Our story, by Laura Cranium

December 2002

I would love to tell you our story: 

My story begins with my new husband and family. I have now taken steps to recapture  control of my life and have chosen a beautiful man to share it with. We have our troubles but he is my friend and equal in every way. We have two heavenly boys, Thomas Ioan and Nicholas Dumitru. Even our eldest son, Tommy, helped the  healing process. His little voice came through to me while in the womb saying to the voices in my head “Hey, stop criticizing my Mommy!” I know that sounds weird but it’s true!  I still, to this day, have to look in the mirror occasionally to know that I'm not hideous, but lovely. I go to a weekly therapy group to convince myself that it wasn't my fault…that I actually was a victim of emotional abuse. Even though the facts stare me in the face! I have to hear the other women tell me their story, a story that sounds exactly like my story, to chip off the large block of doubt on my shoulders. Betsy, the leader of the group called what I had the "Stockholm syndrome," a case where the victims end up loving and defending their captors, no matter how cruelly they were treated. Whatever it was, it really made me lose all sense of reality for a painfully long time. Only by the grace of god (in other words, love), did I recover enough to fight for myself.

I would love to tell you how I met my new family and at the same time put to paper the story of the man who almost succeeded in obliterating me from my own body.

Laurent is a bright spirit… full of optimism.  When I met him I was a robotic shell of who I once was.  I saw his eyes and was immediately affected.  A seed of awareness started to grow but verrrrrry slowly and unconsciously.   It all started six years ago when I met my ex-husband Florin at a symphony  rehearsal.  I was in the beginning of my senior year at Johns Hopkins University's Peabody  conservatory.  I heard Florin as I walked by the room where he was rehearsing on his instrument.   He was just warming up and I  heard two notes... but the vibrato he played with was like a violist.  The  whole reason I played the viola was to make that sound.  Then he quickly  played a scale.  It was like a string of pearls... perfect in each note.  I  watched him through the whole rehearsal and remember feeling reverence  as my stand partner told me of the  world prizes Florin had garnered for his musical ability.  He could manipulate the  emotions of his audience very well, and in turn mesmerized me under his  spell;  like a spider who weaves a web around his prey without the prey  knowing about it until it's dead.  I even had a dream to predict/warn me.  But that was the only message from my intuition/soul because I had lost contact with my inner being and my own powers of consciousness through lack of self-confidence. Why, you ask? Because I was extremely over-protected and controlled as a child.

My music world was all-encompassing and my gentle, trusting nature, combined with my sheltered  childhood, made me vulnerable to him and crushed the tiny ego I had succeeded, on my own, to  form.   As a teenager, my parents had been so proud of my talent that their praise  was more powerful to me than my own praise... my own needs... my own  desires.  I lived to please their ideal of who they thought their daughter  was.   They were my religion.

I had developed a strong inner-fantasy world. A world where I could lose myself for hours in the forest or meditating through painting - but not  through real-life interaction with people.  I was seen as an outcast but I didn't notice. I didn't fit in with other kids my age because I was essentially a 40 year old teenager. My parents spoke through my words. My parents spoke through my clothes... clothes they dressed me in so I would be accepted by the world and loved. Clothes they thought would protect me. I was dressed like a doll each morning.  I won contests and fame for my music, art and beauty. My world was fine until I left my home and started to  interact with real people, with lovers. I was ready for the wolves and they attacked. How naïve I was.  Whether in Italy or on Cape Cod, grasping but fleeting lovers wanted something for nothing. I kept giving without a clue as to what I was giving.   My parents' lack of openness about sex made me feel dirty about what I was doing/experimenting with. I had no voice of my own.  Only my parents voice echoed through me. And that was a joke...  especially in the bed of a lover. You can't fool yourself so much as to think that you can speak with your parents voice while in bed with a lover.  

