Improbable Journey: From West Africa to Cambridge and Beyond A Memoir

Raised in the pre-industrialized village of Sika during the colonial era of West Africa’s The Gambia, there was no reason to suspect that young Bakary J. Sonko would grow to be anything other than the same subsistence farmer as his father and all the other village men. But through an obsessive desire for intellectual challenge, Sonko beat the usual odds and attained a college degree, with fascinating stops along the way at the 1977 Sierra Leone student revolution, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan Arab Republic, University of London, and eventually Britain’s prestigious Cambridge University. In this witty and heartwarming memoir, Sonko tells the entire story, as well as sharing his passionate arguments for more modern infrastructure and investment in the still poor and underdeveloped African nation he once called home. Equally moving and funny, Improbable Journey stands as an indelible addition to the field of African Diaspora literature and will change the way you think of the American immigrant experience. Read more