My heart will cross this ocean
Subtitle: my story, my son, Amadou
By: Kadiatou Diallo and Craig Wolff.
Contributors: Wolff, Craig Thomas.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: One World
Published: 2003
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 260
Subjects: Diallo, Kadiatou.; Diallo, Amadou, 1975-1999.; West Africans -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.; Mothers -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.; Mothers -- Africa, West -- Biography.; Sons -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.; Immigrants -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.; New York (N.Y.) -- Biography.; Africa, West -- Biography.
Genres: Biography.
Description: "Descended from West African kings and healers, raised in the turbulence of Guinea in the 1960s, Kadiatou Diallo was married off at the age of thirteen and bore her first child when she was sixteen. Twenty-three years later, that child - a gentle, innocent young man named Amadou Diallo - was gunned down without cause in New York City. Now Kadi Diallo tells the inspiring story of her life, her loss, and the defiant strength she has always found within.".

"It was Kadi Diallo's voice that captivated the public when she came to America to defend her slain son, and it is that same voice - candid, wise, and generous - that fills the pages of this book. Kadi reaches back to her earliest memories of growing up in Guinea, the daughter of a strict man who was thwarted by the relics of the French colonial system.

Raised in a world in which age-old religious and cultural rituals were disappearing before the onslaught of modernity, Kadi saw her own childhood end abruptly at age thirteen when her father literally gave her away in marriage. Kadi prayed for death, but instead she found herself plunged into a baffling new life - the life of a second wife in a strange household in a distant country, and soon afterward the teenage mother of a sweet-natured son.".

"Yet somehow, Kadi managed not only to survive but to flourish. Despite the rigid strictures of African-Islamic culture, she attended school and later started a successful business of her own. She eventually divorced and remarried and lived for eight years in Bangkok. Back in Guinea, she learned that her oldest child, Amadou, had been shot in New York City.".

"Kadi read with outrage the American newspaper description of her son as "an unarmed West African street vendor." "Nothing," she writes, "could be more distant from the truth." Now, with great pride and searing love, Kadi Diallo finally tells the truth about herself and her son."--BOOK JACKET.