Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa

Plot

Nothing in Keith Richburg's long and respected journalistic career at the Washington Post prepared him for what he would encounter as the paper's correspondent in Africa. At first all he could focus on was an Africa he tried his best to explain, a continent where brutal murder had become routine, where dictators and warlords silenced dissent with machine guns and machetes, where local officials sought payoffs for the most routine tasks, and where starvation had become depressingly common. But slowly, and with a great deal of personal anguish, this reporter asked a much more difficult question: If this is Africa, what does it mean for me to be an African American? [Abstract from LC record #35450531].