Aminatta Forna is one of our most important literary voices. In The Window Seat, an elegantly rendered and wide-ranging collection of new and previously published essays, Forna writes intimately about displacement, trauma and memory, love, and how we coexist and encroach on the non-human world.
Movement is a constant here. In the title piece, "The Window Seat," she reveals the unexpected enchantments of commercial air travel. In "Obama and the Renaissance Generation," she documents how, despite the narrative of Obama's exceptionalism, his father, like her own, was one of a generation of gifted young Africans who came to the United Kingdom and the United States for education and were expected to build their home countries anew after colonialism. In "The Last Vet," time spent shadowing Dr. Jalloh, the only veterinarian in Sierra Leone, as he works with the street dogs of Freetown, becomes a meditation on what a society's treatment of animals tells us about its principles. In "Crossroads," she examines race in America from an African perspective, and in "Power Walking" she describes what it means to walk in the world in a Black woman's body and in "The Watch" she explores the raptures of sleep and sleeplessness the world over.
Forna will be in conversation with Rabih Alameddine, author of the novels Koolaids, I, the Divine, The Hakawati, An Unnecessary Woman, the story collection, The Perv, and most recently, The Angel of History. He divides his time between San Francisco and Beirut.
*Customers who order a book through the Eventbrite link below will receive a special copy signed by the author (while supplies last)!
Click here to register for this virutal event!
