[PW] Re: ? Kola Boof

[Dean Walton]

Let me say that I must be speller.  The name would be Kalo not Kola 
using the first two letters of each name.

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/