3 August 2010: More on Damali Ayo, Obamistan! (refer to entry from Words, UnLtd., 12 July 2010, OEN 18 July 2010)
Having completed Damali Ayo's Obamistan!, I have this homage to add: in summary, Obamistan is a landmark publication that reaches out to a far broader public than does the usual nonfiction bestseller, which I expect this book to become. I have already handed it on to the next reader and told her to share it similarly.
Not only does it reach out to a public with little to no time to buy books, let alone read them--the people with the dream of integration into mainstream society, which should become interracial and celebratory of differences rather than xenophobic and bigoted; it also reaches out to the targeted public in two ways: sharp and bitter criticism of a disease few of them acknowledge: xenophobia and racism; and a portrait of what it's like to be among those people still isolated behind racist curtains, starved for understanding and recognition of the beautiful cultures they have to share with us and assimilate to create a dynamic and new United States of America, Obamistan.
More than that, it eloquently and accessibly revives the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., of complete integration and equal rights for all; complete "interunderstanding" (to coin a phrase) in an environment of love and esteem for the new one that will arise out of many. It is a twenty-first-century rewording of this dream and where we stand, with a dim view of what's been accomplished so far and an exhortation never to stop working toward and dreaming of Obamistans the world over.
My only criticism is that the message would be stronger if more condensed. The book goes on too long, though I am aware of the infinity the dream encompasses.
Thank you, Damali, for this manifesto from a large majority of our population unequipped to put into words what you have accomplished so eloquently--a project of equal and exigent importance for all of us. The unified alienation we otherwise risk is indescribable and something we must fight hard against for Western civilization, which we must allow to dynamically evolve, to continue at all.
