A few days ago, I received a special gift from Ramble Pictures, a film production company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a framed picture announcing a documentary titled Papa's Shadow, which deals with Hemingway in East Africa. Much of the documentary is a conversation between Patrick Hemingway and me about Hemingway's African experiences as reflected in his writings, as well as his ideas about writing, culture, and life in general.The picture features Ernest Hemingway, Patrick Hemingway and me, as well as Mount Kilimanjaro, the vast plain below it, and a plane in the air. This scenery magnificently evokes Hemingway's famous short story, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro."
I am humbled to be featured alongside Ernest Hemingway, one of the greatest writers in the English language, as well as Patrick Hemingway, his son and only remaining child, who knows my country and East Africa very well, having lived there for twenty five years, and who has been my mentor in my efforts to study Ernest Hemingway.
I am equally humbled that Patrick is also a great admirer of my work, such as my book, Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences. In Papa's Shadow, Patrick refers to it and he is seen reading a passage from it, in Swahili and my English translation.
Papa's Shadow focuses on a dimension of Ernest Hemingway that is not well known: his life long fascination with Africa. In the course of studying Hemingway, I realized this deficiency and decided to create a course, Hemingway in East Africa, which inspired Jimmy Gildea, one of the students, to create Papa's Shadow. I highly recommend this documentary. To order it, contact Ramble Pictures. email: info@ramblepictures.com, telephone: (952) 426-5809.
