Above the Fray Fellowship

In 2009, I read a New Yorker article by Evan Osnos about Guangzhou, China that I couldn’t get out of my head. In the article, Osnos described a bustling neighborhood of African immigrants and merchants, living and working (often illegally) in China. Forget the “American Dream” this was the “Chinese Dream” and I wanted to go and talk with people about their Dream. Fast forward to 2011, I pitched this idea to the folks at the John Alexander Project and they awarded me the second-ever Above the Fray Fellowship. After many months of maneuvering to get a journalist visa to China, I was awarded a 30-day single entry visa. With the thoughtful guidance of Ted Clark, the former Deputy Foreign Editor at NPR, I set off for Guangzhou where I spent a month hanging out in a strip of wholesale shopping malls talking with Igbo businessmen and women about their dreams and more. 


“In Southern China, A Thriving African Neighborhood” (aired April 26, 2012 on NPR’s Morning Edition)