By Anna-Maria Teresa Temu

Sometimes a book is more than just a book — it’s a doorway into a whole world, a legacy carried in our hands.

My NALA brother and friend Mahamadou Toure has given us exactly that. His two works —

– Women’s Strength Unveiled: A Journey Through Pregnancy, Birth & Beyond
– The Untold Story of El Hadj Saad Oumar Toure

are more than titles. They are vessels of memory.

Through them, we meet his father, a man from Mali whose life journey stretched across continents. A man of pilgrimage and prayer, who traveled as far as Tajikistan. A man who resisted the pressures of French colonial schooling in order to preserve his community’s dignity and wisdom. A visionary who transformed Islamic education in West Africa.

These stories are not only personal — they belong to all of us. They remind us that storytelling is how we preserve our legacies, honor our journeys, and pass strength to the next generation.

That’s why I’m so excited about the New Americans Book Fair, happening on Saturday, September 20, 2025.

It’s more than an event. It’s a celebration of immigrant, refugee, and New American voices — voices like Mahamadou’s — sharing our histories, our resistance, our resilience, and our dreams with the city we now call home.

🗓 Saturday, September 20
⏰ 12:00–5:00 PM
📍 Karl Road Library, Columbus
💫 Free & open to the public

Come join us, be inspired, and celebrate the power of words to shape our collective future.

Thanks to New Americans Magazine and Deba Uwadiae for making this possible.

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