Then, four years after I left my home, I let this spider (Florin) into my personal space to do with my mind and body whatever he pleased. I didn't think I could do a good job of anything in my life so whatever he said had to be better than what I thought.  So many times he did wrong things in  front of me, through me, to me... and it just made me sadder and  sadder... until I got angry.   I got so angry and I had no one to take it out on except myself, then eventually my closest friends/family and his family  (because he had no friends). To this day, I'm still trying not to be angry.  This is how it happened.  

First, he told me to get rid of all my friends because they were what was causing my lack of confidence. That was the first step in my destruction: isolating me from anyone who might support my interests.  My friends were people I chose with my tiny ego (sense of self) and were the beginning of my interaction with the outside world.  My best friend, Helen, was a serious source of strength for me so he especially hated her. He told me she was sick for wanting to know too many details of my life. I didn't really know if he was right so I believed him.  I couldn't go dancing with any male friends or to the parties/café outings like I used to.  He used information about me from my past (the various men I had relationships with) to make me feel dirty and ashamed.  So any sensuality I felt had to be suppressed. He accused me of having feelings for my friend Antonio but I really didn't … except he was the first male friend I'd ever had, but I was in no way attracted to him. No matter how logically I explained this to him, he wouldn't budge. It was either him or Antonio, so of course I chose him.  The joy  went out of my eyes and even people who weren't my friends at school  noticed.  I was gray all winter and looked at no one.  He didn't even want  me to look at men in the streets.  I know that's normal in some relationships but the more I gave up, the easier it became for him to control me more and for me to lose more control of my life, my feelings and my strength.  Then he told me to dress a certain way, to show dignity instead of passion. Then it happened. I was gone. I had completely disappeared.   My arguments with him were passionate but he used his crafty mind to manipulate and  get his way.

Eventually, no fights were winnable. When my professor put it to me straight to try and save me, I felt a shred of doubt. My professor was more than just a teacher, he was like Helen, a best friend.  When I confronted Florin about what Paul had said, he, again, made me choose between Paul and him.  This time, I was really torn and my logic made real sense. So, he came up with a plan. He knew he had me in the palm of his hand so he threatened to leave me. Leave me? When I couldn't live on my own!  Think on my own!  That was a fate worse than death itself. Nothing scared  me more.

He had me feeling so small that the thought of living life without him seemed literally impossible. Who would love me?  I didn't have my parents (my religion) around. What would I do without the constant guidance (religion) of Florin Croitoru? I would just simply die of loneliness and weakness. No one else could possibly love a hideous/loathsome/weak creature like me.  I didn't have friends (because he said my friends controlled my life) my family was the enemy (because he said they controlled my childhood.)  I was beyond petrified.  Irrational fear and emptiness were overwhelming me.  I felt so completely alone and helpless.  No strength at all.  No religion – faith in myself - at all.  So… Florin abruptly left for Romania. He was a cunning one! Of course I blamed my professor and Helen for getting too involved in my personal life. When Florin returned thirty-two hours later I welcomed him back with hysterical joy. Him and only him in my life. I could be "happy" now. Can you imagine? He took a 14 hour flight back and forth just to terrorize me to prove his point.

Don't Rock This Boat No More

March 2002

Don’t rock this boat no more

Please don’t rock this boat again

For we’ve drifted long in these troubled waters

Now we just can take it no more

The memories we hold are too painful to bear

But we take comfort in this new hope of peace

Though strong winds of anger threaten ugly tides

Land is in sight and we now sail in shallow waters

We’ve felt this boat rocked from time to time

We’ve felt the fear, the sorrow and pain

We may not like the ones who steer

But it’s a chance we’ve got and one we’re willing to take

So go my friends and tell all people

Tell the angry ones to hold their peace

Tell the weeping ones, we share their pain

Tell the confused ones to watch and wait

Tell them that no one must rock this boat again

Let out sailors join in and help us sail

Let our builders make ready to rebuild our land

Let our teachers get set to teach our children 

Let our doctors care for and treat our wounds

Saah Charles N’Tow, Rhode Island

THE SOURCE OF LEISURE TIME

March 2002

If one looks back from the present surroundings of modern woman with its heated houses, kitchen appliances, and modern gadgets of all types, and compares this to the distant past when woman’s only environment was a cave with an open cooking fire before it, and a few simple tools of her own design to aid her in her work; it would seem that the change in women’s lives has been tremendous.

