A Celebrated African Novelist on Migration and Identity

Guest: Ken Bugul, Author, “Le Baobab Fou” If you look at the list of countries whose citizens have left for other places over the last decade, Syria’s emigrant population has grown the fastest worldwide. The rest of the top ten countries with fastest growing rates of emigration are all in Africa. So it’s not too surprising that migration was something Ken Bugul spoke passionately about during a recent visit to our studio as a guest of BYU’s Africana Studies program.  Ken Bugul is from Senegal. She’s one of French-speaking Africa’s most celebrated authors. Her writing deals with independence, loss, inequality and identity. Her next novel is about migration. It’s unfortunate that only one of her books has been translated into English, because there’s a lot Ken Bugul wishes we, in the West, understood.