By Adan Makina

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 be called the past calling with glaring disappointment. As we celebrate our tenth anniversary, we reflect and share with our readers, esteemed and staunch a series of articles from the past. This Book Review, provides a perspective on Nomad Dairies, a treasure chest Novel on the lives of America’s newest immigrants.

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In a country like Somalia where communal structural composition is dictated by patriarchalism and a penumbra of confounding sedentary lifestyles, ferocious inter-tribal violence, political obscurantism, religious extremism, wife-beating and wife-inheritance, polygamous and arranged marriages, and recurring rivalry, prospective female writers often find themselves in troubling situations that plight their struggle for scholarly recognition. Undoubtedly, such inhuman and belligerent literary blockades riddled with explosively unwarranted hate towards our female partners by cynical males, contribute to gender segregation. However, for many optimistic and fortunate female writers in the Diaspora, female abhorrence and negative perceptions have become tales of the ancients as many have found literary succor in distant lands-lands whose governing styles repudiate male domineering, authoritarianism, and insensate jungle laws.

Shockingly, freedom of press has opened the gates for tarantula of controversial male and female writers who unabashedly and publicly denigrate African and Islamic values, renounce Islamic faith, and proclaim atheism. Hateful utterances jotted down in the lines of a book will never change concerted societal political resolve nor deter steadfast adherents from following their religious beliefs nor dissuade committed aspirants from plotting their long cherished ambitions.

Unlike writers driven by Islamophobia, ethno-nationalism and ethnocentrism, color bar, and malevolent speechifying propaganda, Nomad Diaries (NomadHouse, 2009), a new book that gracefully and radiantly towers above other publications in major book-stands and internet sites, is a contemporary novel detailing incredible social, political, and economic events in clangorous pre and post-independent Somalia. The author, Yasmeen Maxamuud, a Somali, is an erudite essayist and editor of the portal WardheerNews. Yasmeen spent four painstaking concrete years with one thing in mind: the delivery of a captivatingly fine-tuned and well-rehearsed fictional narrative full of drama, euphoria, and absolute tribulation that jolts the nerves of the reader. It is a book full of ordeals depicting characters primarily overwhelmed by a potpourri of conditions that include violence and drug abuse, despondency and illegitimacy, rejection and consanguinity, pessimism and optimism, circumlocution and loquaciousness, magnetism and vivacity in war-ravaged Somalia, in cross border jungles teeming with beasts, in the hostile and inhospitable refugee camps of Kenya, and in cosmopolitan America.

From the 1960s to the present day, African scholars belonging to the literary world-whether writers of fiction or nonfiction, journalists, poets, dramatists, essayists, writers of books for children, or novelists-have been in the forefront producing a plethora of literary works related to various genres: particularly on topics related to culture, gender, dictatorship, colonialism, and neocolonialism. Some novels have been written prior to any African country gaining independence. Others came rolling out of print immediately after 1957 when Ghana and Libya proclaimed independence from England and Italy respectively.

Read more: A Book Review- Nomad Diaries Rekindles Old Memories

Adan Makina
Email:adan.makina@gmail.com