Black Girl from Pyongyang: In Search of My Identity

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Suzanne Cronjé (1976). Equatorial Guinea, the forgotten dictatorship: forced labour and political murder in central Africa. Anti-Slavery Society. ISBN 978-0-900918-05-6. Ms Macias, who left North Korea in 1994 and spends time with family in Spain, still speaks Korean as her first language after those formative years in Pyongyang with children of the elite. After speaking to more than 3,000 witnesses and historians, she believes her father's legacy has been tainted by those very people who brought about his downfall.

Monica Macias | 9780715654309 Black Girl From Pyongyang | Monica Macias | 9780715654309

The closing chapters of the book are dominated by her struggles as she seeks to find her place in life. The book segues somewhat into identity politics; race, politics, colonialism, racism, classism etc, as she presents herself as a victim. Her life has certainly been complicated by her childhood circumstances. But as an adult, outside of NK, her choices have been made freely and have been hers to make. I doubt her difficulties will resonate much with those that have faced far more serious and brutal treatment under her previous benefactors in EG or NK. Nevertheless it is interesting to read her views as she experiences and lives freely in the world today. She states “…all countries are the same, acting in their own interests…” This may be true, but even so, the outcomes for people in most parts of the world are far preferable to those who live in EG, NK or under other authoritarian and repressive regimes. Not just your run of the mill memoir, it's the life story of a Guinean girl who grows up in North Korea, even more, the youngest daughter of the 1st President of independent Equatorial Guinea raised in North Korea under the protection of Kim Il-Sung... who keeps trying to find out who she is with her mixed identity while also trying to reconcile the two men so crucial in her life, who the world sees as horrific, with the direct experience of them she had. You won't find a recounting of atrocities or a political discussion on the merits or demerits of such complicated places as North Korea or a country immersed in post colonial dynamics like Equatorial Guinea, but her story is full of daily life experiences, with highs and lows, with lovely friendships and bittersweet memories, of real people living in real places even if that place is Pyongyang. Muakuku Rondo Igambo, Fernanado (2006). Conflictos étnicos y gobernabilidad / Ethnic conflicts and governance: Guinea Ecuatorial. Editorial Cumio. p.80. ISBN 9788496357389 . Retrieved 23 March 2017.Francisco Macías Nguema was born on 1 January 1924, [8] as Mez-m Ngueme at Nfengha, Spanish Guinea, to parents who had been expelled with the rest of their clan from what is today Woleu-Ntem Province, Gabon, [9] at a time when the Spanish Colonial Guard had not yet exerted control over the jungled area. He belonged to the Esangui clan, part of the Fang, Equatorial Guinea's majority ethnic group. His family settled in Mongomo, where he grew up. [9] Macías Nguema was the son of a witch doctor who allegedly killed his younger brother as a sacrifice. [10] Macías Nguema managed to survive several bouts with tuberculosis as a child, which left him with a profound fear of death for the remainder of his life. He was educated at a Catholic school through the primary level. [9] He changed his name to Francisco Macías Nguema at this time [11] [12] after being baptized by Spanish Catholic missionaries, [10] and would come to learn Spanish in addition to his native Fang. [13] During his adolescence, he worked as a servant for some wealthy Spanish settlers, being described as helpful and obedient, which earned him ridicule and mistreatment by other non-Christianized Fang, and showed an inferiority complex with respect to the Spaniards. [10] Possible mental illness [ edit ] stars. A deeply intriguing and unique memoir of growing up in the Hermit Kingdom. Certainly the first I've read in defense of that state, and a reminder that we in the West are fed a very pejorative and slanted view that has little appreciation of the world from the North Korean point of view.

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She was sent to North Korea under the protection of Kim Il-sung in 1979, aged seven, after her father suspected a coup was coming. Equatorial Guinea - Macias Country - Klinteberg | PDF | Spain | Politics (General)". www.scribd.com. However, as an adult my sister showed me a letter that my father wrote to accompany us when we were sent to Pyongyang. She moved to New York. US president George W. Bush had named Iran, Iraq and North Korea the “axis of evil” and many Americans were horrified to learn of her origins. She was distressed by friends’ comments about the country’s famine from 1994 and 1999, estimated to have killed between 2.5 million and 3.5 million people. “They were talking about it as if North Koreans deserved it because they had a different system,” she says.Macías does not know why the Korean leader decided to keep her and her brothers under his protection. By 1979, Macías Nguema's government had garnered condemnation from the United Nations and European Commission. That summer, Macías Nguema organised the execution of several members of his own family, leading several members of his inner circle to fear that he was no longer acting rationally. On 3 August 1979 he was overthrown by Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, whose brother was among those murdered by the President. [17] [91] Obiang achieved his coup mostly with the help of his cousins with whom he had previously attended a Spanish military academy together and who now headed the military. As Macías Nguema was still at his palace, isolated from the rest of the country due to his fear of being overthrown, the coup met no organized opposition. [91] At university she discovered literature. She mostly read the Russian classics but found Korean translations of Jane Austen and Shakespeare, too. She couldn’t finish reading Hamlet, because the parallels with her own life were too disturbing. “But what it showed me is my story isn’t the only one. It won’t be the first, nor the last one. It’s just one story of human society,” she said. Eburi Palé, José (5 July 2007). "Febrero de 1969: dos provincias españolas bajo el terror" . Retrieved 29 April 2017.