About the Book: Wisecracking, inquisitive, and bombastic, Selam Asmelash is the youngest child in her large, boisterous family. Set in southwestern Ethiopia in the 1980s, Selam and her father listen to the radio in secret as the socialist military junta that recently overthrew the government seizes properties and wages civil war in the North. The Asmelashes, once an enterprising, land-owning family, are ostracized under the new regime. Selam’s mother grows ill and embraces a persecuted, Pentecostal God, insisting her family convert alongside her. The Asmelashes stand solidly in opposition to the times, and Selam grows up seeking revenge on despotic comrades, neighborhood bullies, and a ruthless God. Told through the perspective of its charming and irresistible narrator, “The History of a Difficult Child” is about what happens when mother, God, and country are at odds, and how one difficult child finds her voice.
About the Author: Mihret Sibhat was born and raised in a small town in western Ethiopia before moving to California when she was seventeen. A graduate of California State University, Northridge, and the University of Minnesota’s MFA program, she was a 2019 A Public Space Fellow and a 2019 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grantee. In a previous life, she was a waitress, a nanny, an occasional shoe shiner, a propagandist, and a terrible gospel singer. She’s currently a miserable Arsenal fan.
About the Moderator: Wendy Laura Belcher is Professor of African literature with a joint appointment in the Princeton University Department of Comparative Literature and the Department for African American Studies. Working at the intersection of diaspora, postcolonial, medieval, and early modern studies, she has a special interest in the literatures of Ethiopia and Ghana and is working to bring attention to early African literature (written between 1300 and 1900), particularly that in African languages, through her research and translation.
This event was recorded on December 3, 2023.