I was born in The Gambia in 1966 in Banjul. After undergoing training with a governmental newspaper, I worked as a reporter for The Gambia News Bulletin at the information and broadcasting department. I also worked as a public servant in the Municipal Council for seven years (1987-1994), and as a freelancer writer for the biggest independent Gambian newspaper The Daily Observer. Following a military coup in July 1994, I left towards Sweden in search of “greener pastures and freedom” and, eventually, I arrived to Finland where I noticed the pervasiveness and the suffocation of racism and racial violence from the first encounter. In Helsinki, besides my cultural and artistic work, I have studied at various levels gaining working experience with children, the elderly and refugees. I hold the advanced level of the Finnish Language Proficiency Test (YKI). I have published the books “The Outcast” (Helsinki, 2010) and “Shadows In The Dark” (Helsinki, 2011). My work appears in the anthology “Sama taivas eri maa” by Laura Huttunen (WSOY, 2000), as part of an essay runner-up prize given by the Finnish Literature Society and Tampere University. I have worked with various organizations as an activist for inclusion, multiculturalism and equality; and as an artist, poet and resource person taking part in international poetry gatherings. Through my poetry, I have given myself literary licence to scream at what I found to be an abusive barbaric wicked society with hypocritical pretensions of civility, that has let racism and discrimination loom over our heads like a Sword of Damascus and as the obnoxious shadow of a racial ghost that follows us everywhere in the Finland that I know and have lived for 27 years.
Now That We’ve Seen It
Text in English: Dodou Touray
Translation into Finnish: Anne Ketola
Translation into Spanish: Daniel Malpica
Read in English by Miiko Toiviainen
Read in Finnish by Eeva Soivio
Read in Spanish by Daniel Malpica
Now That We’ve Seen It, in English
Now That We’ve Seen It, in Finnish
Now That We’ve Seen It, in Spanish
