[PW] ? Kola Boof

[Karen Lofstrom]

Here's a real life mystery that the Wombats might be able to solve.

There's an African-American writer who calls herself Kola Boof who has
published four books through a small press called Door of Kush. She claims
to have been Bin Laden's love slave (!!!), to have had an exciting life as
an actress in Egyptian films, and to be the child of a Sudanese princess and
an Arab archaeologist who were killed before her very eyes, ultimately
leading to her adoption by an African-American couple named Marvin and
Claudine Johnson who live in Anacostia, near Washington DC. She says that
the Sudanese government has issued fatwas against her and that she is the
victim of outrageous sexism and racism. She claims that her works were first
published in Arabic but that her publisher was firebombed and hence no
copies of these works are available.

She entered my purview through what are probably her activities on
Wikipedia. Some editors want to edit the Kola Boof article to indicate that
there is no proof of her claims and that most of them seem to be fantasies.
Others -- a string of new editors and anonymous IPs -- are trying to keep
the article in its original credulous form.

I've found a few articles online pointing out that her claims are
contradictory, ridiculous, impossible. The best material seems to be in a NY
Times article from 2002 that is pay-only, and I really don't want to pay.
Also, that's old.

The only things I can find out *for sure* about this woman are that she HAS
published four books through Door of Kush, which has an ineptly assembled
website and a stable of three marginal authors, that a number of
African-Americans buy her claims, that she has managed to get a lot of
publicity, and that she briefly held a job as a writer for a soap opera and
was fired. There is no evidence that she has ever been in Africa, or knows
Arabic, or that her supposed Arabic publisher ever existed, or that the
parents she claims ever existed. My own guess is that she WAS adopted by the
Johnsons and that she has invented a glamorous life for herself before
adoption. It's not at all clear what she was doing after she left the
Johnson home and before she surfaced in New York claiming to be Bin Laden's
love slave, but I rather doubt that she was starring in Egyptian movies and
living in sin with Bin Laden.

Seems to me that the trail would have to start with the Johnsons and that it
would all unravel from there. Is anyone intrigued enough to check them out
in DC area resources?

-- 
Karen Lofstrom