AfricaIs aCountry

Darfur to Brooklyn

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Darfur to Brooklyn

By
Sean Jacobs

On Sunday “The New York Times” published a photo essay on the daily lives of the approximately 300 immigrants from the Darfur region of Sudan who live in Kensington, Brooklyn. The images are by Dave Sanders, “a photojournalist who lives in nearby Park Slope, has been documenting the community since the fall of 2008.”  (He is interviewed on The Times’ Lens Blog.) Here’s some highlights of images of the refugees, now migrants, doing, among other things, back-breaking work, at a wedding (above) and, Abdallah Abaker, a taxi driver, who paints in his free time. It also turns out the largest group of Darfuris in the United States live in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and that some move between there and New York City.

Further Reading

No one should be surprised we exist

The documentary film, ‘Rolé—Histórias dos Rolezinhos’ by Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Vladimir Seixas uses sharp commentary to expose social, political, and cultural inequalities within Brazilian society.

Reading List: Barbara Boswell

While editing a collection of the writings of South African feminist Lauretta Ngcobo, Barbara Boswell found inspiration in texts that reflected Ngcobo’s sense that writing is an exercise of freedom.

Kenya’s stalemate

A fundamental contest between two orders is taking place in Kenya. Will its progressives seize the moment to catalyze a vision for social, economic, and political change?

An annual awakening

In the 1980s, the South African arts collective Vakalisa Art Associates reclaimed time as a tool of social control through their subversive calendars.

More than a building

The film ‘No Place But Here’ uses VR or 360 media to immerse a viewer inside a housing occupation in Cape Town. In the process, it wants to challenge gentrification and the capitalist logic of home ownership.