A GAZELLE ATE MY HOMEWORK is three hours of laughs and snorts and tears...and SCREW people who think immigrants are dangerous!

A GAZELLE ATE MY HOMEWORK: A Journey from Ivory Coast to America, from African to Black, and from Undocumented to Doctor (with side trips into several religions and assorted misadventures)
HABIB FANNY, M.D.
Thorntree Press
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Sick of living in the shadows of a corrupt post-colonial Ivory Coast, intrepid gazelle hunter Habib Fanny schemes to see the opulence of America for himself, with naught but rudimentary raft-making skills and his trusty spear to aid him.

Well...that’s one version of the story, at least. In truth, Fanny’s story takes him on an adventure across continents, around dangerous political intrigue, into the depths of poverty, and through the complicated systems that provide him with a medical education. His journey to become an American is beset not by lions and man-eating sharks, but rather by persistent internal questions, which he attacks with the same rigor he brings to his schooling. What does it mean to be a Muslim, a Christian, an agnostic, or possibly, maybe, an atheist? What does it mean to be African in America, but not yet Black? And how on earth do you deal with the dating scene?

As he navigates the shifting waters of cultural identity, he’s forced to confront his own colonialist prejudices. Habib Fanny—that’s Doctor Habib Fanny, M.D., actually—doesn’t find gold-paved streets in America, but with humor and curiosity, he finds a path all his own.

I RECEIVED A DRC OF THIS BOOK FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+ AND I THANK THEM FOR APPROVING ME TO GET IT.

My Review: There are some people who defy the odds. There are a few more people who defy categorization. There are ever more people who defy Authority. (Thank goodness for that, especially at this moment in history.)

But there are not that many who do all three, in a foreign language, while a teenager, in a broken family and without a peer group's support. In fact, here he is: Habib Fanny (pronounced fahNEE), M.D.

A unicorn or a phoenix or both...a person of rare and astounding strength, depths of talent for caring and knack for survival turbocharged by burning in the crucible of adolescence while learning a new culture, and now he is using all his accumulated knowledge and wisdom to help suffering people recover from their ills and ailments.

It is worth mentioning that Dr. Fanny is an example of the kind of person whose visa will now be denied by presidential order, though it will not impact the good doctor himself. Just the many people across the world whose rosy view of our country, much like Author Fanny's view growing up, leads them to try to get here, to learn from our remaining great institutions and to give back the expertise they gain from our educational system.

However, be that as it may (and I wish to hell it wasn't), there's a book to review and here I go.

Habib Fanny was never going to have it easy in Detroit. His name, his Africanness, and his absolute ignorance of hoops and the NFL were going to present hurdles to socializing with the young men and women whose skin color, from a white outsiders point of view, should've made this socialization a conquest for him. Not so much...he's got nothing in common with the dead-enders, being intelligent and ambitious, and the stars aren't looking for cultural exchange so much as cultural escape.

So this formerly upper-middle class good student, now an impoverished immigrant son of a single mother, reinvents himself with humor (see the title of his book) and a reservoir of strength that is enviable and awe-inspiring and humbling. Seriously, my fellow Americans, is this person and the hundreds of thousands who are like him around the world, someone we want to support excluding from joining the American Experiment? A man who works his way through medical school while still answering without rancor others' jibes and insults about his heritage, his skin color? In his place, I'd've booked it back to Ivory Coast.

Yet in addition to writing this book as an adult, Author Fanny has taken on medical practice in a new state, during a pandemic, while still mentoring his nieces and nephews into the life of the mind (he talks them into reading!), while *also* answering random strangers' questions on Quora and having a spiritual awakening.

Are you in love with him yet? If not, I fear you are dead inside. Here's a snippet of conversation responding to a Quora user's query about how he is doing in this difficult time:

I’m a loner. I’ve always been. My little sister is 7 years younger. The sibling closest to me in age is 6 years older. I played by myself a lot as a kid. I still do. But by moving to a city where I hardly knew anyone, and in the middle of a pandemic requiring physical distancing, I may have signed up for more solitude than even I can handle. And yet it must be handled. And so it will.

Author Habib Fanny, M.D., theydies and gentlethem. I urge you to read the heck out of his hilarious and touching memoir...with a side trip into capsule modern African history...to be sure he knows how very much he is loved and valued for his own unique self.