Racism Explained to My Daughter

New York, NY: The New Press, 1999. First edition. First printing stated. Hardcover. Good in very good dust jacket. A few ink comments and underlinings.. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 207 p. Illustrations. Occasional footnotes. In this international bestseller which has been translated into 15 languages, the author speaks frankly with his ten-year-old daughter about racism Introduction by Bill Cosby and Responses from William Ayers, Lisa Delpit, David Mura, and Patricia Williams. From Wikipedia: "Tahar ben Jelloun ((born in Fes, French Morocco, 1 December 1944) is a Moroccan writer. The entirety of his work is written in French, although his first language is Arabic. He became known for his novel "L Enfant de Sable (Eng. The Sand Child ). Today he lives in Paris and continues to write. Tahar Ben Jelloun was born in Morocco in December of 1944. As a child, he attended an Arabic-French bilingual elementary school. He then studied in the Lycee Regnault in Tangier, Morocco until he was 18 years old. He studied philosophy at Mohammed V University in Rabat. After having been a philosophy professor in Morocco, he joined the group who ran Souffles (a literary magazine) in the mid-1960s. He wrote many pieces for the cultural magazine. He later participated in the student rebellion against the repressive and violent acts of the Moroccan police. In 1966, he was then forced into military camp as his punishment. Five years after, his first collection of poems were published in Hommes sous linceul de silence (1971). Shortly after he moved to Paris, France and in 1972 began writing for Le Monde. He received his doctorate in social psychiatry in 1975. Ben Jelloun became a famous writer once his novel L Enfant de Sable (Eng. The Sand Child ) was released in 1985. In 1987 he was awarded the Prix Goncourt for his novel La Nuit Sacree (Eng. The Sacred Night ). He was the first Maghreb author to receive the award. His 1996 novel Les raisins de la galere (Eng. The Fruits of Hard Work ) reflects his ideas of racism and the traditional ideals of women in Muslim and Islamic subcultures. The protagonist, Nadia (a Maghreb woman), fights for gender equality in the local authority and in her private life. In 2004, Ben Jelloun was awarded the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Cette aveuglante absence de lumiere (Eng. This Blinding Absence of Light). He received the Prix Ulysse in 2005 for the entirety of his work. In September 2006, Ben Jelloun was awarded a special prize for "peace and friendship between people" at the Lazio between Europe and the Mediterranean Festival. On February 1, 2008, Nicolas Sarkozy awarded him the Cross of Grand Officer of the Legion d'honneur."