My good friend Maaza Mengiste is featured in New York magazine as one of a handful of “future writing stars” from the city. An excerpt of her first novel is included with the profile. Check it out.
Pink-haired Carolyn Kellogg reviews Mary Otis’s debut collection, Yes, Yes, Cherries, finding that, despite the title, the stories “eddy around forlorn characters and their thwarted desires.”
The big news over the weekend was that video-sharing site YouTube is no longer accessible through Maroc Telecom in Morocco. There has been no official statement, which means that no reason has been given, and no explanation provided. But since about Friday, Maroc Telecom users (of which I am one) cannot access the site, while customers who use rivals Wana or Meditel supposedly can.
I should point out that the vast majority of Internet users here go through Maroc Telecom, and that the bandwidth of the two rival ISPs is smaller. So in effect YouTube has been censored. It’s worth pointing out that Maroc Telecom is a subsidiary of Vivendi, so if there is censorship at the behest of the government, it is carried out by a multinational company.
The ban, of course, is completely useless. Bloggers have already begun sharing addresses of proxy servers, or suggesting the use of Dailymotion, which has many of the same material on Morocco as YouTube. And because the ban makes people curious, the offending material–whatever it is–will undoubtedly pop up on another web site.
Update: Please sign the petition asking Vivendi and Maroc Telecom to stop censoring YouTube.
Another update: YouTube is back on. Yay! Thanks to all those who spread the word out about this.
For those who care and/or read French: There is an interview with me about Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits in the current issue of Jeune Afrique magazine.
The United Nations has closed its HCR office in Rabat, due to what it claimed were violent protests by refugees.
The UNHCR says there are some 600 registered refugees in Morocco, along with some 10,000 illegal migrants. Some 30 people who are camped outside the UNHCR office denied using violence during Saturday’s demonstration.
They also want the right to work and say that those from Arab countries receive favourable treatment. UNHCR said they closed the building because they could not work under the threat of violence which was intolerable.
It also said it does not provide refugees with financial assistance anywhere in the world.
Paulin Kuanzambi, an Angolan refugee who is the president of the Collectif des Réfugiés in Morocco, pointed out in an open letter that this is not the first time UNHCR closes its doors in Rabat. He called on the Moroccan government to uphold the rights of refugees under the Geneva convention. Let’s just say there’s a long, long road to go before that becomes a reality.
I picked up a copy of Colum McCann’s new novel, Zoli, when I was in New York for the PEN festival, on the recommendation of a couple of friends, including my editor at Algonquin. The story begins in the 1930s, when a young Roma girl named Marienka (nicknamed Zoli) loses her entire family in an attack by Hlinka guards. (Fascist attacks against such minorities were common in Czechoslovakia at the time.) Zoli escapes with her grandfather, and together they join a kumpanija, a traveling group of Romani musicians. Zoli’s extraordinary ability to remember and to write songs and poems soon attracts notice–from Swann, an expat translator, and Stransky, a Slovak poet and editor. Zoli’s growing fame is quickly co-opted by the Communists, who want to make of her a poster child of Romani “integration” in a new society. The novel explores questions of belonging–national, cultural, linguistic–as well as class and ideology, without ever once slipping into a harangue. A rare feat these days. McCann immersed himself in Roma culture to write this novel, and the care with which he draws this world is palpable. He breathes life into very different characters, giving them each the space in which to tell their story. A great book.