Wanderings: Sudanese Migrants and Exiles in North America / Edition 1

by Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf

Overview

In one of the first books devoted to the experience of Sudanese immigrants and exiles in the United States, Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf places her community into context, showing its increasing historical and political significance. Abusharaf herself participates in many aspects of life in the migrant community and in the Sudan in ways that a non-Sudanese could not. Attending religious events, social gatherings, and meetings, Abusharaf discovers that a national sense of common Sudanese identity emerges more strongly among immigrants in North America than it does at home. Sudanese immigrants use informal transatlantic networks to ease the immigration process, and act on the local level to help others find housing and employment. They gather for political activism, to share feasts, and to celebrate marriages, always negotiating between tradition and the challenges of their new surroundings.Abusharaf uses a combination of conversations with Sudanese friends, interviews, and life histories to portray several groups among the Sudanese immigrant population: Southern war refugees, including the "Lost Boys of Sudan," spent years in camps in Kenya or Uganda; professionals were expelled from the Gulf because their country's rulers backed Iraq in the Gulf War; Christian Copts suffered from religious persecution in Sudan; and women migrated alone.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801487798
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	08/23/2002
Series:	The Anthropology of Contemporary Issues
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf is Visiting Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar and the author of Transforming Displaced Women in Sudan: Politics and the Body in a Squatter Settlement.

Table of Contents

Author's Note
Acknowledgments
An Airport Scene
Introduction: Departing
Part I. Inaugural Migration to North America
Chapter 1. The First to Arrive: Sati Majid, 1904-29
Chapter 2. The Bahhara: An Immigrant Community
Part II. Post-1989 Migration: Four Experiences
Chapter 3. Southern Sudanese: A Community in Exile
Chapter 4. Beyond the Storm: Sudanese Post-Gulf War Migration
Chapter 5. The Copts: A Perpetual Diaspora
Chapter 6. Migration with a Feminine Face: Breaking the Cultural Mold
Part III. The Ghorba: Life in Exile
Chapter 7. Economic Bearings
Chapter 8. Finding Refuge in the Shrine of Culture
Chapter 9. Political Life
Epilogue: Racialization and a Nation in Absentia
Glossary
References
Index

What People are Saying About This

Sondra Hale

Wanderings is highly readable and an appropriate mix of theory and personal narratives. Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf makes good use of the data, and employs a methodology that reveals and clarifies rather than mystifies.

Soheir A. Morsy

This rare anthropological investigation of Sudanese migration to the New World is a valuable contribution to the study of transnational migration. Informed by global political economic developments, Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf's analysis of the complexities of social identity provides a challenging alternative to the classic conception of community as a territorially based entity. This meticulously researched and well-written book holds promise of broad appeal among both specialists and non-specialists concerned with contemporary developments in African/Arab societies, as well as issues of race and ethnicity in the U.S.

Editorial Reviews

Abusharaf discusses the variety of Sudanese migrants who came to North America in the 20th century.... Wanderings is valuable in demonstrating recent immigrant attitudes toward a new environment.

Choice

Wanderings is a sensitive portrayal of the diverse Sudanese community in North America. It is also highly readable, partly because the author allows immigrants to speak for themselves by frequently including excerpts from conversations and interviews. The details of this book are Sudanese, but the core immigrant experience it examines--of struggling to make a new home while trying to preserve links to an old one--has universal resonance and appeal.

--Heather J. Sharkey "International Journal of African Historical Studies 36:1"

Abusharaf discusses the variety of Sudanese migrants who came to North America in the 20th century.... Wanderings is valuable in demonstrating recent immigrant attitudes toward a new environment.

-- "Choice"

This interesting study presents a nicely textured picture of the Sudanese diaspora in the United States and Canada, surveying the reasons people left home, their economic and social coping strategies, their reluctance to assimilate non-Sudanese lifestyles, and their attitudes regarding religion, traditional customs, women's status, and politics at home.

-- "Foreign Affairs"

From the Publisher

"Wanderings is highly readable and an appropriate mix of theory and personal narratives. Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf makes good use of the data, and employs a methodology that reveals and clarifies rather than mystifies."

Sondra Hale

"This rare anthropological investigation of Sudanese migration to the New World is a valuable contribution to the study of transnational migration. Informed by global political economic developments, Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf's analysis of the complexities of social identity provides a challenging alternative to the classic conception of community as a territorially based entity. This meticulously researched and well-written book holds promise of broad appeal among both specialists and non-specialists concerned with contemporary developments in African/Arab societies, as well as issues of race and ethnicity in the U.S."

Soheir A. Morsy

Wanderings is a sensitive portrayal of the diverse Sudanese community in North America. It is also highly readable, partly because the author allows immigrants to speak for themselves by frequently including excerpts from conversations and interviews. The details of this book are Sudanese, but the core immigrant experience it examines—of struggling to make a new home while trying to preserve links to an old one—has universal resonance and appeal.

International Journal of African Historical Studies 36:1 - Heather J. Sharkey

This interesting study presents a nicely textured picture of the Sudanese diaspora in the United States and Canada, surveying the reasons people left home, their economic and social coping strategies, their reluctance to assimilate non-Sudanese lifestyles, and their attitudes regarding religion, traditional customs, women's status, and politics at home.

Foreign Affairs