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Born on the Nile River in Omdurman, Sudan…Naima Bint Harith(Kola Boof) came to the United States after her parents, Egyptian archeologist Harith Bin Farouk and his only wife, Jiddi, (a charcoal Gisi-Waaq of Somalia's Oromo nomads), were murdered in Kola's presence for having spoken out against slavery and the oppression of Black Africans under the rule of Sudan's Arab-Islamic political factions. Kola Boof, who was born on March 3, 1972 at 2:14 in the afternoon, (according to the Government of Sudan birth records), was put up for adoption by her Egyptian grandmother, Najet Kolbookek, because the grandmother felt that Kola's skin color was too dark for inclusion in her father's Arabic family. Boof was sent to England to live with an Ethiopian family, but they soon rejected the child as well…because they feared she might be "a witch." They complained that Naima was just "too smart, too talkative" for a girl child. She was let for adoption again…and placed this time with an African-American family in Washington, D.C.'s lower class neighborhood, Anacostia Park. The Black Americans welcomed young Naima with open arms and the author found her sanctuary. Says Kola Boof today, "I knew that I was special and that I had been placed with very special people in a very special paradise. I felt that something magical was going to happen. You must understand that the Black Americans are very magical people-because their hearts are broken." Unfortunately, Kola Boof's initial life as the child of Black Americans was not all peaches and cream. The author had to adjust to having her hair straightened ("Which I deeply resented for many years, but now I like it"). She also had to learn English, which was difficult, and she credits the soap opera, Another World, as being her main teacher. She had to deal with the self-hatred of the Black American community, the experiences of which are so riveting and dramatic that they held me, Yi Nee Ling, spellbound as she recounted them in graphic detail in her upcoming memoir, DIARY OF A LOST GIRL, (the book is slated to be released in the United States, Japan, Belgium and Germany in Feb. 2004). Kola Boof says she became a writer because of women like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, Gloria Naylor and…the late white author, Jaqueline Susann. Boof says, "Valley of the Dolls was the first book I ever read. It's not literature but that book got me addicted to reading. Then I found The Bluest Eye…and that changed my life. It planted art inside me and it possessed me, because at fourteen, it was the first time that I had heard somebody tell the truth in America." Kola Boof Today Kola Boof is now a respected literary writer herself…a rising "womanist" sage who speaks quite unapologetically to what she calls "the living black woman". Boof says that it's time for black women to stop calling themselves "strong black women", "mules of the world"...and embrace her mantra..."the living woman." She insists, passionately, that..."The black woman is the meteor that is coming to this earth!" Of course, Kola Boof is a highly controversial author...both feared and hated all over the world. She began her career in 1997 when Ethiopian businessman Russom Damba financed the publication of her stunning poetrycollection, Every Little Bit Hurts. They launched the book in Morocco and Southern Europe-and it caught on with feminists, but not many others. Boof courted those feminist readers, even taking up the civil rights campaign of African lesbians and saying out loud, "I'm not a lesbian or bisexual…but if I could've been I would've been. I would love to be free from my obsession with men. I would have chosen being a lesbian if I could have chosen it." By 1998, news of the book's anti-Islam, anti-Arab, PRO-AFRICA stance reached the ear of terrorist Osama Bin Laden...who in 1996...had been Kola Boof's lover (a relationship in Morocco that she says was against her will and lasted only 6 months). Bin Laden contacted Boof in 1998 regarding her controversial book and told her: "If I had the time to waste. ..I would come and slit your throat myself." His threat, however, did not stop Kola Boof from defining and presenting her own art in her own voice. Read an interview with Kola in Africana Magazine: http://www.africana.com/articles/qa/bk20040518boof.asp |