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Black Ghosts: A Journey Into the Lives of Africans in China

by Noo Saro-Wiwa - £14.99  Canongate Books (2023)
paperback    ISBN 13: 9781838856946 | ISBN 10: 1838856943

The travel memoir of a Nigerian woman in China exploring the intersections and divides between the two cultures and the lives of African economic migrants in the bustling People’s Republic.
 
China today is a land of opportunity for African people blocked from commerce with most of Europe and Northern America. It is also an intersection of racism and prejudice.
 
Noo Saro-Wiwa goes in search of China’s ‘Black Ghosts’, African economic migrants in the People’s Republic. Living in clustered communities, they are key to the trade between the continents. Her fascinating encounters include a cardiac surgeon, a drug dealer, a visa overstayer and men married to Chinese women who speak English with Nigerian accents. This is a story of intersecting cultures told with candour and compassion, focusing on the shared humanity between the sojourner and their hosts.
 
“A gripping examination of a little-known land: the one Africans occupy in China or, more accurately, in Guangdong. Who knew? Noo Saro-Wiwa has found a fine subject and covers it nimbly. This is a revealing book”
Sara Wheeler
 
”Black Ghosts is a marvellous yet unlikely book, travel with a theme, the revelation of modern China by investigating the underclass of African immigrants - highly trained doctors as well as rascals and rappers. Noo Saro-Wiwa is a brave and resourceful traveller-interrogator - outstanding in the so-called travel writing genre”
Paul Theroux
 
“Absolutely fascinating … the portraits are heart-rending [and] fantastic”
bbc Start Of The Week
 
“Gutsy and determined, perhaps cut from the same cloth as her subjects, Saro-Wiwa succeeds in getting her story. The reader cannot help but be filled with admiration”
perspective
 
“Interesting [and] charming … the author retain[s] a freshness and curiosity about China which are increasingly hard to find in mainstream coverage of the country in the West”
literary Review

(Price & availability last checked: November 2023)

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Black Ghosts: A Journey Into the Lives of Africans in China

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In booklists: Black, Asian and Middle Eastern Biography and Autobiography, China, Immigration, Refugees and Asylum Seekers,
In categories: World - Asia, Peace & Human Rights,