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Wanderings: Sudanese Migrants and Exiles in North America. Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf. Ithaca, NY, and London, UK: Cornell University Press, 2002. xii + 193 pp. (Paper US$16.95)
Despite rising African immigration to the USA for two decades, the latest phase of a steady increase in immigration to North America since 1901, relatively few anthropologists have published books about the diverse experiences of "new" African immigrants. Writing in the same vein as Holtzman (2000) on Nuer refugees in Minnesota and Stoller (2002) on West African traders in Harlem, Rogaia Abusharaf portrays North America as a unique yet profoundly alienating place of refuge and economic opportunity for Sudanese immigrants. Her text provides essential background information about one hundred years of Sudanese immigration to North America and uses direct quotes as well as personal narratives to present a wide range of more contemporary immigrant perspectives. A Sudanese immigrant practicing "native" anthropology (with the implied benefits of access and insight), Abusharaf construes "native" as someone who has participated in a transoceanic journey from Sudan to North America. Not only is Abusharaf uniquely positioned by this journey, but she also positions her research as global, encompassing cities across Canada and the USA, the Middle East, and Sudan itself.
Wanderings is divided into three parts. The first and shortest is a historical survey of Sudanese immigration, largely from Dongola Province, during 1900-1983. Each of Part Two's four chapters is devoted to a particular category of immigrants to North America after 1983, the year when President Gafar Mohammed Nemeiri revoked a peace agreement and renewed the cycle of violence in Sudan's long-standing North-South Civil War. Part Three explores the ghorba (Arabic for life away from home, or alienation associated with leaving), the lens through which Abusharaf analyzes immigrants' coping strategies and community building efforts. The book ends with an epilogue, "Racialization and...