Join us for our monthly African Book Club, an ongoing series presented in partnership with host and African Book Club co-Founder Faith Adiele. November's book selection is Why Do You Dance When You Walk? by Abdourahman A. Waberi. Why Do You Dance When You Walk is a poignant and timeless story of the complexity of family, the value of poetry and freedom, and the ripple effect of the traumas that stalk our movement.

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Author Abdourahman A. Waberi will be featured at the program in conversation with Faith Adiele, host and co-founder of African Book Club.

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How to participate: Get a copy of the book, read it in advance of the meeting, and then discuss the book with a group of people interested in reading African Literature virtually on Zoom on Sunday November 19th from 12-1:30 PT.

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You can view a list of all the books previously read and discussed in African Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/african-book-club

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You can order the book from Amazon.

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About the Book

'Papa, why do you dance when you walk?

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When Aden's 8-year-old daughter asks him this one morning in Paris, he is taken aback. The question is innocent, but the answer is not so simple. Unable to resist Béa's inquisitive spirit, he moves silkily between memories of his childhood: from his silent, mysterious mother and the shanty roofs of his neighbourhood to the malicious attack that changed his life forever and the ensuing struggle that made him a man.

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Anchoring his memories is a Djibouti on the cusp of independence; a land of shifting deserts and immense heat, French-from-France ex-pats, and one lonely and sick boy finding solace in books. Why Do You Dance When You Walk is a poignant and timeless story of the complexity of family, the value of poetry and freedom, and the ripple effect of the traumas that stalk our movement.

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About the Author

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Abdourahman A. Waberi is novelist, essayist, poet, and short-story writer. Born in Djibouti City in 1965, he traveled to Caen, France in 1985, where he began his studies of English language and literature. Waberi is the author of numerous novels, essays, articles, and travel reports. His articles, short stories, and reviews have been published in many African and international magazines and newspapers, including Le Monde diplomatique, Africultures, Le Monde, Liberation, Le Nouvel Observateur, Jeune Afrique Economie, DU, Grand Street, and Lettre International. His writings, now translated into more than ten languages, include The Land Without Shadows ; Transit; Harvest of Skulls; Rifts, Roads, Railways ; and, In the United States of Africa. His first volume of stories, The Land without Shadows, won Belgium's Royal Academy of French Science, Literature and Fine Arts Prize, and the Grand prix litteraire d'Afrique noire. He is professor of francophone literature at George Washington University.

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Faith Adiele co-founded and hosts MoAD’s African Book Club, and her monthly column for Detour: Best Stories in Black Travel is syndicated in The Miami Herald. An award-winning memoirist, she contributes to the CALM app, HBO-Max, Alta Magazine, Hyperallergic and others, and her recent work has received Emmy and SoCal Journalism Award nominations. Faith graduated from Harvard College and the University of Iowa’s Writing Workshop and Nonfiction Writing programs. She has a set of hybrid chapbooks about her Nigerian-Nordic-American family forthcoming from Texas Review Press and a travel writing craft guide from Columbia University Press. She lives in Oakland and chairs the Writing & Literature program at California College for the Arts.

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