Somali Documentary Project's 1st book Released

Somali Documentary Project
Sunday, September 07, 2008

After five years of documenting Somali Diaspora, the Somali Documentary Project has just released its first book, The Somali Disapora: A Journey Away. This book is unique in its comprehensive examination of the Somali Diaspora in America.  This is a story of an optimistic people as they struggle through the desperate challenges of fleeing a civil war and as they find that they must face different challenges in America. 

Photographer Abdi Roble and writer Doug Rutledge begin their journey in Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, where over 150,000 Somali people have come to escape the violence.  While in Dadaab, Roble and Rutledge met the family of Abdi Salaam, who was later resettled in Anaheim, California.  They documented the troubles and the triumphs of the family in Anaheim and then followed them when they moved to Portland, ME. 

They also document the lives of Somali people in Columbus, Ohio, which is the second largest Somali community in the United States, and in Minneapolis, which has the largest Somali Community. So the story develops from the refugee camp, where people struggle just to eat, to Minneapolis, where Somali doctors and dentists make life for everyone even better in one of America's more sophisticated urban settings.

The Somali Diaspora: A Journey Away offers the intimate opportunity to introduce yourselves to your Somali neighbors across the country.  This book includes the work that was recently displayed in the Columbus Museum of Art.  The faces in these photographs tell their own stories of optimism confronting perhaps the most horrible conditions with which human beings ever have to cope, while documenting the many successes that Somali people have achieved in America.  The essays weave these stories together to tell the tale of a people who have moved to a new land, while maintaining their unique and meaningful way of life.

The Somali Diaspora: A Journey Away will be released by the University of Minnesota Press on September 5th, 2008.

If you can, please come to the book signing at the Columbus Museum of Art on September 13th from 1 to 3pm.

Columbus Museum of Art
480 E Broad St
Columbus, OH 43215
(614) 221-6801

If you can't make the book signing and wish to purchase a book, please go to the Web Site of the University of Minnesota Press: http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/R/roble_somali.html

Tariq Tarey
Project Manager
Somali Documentary Project
http://www.somaliproject.org/