Babah Tarawally

(Sierra Leone, 1972) is a writer and journalist. In his essayistic book Gevangen in zwartwit-denken. En hoe we kunnen ontsnappen (Trapped in black-and-white thinking. And how we can escape, 2018) he describes how this mechanism determined his thinking for a long time, until he let it go. He pleads for a Civil Rights Movement, inspired by Ubuntu, the African philosophy that revolves around giving and taking, and sharing in groups to strengthen the 'us'. In 1995 he fled Sierra Leone. In 2010 his novel De god met de blauwe ogen (The god with blue eyes) appeared. He was programme coordinator of the Winternachten Festival 2012 and wrote columns in One World; he is also project leader at De ToekomstAcademie (The Future Academy) that is part of New Dutch Connections, an organisation that motivates and inspires (former) refugees. In 2016 he published his second book, De verloren hand (The Lost Hand), a novel about the experiences of asylum seekers and their struggle to overcome traumas.