But in looking a little closer at this picture, and especially as woman we realize that although her surroundings have changed, the nature of her work and her role, have not. She still attends to the hundred and one physical and psychological details that go into living, and making life comfortable for those around her. The preparation of food, the care of clothing, the cleaning of the house and tending of children are still the occupations that engaged the majority of women, most of the time.

In speaking of the majority of women, I deliberately don’t concern myself with the upper middle and upper class women whose situation might be different, and who are certainly a minority among women. The situation of these women has been dealt with at great length, and often with the subtle implication that their lives are typical of all women’s lives. This is hardly the case, but from popular literature, movies, and social analyses by male academics, one gets the overwhelming impression that everyone in the United States is upper middle class.

In my opinion, this mistaken impression doesn’t completely stem for the near-sightedness of authors, academic, etc., who can’t see beyond their own position on the social scale, and so take their position to be the universal one. This impression that they tend to create is probably just as much a calculated effect that arises from a desire to portray the situation of women as an oppressive, improved "you’ve come a long way, baby" and not in need of any change. But any way, I’m tired of hearing about the lives of the affluent minority, and popular conceptions aside, its highly questionable that the middle class woman leads the free and unencumbered existence that’s attributed to her.

“The reform-oriented groups and activities are comprised mostly of white ‘career’ women (as opposed to the majority of women who takes on a second job outside the home only out of economic necessity and tend not to deal with conflicts and issues that don’t touch on these women’s lives. Most of these women (or their husbands) earn enough money that they can pay others to do what is their primary job as women – to maintain the home and the people living in it. They can afford to pay for babysitters or childcare centers, and sometimes, even for a housekeeper. They are thereby freed from the most oppressive ties to their role as women. As unpaid house workers.”

Lisa Leghorn, “Where are we going?”  Dec.1973

On the surface, it appears that for the majority of women, their traditional tasks have become much lighter and require much less time to accomplish because of the use of modern appliances (for those who can afford them all). This view, I believe, is another mistaken assumption that prefers to ignore the fuller picture of the kinds of changes that have place in women’s lives. Although it’s true women have many household gadgets now, social custom has demanded additional tasks from women, for which these application were designed.

No cave woman was ever depicted over an ironing board; iron in hand, for hours on end. Yet it’s a task that consumes many hours of modern woman’s time. It might be a labor that is unnecessary to the basic welfare of human beings, but men, who don’t have a woman to do, ironing for them, will often pay to have this task done for them; thereby indicating that they believe it to be a necessary requirement of modern life.

When a woman prepared skins for clothing, or sewed by hand, she never had a button to sew on, socks to darn, or ironing to do. Neither did she have: windows to wash, curtains to hang, or lunches to make before the morning rush.

Even though the necessity for some tasks no longer prevails, new necessities have arisen to replace the old ones, and woman’s tasks have often been multiplied to meet new social requirements. In more complex cultures, the standards for cleanliness, nutrition and child –care have became much harder to maintain. Throughout all social and technological changes, the nature of woman’s work has remained basically the same. Through her performance of this work, woman has freed the hands and minds of others from the necessary and tiring tasks that are required for day-to day survival and for some degree of living comfort.

In freeing others from the hum-drum necessities of life, women have placed at the disposal of men and children – leisure time – a wealth of leisure time to be spent with some choice, beyond the hammering necessities of everyday existence.

The amount of time woman has saved for others, to be spent by others, has been paid for at great expense to herself. Historically, women, both as a sex and as individuals, have paid dearly for this time they’ve lavished so freely on others. Women have paid this leisure time for others with hard labor and sacrifice and these products of their labor has been used by men and children as if it were their natural right.

Women have paid for this leisure time, not only with their labor, but also at the cost of the advancement of their sex, on both personal and collective level. While men and children used time for personal growth, education, socializing and planning beyond immediate needs, women were chained to the demands of the physical requirements of life.

