Frequently
Asked Questions About
What Is the What and
Valentino Achak Deng.
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Is there a way for individuals to donate to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation?
The foundation was set up to support myriad organizations and people who are trying to improve life for the Sudanese in the United States and in Sudan. For more information, click here. The proceeds of every copy of What Is the What go to this foundation, so every copy of the book bought constitutes a donation (and we are thankful for it). If you would like to donate more, tax-deductible checks can be sent to:
The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation
849 Valencia St.
San Francisco, CA 94110
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Where is Valentino now, and how is he doing?
After taking many years of community-college classes in Atlanta, Valentino was admitted this year as a sophomore to Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Having sought an excellent (and small) liberal-arts college away from the bustle of a big city, Valentino found it with Allegheny, and began his first semester in the fall of 2006. The entire Allegheny faculty and admissions staff has been extraordinary in their support, and Valentino is studying political science and international diplomacy. Though he has realized his dream of admission into a four-year college, there are thousands of other Lost Boys who are still trying to find the means to attend college.
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Why was the book fictionalized, as opposed to it being strictly nonfiction? And why didn't Valentino write the book himself?
Valentino and Dave were faced with many difficulties in pursuing this project. When Valentino first arrived in the United States, he wanted to make his story known, so it might help Westerners understand the conflict in Sudan. But his written English was very limited. He then went to Mary Williams of the Lost Boys Foundation and asked her for help in telling his story. She wrote a letter to Dave, whose memoir she'd read. After years of consultations and interviews, Valentino and Dave decided that the best way to tell the story would be to tell it in Valentino's voice. But because Valentino was very young when many of the book's events took place, there is no way he can recount his life with a degree of detail necessary for a compelling nonfiction book. In a book that is classified as nonfiction, for instance, there can be little or no dialogue, for it's impossible for anyone to recount conversations from 20 years ago with the accuracy necessary to call it fact. A book without any dialogue would make for a different, and drier, reading experience. There are many other art forms that take facts from life and weave them into a more artful form, including historical fiction. Historical fiction takes the dry outline of history and fills it with color, with a level of novelistic detail and specificity that's impossible when conforming strictly to the dictates of nonfiction. To get beyond the brief accounts of the conflicts in Sudan and to humanize the country's suffering, it was necessary to include all the elements of effective storytelling—detail, dialogue, and a comprehensible narrative.
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What can Americans do to help the people of southern Sudan and Darfur?
With the help of John Prendergast from the International Crisis Group, we've put together Ten Things You Can Do for Sudan.
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Do you have recommendations for further reading about Sudan?
Below are some books, for all tastes and areas of interest.
Darfur Diaries
By Jen Marlow, with Aisha Bain and Adam Shapiro
This is a very readable book about three young Americans traveling to Darfur to film a documentary about the genocide in the region. The book is very well written, illuminating and lucid throughout, and frequently funny. It's a travelogue of their journey, with dozens of Darfurian witnesses profiled, and the humor and open-heartedness of the narrators makes the book highly approachable and deeply informative. With a foreword by the esteemed Dr. Francis Deng and a preface by Paul Rusesabagina (the subject of Hotel Rwanda). We can't recommend this book highly enough.
War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan
By Dr. Francis Deng
Dr. Deng is the foremost scholar from southern Sudan, and everything he's written is enlightening and brilliantly reasoned. It's difficult to choose just one book of his, but this is a good starting point. Lost in much of the talk about North vs. South, Muslim vs. Christian, Arab vs. African is the fact that these divisions, especially those between the Africans and Arabs, are tenuous at best. Deng points out that centuries of intermarrying have blurred the lines to such a degree that it's folly for the so-called Arabs of Khartoum to consider themselves ethnically distinct from the indigenous Africans of southern Sudan—all Sudanese share African characteristics and African lineage, and Deng argues that these shared traits show that a common identity can be created.
They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky
Edited by Judy Bernstein
This was the first mainstream book that told the Lost Boys' story in their own words. Bernstein does a wonderful job of weaving the accounts of three boys—Alephonsion Deng, Benson Deng, and Benjamin Ajak—into a very readable book full of wonderful detail.
Emma's War
By Deborah Scroggins
This was one of the first comprehensive books about the Sudanese civil war published in the U.S. It tells the story of the war between the North and South through the life of Emma McCune, an English woman who became the wife of Riek Machar, one of the SPLA commanders and a very controversial figure in the civil war. This book contains very detailed and comprehensible information about the nature of the civil war, and the story of Emma McCune is a fascinating one, and is legend throughout Sudan.
Acts of Faith
By Philip Caputo
Published in 2005, this adventure novel follows an American, Douglas Braithwaite, as he operates a charter airline ferrying humanitarian supplies to southern Sudan during the civil war. As Braithwaite and those around him are gradually drawn deeper into the conflict, the book demonstrates the ethical complexity of aid work and the many dimensions of the conflict.
Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan
By Mary Williams
Williams, the founder of the Lost Boys Foundation, put together this
award-winning children's picture book with illustrator R. Gregory Christie.
In it, 8-year-old Garang Deng, part of a group of Lost Boys fleeing the
civil war, tells the story of his walk to Ethiopia and then to Kenya.
Eventually, with the help of an American aid worker, Garang comes to the
United States. In an afterword, Williams writes about the resettlement
process, and looks at the lives the Lost Boys now lead in America.
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I've been trying to buy the book, but the places I'm looking say they're sold out. Why?
McSweeney's is a small company—only six full-time staff members—and we're doing our best to meet demand. Unlike a larger company with more resources, we can't afford to print more books than we expect to sell, so our print orders are more conservative than they might be if we could risk more. But very soon we'll have another large shipment back from the printer, and that should meet demand. Thanks for your patience.
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