[PW] Re: ? Kola Boof

[Dean Walton]

Karen,

Did you know that the first two letters of your first name and the 
first two letters of your last name spell the name of the person you 
are for?   Hmm...........

Dean



At 05:55 AM 8/22/2006, you 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/