What this has meant is that men have been given the time to pursue politics, governance, invention, war and genius. As the popular expression goes, “Behind every great man, stands a woman.” It is little wonder there are so few recognized women geniuses, etc.

That time (a product of woman’s labor) is a very valuable possessions, should be self –evident, especially in this society where “time is money”. As some man, who had the time to think about it, once said, “Time is absolute gift in life.”    

By Betsy Warrior

A Culture to be Learned: A Personal Journey through Ambiguity

March 2002

As Ethiopian-American youth, many of us have experienced the same joys and pains of bi-culturalism. We can look into each other's Semitic eye and cry about such an experience; we can laugh with our brown, violet-tinted thick lips and laugh about such an experience; we can sing and dance eskista together in celebration of the joys and pains of living between cross-cultural boundaries.

We know there is something about us-our perception, our language, our modern views-that separates us from our parents, the traditions, and the old, old country they speak of nostalgically as "back home." 

My Father's memory, aged photos from family albums and traditional Ethiopian cultural pieces used to decor my house, are the only concrete elements I have contributing to my own notions of a country, which, seems both so distant, yet so intrinsically a part of me. 

My role as an Ethiopian-American is so ambiguous at times.  The images I know of Ethiopia are at once vague yet at once, so grandiose, for it exists for me essentially as an object of my imagination. Therefore, isn't part of my identity also a vague my imagination; open for interpretation?

When one looks at me, Ethiopians or Americans, I'm sure they are baffled.  Being an artist, I've always equated the way I am perceived by others, similarly to the way one interprets an abstract work of art: the beholder is confused, entranced and struck with the sudden question of whether the image is something with which they can identify or rather, must work to figure out.

Being of both mixed race and culture, I have deduced that it is hard for many Ethiopian-Americans to identify with me, call me one of their own reflect of culture with me.

Just as being an Ethiopian immigrant is a separate experience than being an Ethiopian born American, being an Ethiopian / white/American is a completely separate experience than being just an Ethiopian born American.  As the Ethiopian community, now comes the question of who can be considered truly Ethiopian? 

Must they possess fluency in the native language, being able to conjugate Amharic verbs, communicate with the elders in the sacred language, and carry the rhythmic flow of conversation-skillfully rolling the tongue in sounds unique to Ethiopia? Or, must they be able to cook authentically -being able to name Ethiopian spices correctly, make decent wat, and roast coffe beans without burning them? Or, must they look Ethiopian -possessing light brown skin with a gray tone, thick and beautiful purple tinted lips, and a large forehead covered in curly, dark and soft

hair that is not typical of many Africans?

Or must they be proud- possessing so much faith in their history, culture and people that it extends into an air of superiority, debasing the validity of other people's pride

May be, I've come to learn a true Ethiopian must not need to question such things. If one knows who he or she and he/she is comfortable in his/her identity, it does not need to be worn in the form of pride.  I will admit that my Amharic is rusty, my wat is not the best tasting, and yes I've have burnt my Buna beans on several occasions.

 But the fact remains that I am Ethiopian. 5o%. 100%. Whatever. Maybe my children will be 25%Ethiopian or may be more, depending on whom I choose to marry. When I meet other Ethiopian-Americans I wonder if they feel a sense of pity for me-some sympathy for a poor mixed girl who does not know herself.  Perhaps, to them I am a misunderstood abstract piece of art.  However, contrary to popular belief, I do very much know my self and my culture. 

 Becoming comfortable in my identity came after I had stopped searching for definitions of a true Ethiopian, of a true anything.  As Ethiopian-Americans, this is a factor I would like to point out to those raising children in an American Society:

   We must be aware of what it means to be American, and what it means to be Ethiopian.  This applies to everyone, whether or not you are mixed and whether or not you are a full blood. I feel there need to be an acceptance among the community, a decreased emphasis on expected standards, and an embracing of many types of Ethiopians and cultures.

