The Somali Diaspora

While I was researching Out of Nowhere a friend invited me to join her to see a photography exhibit at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. We entered a room filled with the beautiful images which comprise The Somali Diaspora, a chronicle of one family's journey from the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya to resettlement in California to eventual arrival in Lewiston.

Photographer Abdi Roble, a native Somali who came to the U.S. in 1989, opens a hidden door into the lives and experiences of Somali immigrants with this book. A White House "Champion of Change," he is the executive director of the Somali Documentary Project and a visiting scholar at Ohio State University. Doug Rutledge, a poet and playwright who is also the writer for the Somali Documentary Project, contributed the essays.