full effects of constant migration; how much globalization is affecting us in ways we are yet able to fully grasp. I didn't want to compare London and Somalia. I wanted to compare two lives that clash in London; to show how very different two young black people living in London might be, the causes and effects of that interaction.

And  SoulCulture asks about the reality behind the fiction,

SoulCulture: The book contains a lot of difficult but compelling chapters vividly describing sexual abuse and violence. Was this a realistic representation of their stories or extreme content needed to make a certain point?

Peter Akinti: Some of it is definitely to make a point. There’s a point where two boys get stopped and searched by the police and someone asked me what I thought about stop-and-search. They thought it was me trying to say something about stop and search but it wasn’t, it was much more to do with an experience I had with my niece.

One of her friends got involved in something crazy and I took her to the police station and I took a statement and they were really rough with her, and when she came out I said ‘what did you think of that?’ and she said she never wanted to do anything like that again, it felt like abuse. And that struck me. That’s where it came from, that first one.

So a lot of the things that happened aren’t me trying to be clever; a lot of these things really happened. A friend of mine had a younger brother who jumped off a tower block in East London and that’s where that came from. I just wanted to show that’s how a lot of people feel once they’ve had that experience, especially the Metropolitan police – they’re really rough with young, black people.

In addition to those two interesting interviews, Akinti has a couple pieces in the Guardian you may want to check out:  Looking back on New Labour and Why London is no place for a young black man.

Eritrea: A Sad Anniversary

Today is the sad anniversary of the detention of hundreds of government officials, journalists and other community leaders six years ago in Eritrea. Amnesty International has a press release detailing the lack of progress in the human rights climate to date. An action is available here.

Meanwhile, instead of releasing prisoners of conscience and permitting freedom of speech and association, the Eritrean government is hosting conferences for the Somalian opposition and encouraging further destabilization of the region. The US government has taken note,

[US Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi] Frazer said that this was about more than just simply considering Eritrea as a rogue state in the region.

It was quite specifically Eritrea's relationship with recognised terrorists which could lead to its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.

This, in turn, she said would bring a change in the nature of its relationship with the US and in the ability of the US and other countries to provide assistance to Eritrea's government.

Hmm. Maybe if the US government had put more pressure on the Eritrean government five or six years ago there would still be a viable opposition to work with?

War and Literature

If you missed NPR's War and Literature series last week you catch it online. The series includes an interview with Somalian author Nuruddin Farah, author of Rights Readers selection, Secrets.

Eritrea Update

A must read for our on-going project to bring attention to human rights issues in Eritrea, Michela Wrong (Rights Readers Selection, I Didn't Do It for You : How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation) writes in the New Statesman about the conflicting interests of Eritrea and Ethiopia in the renewed Somalian conflict. [Link]