THE BOOK |
THE FACILITATOR |
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![]() Sam Kolodezh |
ABOUT THE BOOKLike the protagonist of this 2007 debut novel, Dinaw Mengestu came to the United States from Ethiopia, fleeing with his family after the Communist Revolution in 1974, which took the life of his uncle. Called “a great African novel, a great Washington novel and a great American novel” (The New York Times Book Review), The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears alternates between the present and the past to tell the story of a lonely Ethiopian shopkeeper in a D.C. neighborhood undergoing gentrification. “Almost every page reminds us that ‘departure’ and ‘arrival’ are deceptively decisive words” (The New York Times). Mengestu “belongs to that special group of American voices produced by global upheavals and international, if sometimes forced, migrations,” writes the Los Angeles Times. His “assured prose and haunting set pieces … are heartrending and indelible” (Publishers Weekly). –National Endowment for the Arts You can purchase this book now
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ABOUT THE FACILITATORDr. Sam Kolodezh is a lecturer at UCSD and NYU LA. He received his Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama from the joint program at UCI and UCSD. He specializes in cultural theory, Shakespeare, and adaptation. He is the son of Jewish Ukrainian refugees, a lover of stories across mediums, an avid traveler, and an explorer of in-betweens. As the Jewish half of a HinJew marriage, he is committed to interfaith and intercultural dialogue. He has worked as a scholar and artist in North America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. ABOUT THE AUTHORDinaw Mengestu was born in 1978 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and didn’t return there until 2006. He left with his mother and sister for the United States when he was two years old—reuniting with his father who fled during the communist revolution. Mengestu is a Macarthur Foundation Fellow and serves as the Lannan Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University, his alma mater. |
OCJCR’s Book Club Series is partially funded by a grant from