Yes, Ethiopians are a very proud people but we (that includes my self) must also

be open to learning, shifting, adapting, and thriving as Ethiopian-American culture. 

This means that when you confront someone like me a "half-breed", you are not tempted to respond with the need to teach me so much about my culture, my language -myself.  Rather, you will look at this abstract piece of art and say, "How much I have to Learn."

My father was the first of our family to migrate from Ethiopia to America-and there are many who share and have voiced a similar experience.  We know this because they are our parents.  Or, perhaps you are an Ethiopian immigrant yourself and know of this experience first hand. But I know this: my lack of knowledge in language and international experience no less decreases my substance as person of culture. 

I have a country to visit, an extended family to meet, and a language to become more proficient in-but this, is a personal experience I must fulfill myself.  Look at this piece of art, and become excited in its ambiguity-its inability to be defined. 

Look at it and ask of its culture, its experience its wanting to know more. Look, ask, but don't assume. Perhaps you too, will have much to learn: my culture is currently under going its evolution and my journey, which, is yet to be completed, still carries a story-maybe not as impressive, but holding the same impact as the physical journey of an Ethiopian immigrant from one country to another.

My Trip to the South

June 2002

 

This past summer was mind boggling. I packed my bags from the comfort of "small quiet liberal town" USA too literally cramming myself into one of three vans to travel 5,000 miles though the harsh reality of life. 

For nineteen days, I along with fifteen other teenagers from the Greater Boston Area, on a Civil Rights tour which was called Project Hip-Hop (Highways Into the Past History Organization and Power).  This opportunity gave me a first hand experience of history and reality that has been blatantly ignored, forgotten and

mistold  in history book classes.

 We made several stops, from, West Virginia to the Mississippi Delta, learning from active veterans of the movement who inspired, touched, and enlightened me with true-life stories of their struggle. 

I learned about many heroes from Fannie Lou Hammer and James Chaney to the devastating problems that face the South today carrying the torch of the struggle of freedom forward,  I believe that it is the responsibility of my generation of shining the light into the darkness of America history.

Jonnie Carr, Cleveland Sellers, and Hollies Watkins became my teacher of life, telling about the struggles and horror they were forced to face at a young age.  For them history is second nature, it pumps in their veins, I learned about the past and learned about what people were people were doing to solve today's problems. 

I also met with youth of my age, that are active in changing their society for the better, and my friends are watching Dawson's Creek sitting in Martin Luther King's church and standing at James Chaney's grave, talking to people who were there and help start a lot of the grass-root organization was amazing. 

This trip was filled with excitement and shock and an under current of sadness. In about twenty years all these veterans will be dead.  With their struggles and our society watches WWF and idolizes Britney Spears.  I ended up believing that the torch of freedom has to be passed and the cause for which thousands sacrificed for their lives should be carried to its goal by my generation.

But the real wakeup call hit me on the twelve-hour ride to carefree home, when I was immersed with the thought that I have to carry the struggle forward and came out a changed person from this experience.

I gained so much knowledge, that I would cheat society and myself if I didn't share and implement my experience and knowledge and tell the truth as it has never been told due to particle censorship.  Being aware and learning what happened was not only enlightening but also empowering. 

My tolerance for hate and racism is at an all time low.  I have now committed myself to fight racism in my life and society at large.

 I have experience more than the average teenager who is solely obsessed with their figure and shades of lipstick does.  My attitude and out look has dramatically changed I feel focused and molded. 

I am finally ready to shine the light in the darkness at the expense of sounding idealistic.  I am determined to contribute to change the reality in the South; at least it is worth my try.

