000			02911fam a2200421 a 4500
001			1953522
003			OSt
005			20210930192201.0
008			960829s1997 nyu 001 0 eng
010			_a 96043260
020			_a0465001874
035			_a(OCoLC)35450531
035			_a(OCoLC)ocm35450531
035			_a(NNC)1953522
040			_aDLC _cDLC _dNNC _dOrLoB-B
043			_afb-----
050	0	0	_aHN773.5 _b.R53 1997
082	0	0	_a306/.0967 _220
100	1		_aRichburg, Keith B.
245	1	0	_aOut of America : _ba black man confronts Africa / _cby Keith B. Richburg.
250			_a1st ed.
260			_aNew York : _bBasic Books, _c1997.
263			_a9702
300			_axiv, 257 p. ; _c25 cm.
500			_a"A New Republic book."
500			_aIncludes index.
520			_aNothing in Keith Richburg's long and respected journalistic career at the Washington Post prepared him for what he would encounter as the paper's correspondent in Africa. At first all he could focus on was an Africa he tried his best to explain, a continent where brutal murder had become routine, where dictators and warlords silenced dissent with machine guns and machetes, where local officials sought payoffs for the most routine tasks, and where starvation had become depressingly common.
520	8		_aBut slowly, and with a great deal of personal anguish, this reporter asked a much more difficult question: If this is Africa, what does it mean for me to be an African American?
520	8		_aIn this provocative and unvarnished account of his three years on the continent of his ancestors, Richburg takes us on an extraordinary journey that sweeps from Somalia to Rwanda to Zaire and finally to South Africa, and shows how he was forced to confront the divide within himself between his African racial heritage and his American cultural identity.
520	8		_aAre these really my people? he wonders. Am I truly an African American? The answer, Richburg finds after much soul-searching, is that black skin is not enough to bind him to Africa and that he is an American first, foremost, and singularly. To those who would romanticize Mother Africa as a black Valhalla, where blacks can walk with dignity and pride, he regrets to report that this is not the reality. He has been there and has witnessed the killings, the repression, the false promises, the horror.
520	8		_aAnd in his darkest night of the soul, Richburg looks into his own family's past and concludes, "Thank God. Thank God my nameless ancestor, brought across the ocean in chains and leg irons, made it out alive. Thank God I am an American."
600	1	0	_aRichburg, Keith B. _xTravel _zAfrica, Sub-Saharan.
650		0	_aHuman rights _zAfrica, Sub-Saharan.
651		0	_aAfrica, Sub-Saharan _xSocial conditions _y1960-
651		0	_aAfrica, Sub-Saharan _xDescription and travel.
900			_bTOC
942			_2lcc _cBK
999			_c2376 _d2376