By Faisal Roble On the eve of October 19, 2015, a young Somali woman called me from Toronto, Canada. Still winding down from my daily commute, I reluctantly answered the phone and inquired who the caller was? “You don’t know me, Faisal, but I am a big fan of yours,” said the voice of a...
Editor’s Note: Peaking into the rich WDN archives full of ten years of rare collection of historical pieces, news, commentary, opinion as well as cultural and poetry analysis and writing from across the globe, we come upon a jewel, a rarity, a genius piece of writings, honest and true and free of bias. Indeed, it could...
Lidwien Kapteijns is a professor of history at Wellesley College. A few years ago, she contacted Afropop Worldwide to say she was a co-trustee of a large collection of rarely heard songs from Somalia. These songs date from between about 1955, when the country was approaching independence, and 1990, when it was disintegrating into a...
By Prof. Said S. Samatar Introduction This piece appeared in Research in African Literatures exactly three decades ago. Since then mighty changes have occurred in Somalia in particular, and in the world at large generally. Alas, Abdisalaam Haaji Aadan, the witty burlesquer in the piece, is dead, so is the Somali state, so is the Soviet Union;...
By Abdelkarim A Hassan “I haven`t voted since 1964, I don`t want to get my judgment involved in what I do for a living” Jim Lehrer, PBS, News Hour. Background In recent years Somali journalism, Islam and Somali music have become the easiest areas to penetrate without any previous experience or training. In other words,...
By Yasmeen Maxmuud Traditional Somali history has not been kind to Somali women and has often associated the term “Naag” with their weakness. All the demise of the family would be associated with the limitation of women. A countless number of proverbs as well as Somali poems has traditionally portrayed women as weak beings that...