Rahel Ayalew  (Cambridge, Massachusetts)

Until this River Dries

June 2002

A river wide

A river violent

A river shallows

It is a river filled with the debris of our hate and pain

A river smelling with the foulness of our sins and crimes

It is a river that sings to us songs of our past

With lyrics of woeful evidence of our madness, deception and shame

It is a river that brings us dire warnings for tomorrow

Warnings of what destruction our greed can bring

It is a river dark, suspicious and ironically calm

Quietly flowing with the current of our want for revenge

It is a river that widens with our deceits and lies

A river that strives on the blood of our innocent families and friends

Until this river’s height sinks to levels that reveal the true power of democracy

When our legislators and judges are no longer puppets of a corrupt regime

Until the voice of the press can be heard without restrictions

Until it’s mass clears to reveal the riches of our land, hidden deep

Exposing the thugs and thieves who strive on our people’s suffering

Until this river dries, our fear will not die

Until this river dries, our joy will not return

Until this river dries, peace will elude us

Our hurts will not go away

No, No, No, We will not know peace or calm

Until this river dries

Saah charles N’Tow, Rhode Island, 1998

Jane Kurtz: Author and Friend of Ethiopia

June 2002

Jane Kurtz, was born in Portland, Oregon, but grew up Ethiopia, Maji, a small town in the Southwest part of the country.  Jane, is not only a well known, and award -winning author of children's books but she is also the first non-Ethiopian author who writes Ethiopian children's books such as Fire on the Mountain, Only A Pigeon,  Pulling the Lion's Tail and so many other books. So we decided to get know more about her work, as to why she is interested in writing Children's books in general and Ethiopian Children's books, in particular. We also asked her if she speaks Amharic? (The Ethiopian official language) About some of the difficulties that she has encountered in the process publishing her books? And abut her future plan as to how she is planning to introduce her books to the larger American readers? 

 My parents moved to Ethiopia in the 1950s to work for the Presbyterian Church. When they reached Addis Ababa, I was two years old, so I had no memories of life in the U.S. and never thought about comparing my experiences in Ethiopia to any place else.  My parents studied Amharic in Addis Ababa and then took their family (four children by then) to live in Maji, in the southwest corner of Ethiopia.  I visited the U.S. when I was in the second grade and again when I was in the eighth grade, but otherwise I spent my whole childhood in Maji or Addis Ababa. 

Maji was a magical place for me.  We had no television, of course, or movies or telephones or anything like that, so my sisters and I would make up our own stories and act them out for days at a time.  Often, we would pick my mother’s flowers to use in our games or scoop frogs out of the inset plants.  The Ethiopian adults around us didn’t like to see us handling frogs and would sometimes scold us and make us drop them.  Maji is mountainous and green even in dry season.  One year, my father’s parents came to visit, and my grandfather and my dad built a house for us, using the materials that everyone used around Maji—mud mixed with straw for the walls, a koro koro roof (tin).

The new house had square walls instead of the round wall of the house I’d lived in up until then.  My sisters and I would climb into the attic of the new house and play paper dolls with families we cut out of the Sears catalog.  After my mother taught my sisters and me how to read, we loved books and got many more ideas for stories from reading and re-reading the few books we had in Maji.

When I was in fourth grade, I went to boarding school in Addis Ababa run by the Presbyterian, Mennonite, Lutheran and Baptist missions.  After that, I only went home to Maji at Christmas and during summer vacation.  When I was in high school, my parents moved into Addis Ababa.  They lived in Ethiopia for 23 years, finally leaving in 1977 when it became dangerous for ferenjis (foreigners) to stay.  I loved growing up in Ethiopia and would never trade my childhood for another kind of experience, even if I could.  I learned enough Amharic to play with my friends and bargain in the markato (market place) and so on—and enough to understand what was being said around me.  I never studied the language as my parents did, and I wish I had.  But in Maji, my family, a nurse, and a teacher were the only people who spoke English, so I heard Amharic and Deeze and other languages around me all the time.  My oldest sister and my brother both taught in Ethiopia during the 1980s and 1990s, and they became fluent in Amharic because their ears were used to the sounds. I went to boarding school in Addis Ababa through high school, attended college in Illinois, and eventually earned a master’s degree at the University of North Dakota.

