Malik is a security guard here in the Midtown GlobalMarket. He’s incredibly friendly, and we often joke around about books we could make together about he and his co-workers experiences on the job. The other day he let us know he has a book that he does want to make, not a joke, but an oral history of the voices of Somali elders – folks his parents age and older – who were able to escape the civil war and come here to Minneapolis.

I’m so excited to help to get this book published. It’s a publication that our neighborhood, and Minneapolis as a whole, needs.