Sosina Wogayehu learned to do flips and splits at the age of six,
sitting on the floor of her parents' living room in Addis Ababa,
watching a German variety show on the only television channel in the
land. She sold cigarettes on the Ethiopian streets at the age of eight,
and she played table soccer with her friends who made money from washing
cars, barefoot in the dust. And, she dreamed of being a circus
performer. Twenty-five years later, Sosina has conjured herself a new
life in a far-off country: Australia. Along the way, she helped rescue
one brother, yet she lost another. Sosina has traveled the world as a
professional contortionist, capable of bounce-juggling eight balls on a
block of marble. She performed with Circus Oz (Australia's premier
circus company) from 2002-2009, and she appeared in Peter Jackson's 2005
remake of King Kong. Sosina was also a 2007 nominee for the Australian
of the Year Award. Additionally, Sosina has been able to juggle worlds
and stories, and, by luck - which is something she is not short of - she
is friends with author David Carlin. Following his acclaimed memoir Our
Father Who Wasn't There, David Carlin brings us his 'not-me' book,
traveling to Addis Ababa where he discovers ways of living so different
from his own and where he confronts his Western fantasies and fears.
Through Sosina's story, David shows us that, with risk and enough
momentum, life's circumstances are never predictable: whom we befriend,
where we end up, and how we come to see ourselves. *** ...Carlin is a
master storyteller who is well-equipped for the challenge of capturing
the life of a woman about whose culture, at the outset, he knows
practically nothing. The subject of The Abyssinian Contortionist is
clearly a remarkable person of unusual social mobility and ability, yet
Carlin manages to navigate the high-wire act of astute observation
without falling into hagiography....his writing is so crisp and vivid
that, on reading its final pages, I felt a deep satisfaction and a
longing for more. - Andrew McMillen, The Australian, May
2015Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?[Subject: Biography, African Studies, Australian
Studies, Women's Studies, Refugee Studies, Diaspora Studies]
