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Black Girl from Pyongyang: In Search of My Identity

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In Beijing, singing karaoke with South Koreans, people she’d been taught to view as US puppets. Such meetings made her question the society in which she’d been raised. In 1979, Monica Macias, aged only seven, was transplanted from West Africa to the unfamiliar surroundings of North Korea. She was sent by her father Francisco, the first president of post-Independence Equatorial Guinea, to be educated under the guardianship of his ally, Kim Il Sung. Smith, Julia Llewellyn (24 March 2023). "From one dictator dad to another: Monica's lost childhood in North Korea". The Sydney Morning Herald . Retrieved 2 April 2023. I like to remind readers that the author is not trying to show the world the truth and the only truth, but she is giving the reader an opportunity to soak in how other people might see the world. Not everything anyone of us have learned in school and during our upbringing is the ultimate truth. We all need to try to understand other people better, and not simply let everyone know we have the only right knowledge, and everyone else is wrong. Isn't that one of the reasons the world is what it is today? This is an excellent read. Many of my fellow Goodreads readers are offended by the fact of her being, and by the sheer effrontery of her advancing her view on things; I, however, am not. I think there is much value in her entreaty to consider the perspective we use to judge world leaders, because, as she points out, history is written by the victor (or, perhaps, in the case of North Korea, by the all-powerful Superpower), sometimes to the detriment of real progress. However, I did find myself sneering, too, at her attempts to sanitise the images of her two fathers: we all know that if the devil is your bestie, you’ll be moved to comment on his cute curls and how he used his fork to help plough your field that one time you really needed help. In other words, no one is truly the caricature that those who demonise them claim; but that can never mean they have not committed – or are not able to commit – atrocities. Macias cannot be blamed for speaking for those she cares for or loves.

I like how personal this book is. I felt like I got to know the author. She is not afraid of realizing she is wrong, or that there are things she does not know, and she is not afraid of letting other people know that the way they see the world is not the whole truth either. The story I want to share with you in this book is an unusual one. Why? It is uncommon because I was born the fourth child of Francisco Macias, the first legitimate president of independent Equatorial Guinea, a small country and former Spanish colony in West Africa, but I was raised by Kim Il Sung, the former president of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), otherwise known as North Korea. Now, you might wonder why my father would choose to send us – for it was not only me but two of my siblings too – to Pyongyang, North Korea. Well, to understand that I need to give you a bit of context; the full picture will emerge as you read the book. Being open to all sides of a narrative, as she often mentions she is, does also mean looking into the narratives that do not favour your family. The hypocrisy is striking and hence I did not like her analysis of her father's history and take on the world. This is not to say she is wrong in all respects but she should have included more nuance in her analysis to consider more sides of her fathers reign.The Clapham Grand announces partnership with Terrence Higgins Trust, supporting World AIDS Day 2023 Her “unusual” life story certainly gives her a unique vantage point from which to comment on global divisions. For Macias (who currently lives in London and works in a clothes shop) was born in 1971, the fourth child of the first legitimate president of independent Equatorial Guinea, Francois Macias. Fearing for her safety and seeking to strengthen his country’s ties with the communist bloc, he sent her to be raised in North Korea by the man she calls her “adoptive father”: Kim Il-sung. Shortly after she arrived in Pyongyang, aged eight, her father was accused of perpetrating atrocities and executed by firing squad – although nobody told her he was dead.

She reminisces about the food and community she misses but I find it bizarre that she chose to skip over the negative parts altogether. Maybe in an effort to balance with what we otherwise would read about NK. I would have liked to read about her full experience though. I would have liked to know whether or not she was aware of executions, disappearings etc while she lived there. North Korea in 1977. On her right: her biological father, Equatorial Guinea’s then president Macias. On her left: the North Korean founder Kim Il-sung. What’s wrong with you? You know you cannot speak to me like that. I am older than you! You should respect those older than you,’ she said.However, as an adult my sister showed me a letter that my father wrote to accompany us when we were sent to Pyongyang. I had not heard from my father or Teo since we left Malabo. According to my sister – though I do not remember the moment – after a few months, my mother suddenly announced that she had to return to Equatorial Guinea. We were to be sent to the Mangyŏngdae Revolutionary Boarding School in the eponymous district of Pyongyang, some thirty minutes southwest by car of the city centre. Many have tried to make Monica denounce both Macias and Kim Il-sung, but she refuses. To her, she insists, Kim Il-sung was her saviour, of whose abuses of human rights she was obviously oblivious. More broadly, she contends no country is intrinsically “good” or “evil”. “I have long wondered whether any nation has earned the moral authority to lecture others.” 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. My connection to the society I grew up in is partly emotional, but I do have the capacity for dispassionate legal analysis. The moment that emotion interferes with analysis, the analysis can become sloppy.”

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