somalis

"... tells the inspiring story of the soccer team in a town bristling with racial tension that united Somali refugees and multi-generation Mainers in their quest for state--and ultimately national--glory. When thousands of Somali refugees resettled in Lewiston, Maine, a struggling, overwhelmingly white town, longtime residents grew uneasy. Then the mayor wrote a letter asking Somalis to stop coming, which became a national story. While scandal threatened to subsume the town, its high school's soccer coach integrated Somali kids onto his team, and their passion began to heal old wounds."--Provided by publisher.

Andrew Harding, a BBC foreign correspondent, reveals the tumultuous life of Mohamoud 'Tarzan' Nur--an impoverished nomad who was abandoned in a state orphanage in newly independent Somalia, and became a street brawler and activist. When the country collapsed into civil war and anarchy, Tarzan and his young family became part of an exodus, eventually spending twenty years in north London. In 2010 Tarzan returned, as mayor of Mogadishu, to the unrecognizable ruins of a city now almost entirely controlled by the Islamist militants of Al Shabab. Tarzan became a galvanizing symbol of courage and hope for Somalia. But for others, he was a divisive thug, who sank beneath the corruption and clan rivalries that continue today to threaten the country's revival.

In January 1991, when civil war came to Mogadishu (the capital of Somalia), two-thirds of the city's population fled. Among them was eight-year-old Asad Abdullahi. His mother was murdered by militia and his father was somewhere in hiding. He was swept along in the great wartime migration that scattered the Somali people throughout sub-Saharan Africa and the world. Betrayed by the people he thought would care for him, he lived his childhood in an adult world he was wary and skeptical of. He lived in the cosmopolitan streets of inner-city Nairobi and the desert towns deep in the Ethiopian hinterland. By the time he was on the cusp of adulthood, he had a wide array of talents. At the age of seventeen, he was adept at being a street hustler, brokering relationships between hard-nosed businessmen and Somali refugees. He courted a famous beauty and married her. Buoyed by his success so far, he went to Johannesburg, South Africa. There he began an adventure in a country richer and more violent that he could possibly ever imagined.

London teenager Sofia Dirie, who was born in Somalia, finds her life turned upside down when her father, who has been gone for twelve years, returns from war-torn Mogadishu and expects the family to live by his rules.

Poet, rapper, and singer-songwriter, K'naan, recounts his story, in which, he and his family were in danger and fled his home in Somali to live in New York and eventually found a home in Canada.

Joseph enjoys visiting his best friend Jamal's home, where he learns about the Somali culture and enjoys the family's traditions and cuisine.

Teenagers from Somalia describe the conditions in their war-torn and famine-stricken country and their experiences since coming to live in the United States and Canada.

Describes the author's experiences after moving to America to pursue a safer life, from her renewed contact with her family after her father's death to her struggles to embrace new principles in the face of attempts to prohibit her work.

Muktar, an eleven-year-old refugee living in a Kenyan orphanage, dreams of tending camels again, as he did with his nomadic family in Somalia, and has a chance to prove himself when a traveling librarian with an injured camel arrives at his school.

Thirteen-year-old Khadija, a Somali refugee, becomes a model for a famous fashion designer to help her family back home, while the designer's daughter Freya and fourteen-year-old Abdi, whose family Khadija lives with in London, try to protect her.