DIALLO, Kadiatou 1959-

PERSONAL:

Born 1959, in Guinea; female; married Saikou Diallo (divorced); married Sankarela Diallo.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY, and Rockville, MD. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Ballantine Books, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER:

Public speaker and former gem dealer. Also founder of the Amadou Diallo Foundation.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Christopher Award in books for adults, 2004, for My Heart Will Cross This Ocean: My Story, My Son, Amadou.

WRITINGS:

(With Craig Wolff) My Heart Will Cross This Ocean: My Story, My Son, Amadou, One World/Ballantine (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

In the early hours of February 4, 1999, West African immigrant Amadou Diallo was killed by four New York City police officers who mistook his attempt to retrieve his wallet for pulling out a gun.

They fired forty-one times, almost immediately killing the twenty-three-year-old man on the front steps of his apartment building in the Bronx. During the public outcry against police brutality that erupted, Amadou's mother, Kadiatou Diallo, emerged as a strong, dignified voice calling for peace and reconciliation. She became associated with the Reverend Al Sharpton, who organized a protest rally at police headquarters that resulted in the arrest of some 1,200 people. She also hired a legal team including Johnnie Cochran, the lawyer who successfully defended O. J. Simpson against murder charges. In the end, she had her own ideas about how to respond to this terrible tragedy. Writing for the New York Times, Ted Conover remarked that Diallo "in her quiet dignity, shows every sign of being different—a player almost preternaturally prepared to handle the insanity, a woman who, having been used for a few months by the media and politicians, seems to have learned enough now to use them right back." After the police officers were acquitted of the criminal charges made against them, she wrote a memoir, My Heart Will Cross This Ocean: My Story, My Son, Amadou, with the purpose of separating her son from racial stereotypes and revealing the admirable man she loved so much. But the book is also very much Kadiatou's own remarkable story.

Born in a Muslim family of royal descent in Guinea, West Africa, Diallo was married at age thirteen to a man who was thirty and already had a wife. Her son Amadou, the first of four children, was born when she was sixteen. Because Kadiatou's husband traveled around the world on business, the family lived in several countries in West Africa and Asia. She became a businesswoman, trading gems, and Amadou received the best education available. Her son came to the United States with the purpose of getting a degree in computer science, but he wanted to do this without family money and was thus trying to make his living as a street vendor. When Amadou was killed, the relative who called Guinea with the news refused to give the information to anyone but a man, following a West African custom.

When she came to the United States following the murder, Kadiatou was immersed in a political struggle dominated by Sharpton and New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, from which she soon emerged as an independent figure. She made the controversial move of firing Cochran and hiring her own, white lawyer, and she dropped out of a sixteen-city speaking tour that Sharpton had arranged without her approval. While she agreed that racism was an important factor in her son's death, she also criticized the white and black emphasis on patriarchy that hampered her ability to seek justice. Furthermore, she sought a better understanding between all parties, including Africans and African Americans.

In My Heart Will Cross This Ocean: My Story, My Son, Amadou, Diallo was determined to show that her son was not the "unarmed West African street vendor" of news accounts, a description that she said implies he was expected to be armed. She commented in Crisis, "I liked to imagine how people might have perceived the situation if I had been allowed to define him and with the label of my choosing. He would have been the good-hearted, stepping-out-for-air, loved-by-his-mother young man." The telling of her life was described by Crisis writer Angela Ards as having "a voice that is at turns analytical and incisive, then candid and poetic.…Her memoir explores the ways in which a social order rife with patriarchy and racism led to her son's fate, which was of course, inextricably linked with her own."

A Publishers Weekly writer, while noting that some readers might have preferred a larger emphasis on Kadiatou's interactions with leaders such as Sharpton and Cochran, remarked that the book "effectively demolishes the simplistic portrayal of Amadou by the media and reveals his mother's fascinating life." A Kirkus Reviews critic called the work "an uneven memoir.… While the title indicates a focus on Amadou, there are so few details composing his life that the reader can't form a clear picture of him." However, writing for City Limits, Frankie Edozien found "a funny and poetic, yet emotionally wrenching account of an immigrant family's life." Edozien noted that the book was "written in true African style—in the form a of a history lesson."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Diallo, Kadiatou, with Craig Wolff, My Heart Will Cross This Ocean: My Story, My Son, Amadou, One World/Ballantine (New York, NY), 2003.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 2003, Vanessa Bush, review of My Heart Will Cross This Ocean, p. 1559.

City Limits, February, 2004, Frankie Edozien, review of My Heart Will Cross This Ocean, p. 35.

Crisis, May-June, 2003, Angela Ards, review of My Heart Will Cross This Ocean.

Essence, November, 2000, Asha Bandele, "Forty-one Bullets," p. 136.

Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2003, review of My Heart Will Cross This Ocean, p. 518.

New Republic, March 13, 2000, Hanna Rosin, "Black Like Him."

Newsweek, March 6, 2000, Tom Morganthau, "Cops in the Crossfire."

New York Amsterdam News, April 15, 1999, Herb Boyd, "Bringing Dignity to Movement"; August 19, 1999, Herb Boyd, "Kadiatou Diallo Makes Legal Move"; August 26, 1999, Alton H. Maddox, Jr., "Justice or Just Us"; March 2, 2000, Herb Boyd, "Strength and Fortitude in the Search for Justice"; March 2, 2000, Herb Boyd, "No Peace until Justice."

New York Times, Janaury 9, 2000, Ted Conover, "Kadi Diallo's Trial."

Publishers Weekly, March 31, 2003, review of My Heart Will Cross This Ocean, p. 51.

OTHER

National Public Radio, May 14, 2003, Tavis Smiley, transcript of interview, "Kadiatou Diallo Talks about Her Life and Her Son's Death at the Hands of New York City Police Officers."*