FARMINGTON – Devaney, Doak & Garrett Booksellers is sponsoring a conversation and book signing for Cynthia Anderson and Abdi Nor Iftin at the Emery Arts Center on Jan. 7 at 6:30 p.m.
Cynthia Anderson’s book, Home Now, tells the story of Lewiston, Maine, which over the decades has transformed from a predominantly white mill town, to a place where 6,000 of the city’s 36,000 inhabitants are African refugees and asylum seekers, many of them Somali. With empathy and honesty Cynthia takes readers deep into the lives of both immigrants and lifelong Mainers, the result of which is an honest look at a community, and ultimately a country, grappling with change.
Join us at the Emery Arts Center where Anderson will be joined in conversation with Abdi Nor Iftin, author of Call Me American: A Memoir, for an important discussion on Maine as it relates to America’s relationship with religion, race, and immigration.
Praise for Cynthia Anderson
“[Anderson] profiles residents of Lewiston, Maine, in this detailed, sensitive portrait of the city’s revitalization. [Home Now] expertly captures the multilayered dynamics between Lewiston natives and African immigrants…. The result is a vivid and finely tuned portrait of immigration in America.” —Publishers Weekly
“This compelling account relates how 6,000 African refugees came to settle in Lewiston, Maine, a struggling mill town with few jobs and a dwindling population. Author Anderson relies on several voices and story threads to convey the complexities of assimilation. [Home Now contains] even-handed reporting and sympathetic characterizations…. There are happy endings, horror stories, unresolved issues, and joyous breakthroughs. Readers will find lots to think about.” —Booklist
Praise for Abdi Nor Iftin
“Absolutely remarkable and always as compelling as a novel… An essential immigrant story, one that is enlightening and immediate.” — Booklist
“[A] wrenching yet hopeful autobiography… Iftin’s extraordinary saga is not just a journey of self-advancement but a quest to break free from ethnic and sectarian hatreds.” — Publishers Weekly
“A searing memoir…that impressively remains upbeat, highly inspiring, and always educational.” — Kirkus
About Cynthia Anderson:
Anderson has received numerous awards, including the New Millennium Award and the Mark Twain Award for short fiction. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, North American Review, Pleiades, Flash Fiction Forward (W.W. Norton & Co.), Literal Latte, The Masters Review and elsewhere. Her recently published collection, River Talk (C&R Press), received the 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Award for Short Stories and was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2014. River Talk also was a finalist for Foreword Reviews’ IndieFab Book of the Year Awards and Maine Literary Awards Best Fiction Book of 2015.
Anderson lives with her family in Maine and Boston. She teaches writing at Boston University, from which she also holds an M.S. in Journalism. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Redbook, Boston Magazine, usatoday.com, Huffington Post, Fourth Genre, The Miami Herald, Brevity, and others, and has twice been shortlisted in Best American Essays (Houghton Mifflin).
About Abdi Nor Iftin:
As a child in war-torn Mogadishu, Abdi Nor Iftin learned English by watching action movies. When U.S. Marines landed to take on the warlords, Abdi cheered the arrival of these real-life American action heroes. Sporting hip-hop clothes and dance moves, he became known as “Abdi American.” But when radical Islamists took control in 2006, it became dangerous to celebrate Western culture. Instead, Abdi risked his life posting secret dispatches to NPR. As life in Somalia grew more dangerous, he fled to Kenya. In an amazing stroke of luck, he won entrance to the U.S. in the annual visa lottery, though his route to America—ending in a harrowing sequence of events that nearly stranded him in Nairobi—did not come easily. Now he is a proud resident of Maine and is on the path to citizenship.
