[PW] Re: ? Kola Boof

[Beth Johns]

The NYT article is on ProQuest's Historical New York Times:

JULIE SALAMON "Fatwa Victim or a Fraud :Mystery Enshrouds Kola Boof, Writer
and Internet Persona. " New York Times (1857-Current file)  [New York, N.Y.]
11  Dec. 2002,E1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 -
2003).

I haven't read the article yet so I don't know how much this will help.


On 8/22/06, Karen Lofstrom <klofstrom at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Project Wombat
> list at project-wombat.org
> http://www.project-wombat.org/
>



-- 
Beth M. Johns
Electronic Resources & Reference Librarian
Saginaw Valley State University

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding
of ourselves."
  - Carl Jung