Finding A Book By Teju Cole

The short story "Modern Girls" is by the Nigerian writer Teju Cole and is set in a girls's school in Nigeria in the early 1970s.

After hearing it read on public radio's Selected Shorts in September 2015, I included his name among the writers I should read.

But it wasn't until a little more than six months ago, after leaving my ophthalmologist's office, that it was my good fortune to find, on top of a garbage bin, a copy of one of his books, Known and Strange Things (Random House, 2016). It was the first book of his that I have encountered.

I haven't read it yet. But I intend to. Perhaps I should put it on my summer or fall reading list.

Cole, it should be noted, was a recipient of a United States Artists grant. USA is a nonprofit organization that since 2006, reported Vogue magazine, in 2017, has given "unrestricted grants of $50,000 to individual artists who...use traditional methods and unexpected approaches to speak to a vast range of experience." Cole has also received several awards including the PEN/Hemingway Award.

Known and Strange Things is described on the back cover as "[p]ersuasive and provocative, erudite yet accessible...."

Books By Authors From Countries Disparaged By Trump

As a response to President Trump's recent labeling of Haiti and African nations  as "shithole countries," Book Culture, a book store on 112th Street near Broadway in Manhattan, created a window display featuring twenty-eight books from some of the countries disparaged by Trump.

On one of the windows was posted a message, printed in all capital letters, that said:
"WE HAPPILY SELL BOOKS BY AUTHORS FROM 'S***HOLE COUNTRIES.'"

Some of the books and authors in the window display included In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story by Edwidge Danticat, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah, Homecoming: A Novel by Yaa Gyasi, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,  Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue, Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf by Helene Cooper, and A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa by Alexis Okeowo.

A Nigerian Short Story Heard On The Radio

I heard the Nigerian writer Teju Cole's short story, "Modern Girls," read on public radio's Selected Shorts via New York's WNYC on September 13, 2015. It is set in a school for girls in Nigeria during the early 1970s, around the time of the Biafran war. The quality of Cole's writing is so good that I want to read the story myself  as well as his other work, both fiction and nonfiction.