Jane said, I always loved to read and write, but I didn’t have any dream of writing children’s books until my own children were young and I was reading hundreds of books to them.  That’s when I fell in love with children’s books.  At first, I wrote stories inspired by my children’s childhoods.  In 1990, after I had moved to North Dakota, I became quite homesick for Ethiopia and realized that I could reconnect with Ethiopia by writing stories that related to my own childhood.  I started by writing my own versions of some of the stories I remembered hearing as a child in Ethiopia.  After that, I ended up writing a novel set in the time of war in the 1980s, a picture book based on the daily life of a shoeshine boy who was a friend of my brother’s, and a picture book inspired by the experience of some Ethiopian friends here in the U.S.

I hadn’t been back to Ethiopia for 20 years until 1997 when I was invited to speak in three schools in Addis Ababa, the international school, the British school, and a mission school.  During my years away, I heard news of Ethiopia from my parents, who went back to visit quite often, and from my brother and older sister when they lived in Addis Ababa.  I also kept up with what was happening by reading.  This Christmas, my parents, five of their children (including me) and seven of their grandchildren (including two of my children) went to Ethiopia for about three weeks.  We climbed Maji mountain, visited Lalibela, and spent time at the girls’ school run by the Presbyterian church in Addis Ababa.  The other project that has kept me in touch with Ethiopia recently is that I was asked to serve on the board of a non-profit organization called Ethiopian Books for Children and Educational Foundation. It was started by Gebregeorgis Yohannes, who was born in the small town of Negele Borena in southern Ethiopia, left Ethiopia in the troubled 1980s and eventually (with a MLIS degree from the University of Texas) became a children’s book librarian at San Francisco Public Library.  Nineteen years old when he first read a book outside of school, Yohannes now lives by the motto “Books change lives.” In the 1990s, he began to try to figure out how he could share books with children in the country where he grew up.  He formed a nonprofit organization (the Ethiopian Books for Children and Educational Foundation, or EBCEF) and asked me to serve as a member of the board.  He gathered about 4,000 books and other educational materials.Then he took a leave of absence from his job and went to Ethiopia with a goal of publishing the first Ethiopian picture book and setting up a book center for poor Ethiopian children.  He wrote down a favorite story from his childhood, Kilu Mammo (Silly Mammo), hired an Ethiopian artist to do the illustrations, and started to look in to printing possibilities.

So far, Yohannes has not been able to get NGO status to operate in Ethiopia. In the meantime, he and the Board of Directors decided to publish the first edition of Kilu Mammo in the U.S. in order to provide a resource for the many Ethiopian families in the U.S. and raise money for the operation of EBCEF in Ethiopia.  Kilu Mammo is at the printer right now, and we hope to have copies available within the month—a picture book in both English and Amharic.

When a new book comes out, the publisher typically sends copies to all the review journals and sometimes to newspapers and so on around the country.  After that, it’s up to the author to try to find ways to let readers know about her book.  For most children’s authors, the primary opportunity to do that is speaking in schools and at conferences, which I do.  In the last few years, I have spoken in such places as California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Maine, Tennessee—and overseas

in Ethiopia and Kenya.  I was invited to be

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one of fourteen children’s authors and illustrators to speak during Laura Bush Celebrates America’s Authors Day in Washington D.C. last year at the time of the inauguration. Everywhere I go, I show pictures of my childhood in Ethiopia and talk about that beautiful country.  I do, indeed, hope that Ethiopian families who find my books will tell others about them, too, because word of mouth is one of the main ways people find out about books.

 In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a real “multicultural boom” in the world of children’s books.  Though I had to work very hard to find my first publisher—and got rejection letters for 10 years—I also found editors very interested in stories that showed a glimpse of life in far-away places.  Now it’s harder to get multicultural books published because many of the publishers have become huge corporations concerned about profits. 

If books don’t sell in big numbers, they often feel they cannot afford to publish them.  So it’s an on-going struggle to get new books accepted.  That’s one reason I appreciate this opportunity to let people know about my books.  If people can find out about my work and tell others, it will help keep the books in print and help me find a publisher for other books.

You can find an order form on my web page, http://www.janekurtz.com.