March 12, 2007 — Just 10 years old, he fled war-torn Sudan to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya and watched his friends get shot by soldiers, die of hunger or get eaten by crocodiles.
Now he's coming to St. Thomas to talk about the book chronicling his journey out of Africa and the new challenges he faced in the U.S. mainland.
Valentino Achak Deng and author Dave Eggers discuss their book, What is the What, at UVI's Little Theater on March 22 at 7 p.m.
Tickets are $20, $10 for students with IDs and are available at Reichhold Center, Dockside Bookstore, Modern Music (Nisky). Parrot Fish, Interiors (Fort Mylner) and Home Again (Red Hook). Call 693-1559 for more information.
A question-and-answer period will follow the reading.
What is the What is the slightly fictionalized autobiography of Deng's horrifying experiences in Sudan's civil war. The book challenges its reader with Deng's profound humility, good will and surprising humor — staring into the jaws of lions, down the barrel of guns or into the dead eyes of a thieving Atlanta thug.
Deng is one of 20,000-some "lost boys" who escaped certain death in their villages in southern Sudan for a slightly less-bleak future in the desert. They walked hundreds of miles for the relative safety of sandbag and plastic-tarp refugee camps. Countless died on the way: bombed, shot, destroyed by land mines, starved, dehydrated.
International charity workers were eventually able to get Deng and others to the United States, which they imagined as a utopia of freedom and safety where they could educate themselves, build families and eventually assert some sort of influence on the world.
But challenged with such concepts as television, scam artists and American versions of racism and xenophobia, Deng finds himself longing, however oddly, for the arid deserts of his homeland.
Told by Eggers in remarkably clear prose, What is the What shakes the reader on every page; Deng's hardships act like a moral mirror held up to our world. The narrative style creates an image of Valentino as smart, young, unsophisticated and honest.
The upcoming event is sponsored by The Forum, a St. Thomas-based non-profit that brought opera singers, pianists, television directors, poets and symphony orchestras — 35 productions in all — to the territory over the past 11 years.
Eggers is co-founder of the non-profit 826 Valencia, which offers free after school tutoring programs.
At other 826 events children learn to improve their expository writing skills by telling stories, creating their own books
In partnership with The Forum, 826 has brought one of its best received programs, storytelling and bookmaking field trips to the Enid M. baa Public Library for 3rd and 4th graders. The program is supported by the Driehaus Community Fund at the Community Foundation of the Virgin Islands.
Similar programs are active in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles and Michigan.
Volunteers are needed to make 826 events in St. Thomas more permanent. Anyone interested can learn more by inquiring at Enid Baa or by visiting the 826 website.
San Francisco-based Eggers is the critically acclaimed author of Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, for which he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
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